New technology and change in UK’s music industry development

It is a fact that new technology has affected many Cultural and Creative Industries; in the case of music the repercussions have been really bad mostly in the copyright field regulations.

The UK music industry used to work in a very different way before the digital era came; all the regulations from production, content, copyright and access had a whole singular approach.

Now all these regulations are changing due the overwhelming bad usage of new technology; before, people used to go to the disco store and buy records, now you can download the same records, sometimes with the same quality, for free.

This is a fact and it has affected a great majority of Featured Artists which are the responsible for most of the income in the music industry and has caused an incredible amount of waste of money, as artists have to pay (in the majority of cases) for the studio and all the production process to finally have their album released and then for people to download it for free.

In the UK there exist some regulatory bodies that are trying their best to solve this big issue that piracy is, but at the end of the day people from every part of the world were, are and will be downloading files and files of music illegally, it’s a reality and we have to learn how to take advantage of it or either develop a really strong regulation that would stop piracy for once. As I posted couple of entries ago, in the UK, 7 of 10 people in the UK downloading music ilegally would start paying for the service if their ISP (Internet Service Provider) told their so. That is quite a number! But is this the solution? It wouldn’t either way affect the artists’ income because many people are so used to download for free that they wouldn’t be bothered to pay?

In a recent article written by Mark Mulligan for www.paidcontent.org, he explains that there can be 3 possible approaches to illegal downloading music in the UK:

- Adapting digital music to New Media in the form of advertising. For each track there will be a certain amount of ads before, or during the downloading process. The average revenue per unit (ARPU) wouldn’t be too much but it would cover the largest segment of the industry.

- Premium membership. People will have a limited access to music for free, like samples and if they want full access and HQ (High Quality) they will have to pay. This would cover the smallest sector of the industry but the higher ARPU.

- Subsidized by the ISP (Internet Service Provider). This would make the perfect balance of ARPU and industry segment coverage.

I think in the digital era we are all living in, it will be impossible or at least it will take loads of time and money to make people stop downloading music for free.
However, with these 3 approaches working together, we can make the most of illegal downloading music in the UK and bring back all the lost income and copyright to Featured Artists and renew the way producers and regulation bodies look at the music industry or any other CCI.

Interesting links on this issue:

http://newsblog.thecmuwebsite.com/post/CMU-Review-Of-The-Year-2009-The-music-business.aspx

http://www.ukmusic.org/news

http://www.featuredartistscoalition.com/showscreen.php?site_id=161&screentype=folder&screenid=2984

http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/sep/landmark_deal_between_youtube_and_prs

http://www.pro-music.org/Content/questions/FreeMusicMyths.php