Business value: The Future of music

The original title: "The Music of the Future" music will not die or old, it just needs to be presented in a more advanced form of organization.　　When this 10-year music and technology again to look, may both sides be able to find too late tacit understanding. Zhao Xing | Wen April 23, 2011, "The father of the CD" Big Ohga died, his efforts to promote and advocate the era of the laser record has entered the twilight, although no one can officially put an end to the death of the era, but the "time is not much" is a tacit idea. The tapes cut off the black vinyl record, and the CD grabbed the tape, and now it's time for the digital music to turn into a CD. The history wheels roll forward, the music will not disappear, but the media and the carrier is constantly evolving.　　And the most maddening thing about the recording industry is that the Internet is coming, and the changes it brings can never be erased. Almost all traditional industries face the dilemma of how to move their businesses online. Especially for a century-old huge operation of the machine, the huge inertia how to let its brakes shunt? The music industry has spent almost 10 years--and wasted 10 of years--to wake up from the dream of "a yarn to feed a singer for a lifetime, a superstar to feed a company."　　When it opened its eyes, it was not pirated CDs, but the internet was ubiquitous, without spending half a cent of the pirated downloads. And while it was a rush to sue piracy while considering large-scale value shifts, the era of mobile internet came again. Looking back on the PC internet age, we felt it was so short-lived that the record company was hit by the internet without a fight, but it was too far away when looking at the mobile interconnection.　　The music industry is facing up to the prospect of the future, repeatedly missing the present, and the music will be innovation or revolution, it depends on how many chips they have left. Outworn's path depended on the 2001, the music industry was enjoying the golden age of nearly 10 years. CD sales continued to rise in 1994, the world record sales of more than 1.7 billion, 2000 breakthrough 2.5 billion, sales reached about 37 billion U.S. dollars.　　And all this, thanks to cd--, which at the time seemed to represent a high-tech music medium. The big Ohga, a director of Sony, ignored suspicion and opposition in the late 70, insisting that CDs would replace vinyl records. Just like the 33-turn black vinyl record successfully replaces the 78-turn record, the biggest reason is that the recording has grown longer.　　From 78 to 4-5 minutes on each side, to 33 rpm for 25 minutes, and then to CD to record a whole 75-minute symphony, plus a higher resolution of the sound quality, the music industry's technology upgrade is ready. 1982, the CD was first launched by Sony Records after hit. This diameter is only 12cm, in order to lossless digital signal records, can be non-linear playback of the "plastic film" in Japan in a short period of 5 years sales that exceed vinyl records. That same year, Sony unveiled its brand's first CDPlayer. After entering the 1983, other companies also listed the CD player.　　Until 1999, Sony had been updating its players almost at a rate of 10 a year. At that time, the music industry on recording technology highly sensitive and relentless pursuit, so that the music industry ushered in the last century in the 90 's once brilliant, product shape changes also led to the CD machine manufacturers hot.　　While there are struggles to transition from cassette to CD, while the music industry is enjoying the triumph of professional technology, computers and Internet technology are also subtly altering people's lives. In the 90 's, computer technology and Internet technologies were rapidly developing and popularizing in "seconds", with PC configuration escalating, HDD capacity from dozens of MB to hundreds of G, from no sound card to microphone, camera available, from LAN to Internet, from 3.5-inch floppy to hard disk storage.　　These technological and hardware innovations, seemingly unrelated to music, have been foreshadowing the decline of records everywhere.　　If it were not for the invention of the MP3 encoding format, without the optical drive and the hard disk space, it would not be easy for people to copy the contents of the CD to the local machine, share it with others over the internet, or reproduce more CDs using the disc-burning software. Record companies are not blind to all this, but the original mode of production and business model, as well as the huge market capacity, so that they do not believe that the nascent technology can shake the physical stores channel distribution capabilities. For hundreds of years, the record company's model of "producing music-selling physical products-copyright transactions" has formed a complex and closed ecosystem, and the life of the ecosystem, which has not been broken for a long time, lies in the high threshold of technology.　　As a result of sophisticated technology, there is little piracy of black gum; the "string of tapes" of the cassette era had been rampant; in the CD era, while the technical barriers to the production of music content are still there, computers and the Internet are equipped with almost everyone the necessary equipment for content reproduction and dissemination. Global CD sales continued to grow over the previous year in 1999, when Napster, a peer-to-peer offering for free sharing of MP3 music, appeared. But from 1999 to 2002, global record sales fell by 19.8%.　　The music industry has found two of the best reasons for this, one is the economic situation after the terrorist incident, and the second is the continued threat of Internet file sharing. But the record company's response to the latter is to "block" the way desperate resistance.　　In the face of the Internet as a mass technology, the record company does not like to embrace the new recording technology as Open arms, but in the original path depends on the strong inertia to make a futile resistance. When people face almost lossless sound and completely free music downloads, any noble virtues and values are hard to convince people not to download, and the advent of peer-to-peer agreements has even been overcome by selfish instincts-as long as users do not remove downloaded items from the list, they can always provide a download source for others, Apparently people are willing to offer this to others.Laura。 But record companies have launched a series of promotional campaigns to persuade people not to participate in Peer-to-peer file-sharing activities.　　In the face of real benefits, the record company's one or two slogan appears too weak. Subsequently, the music industry began to resort to legal threats, and the targets included file-sharing platforms, service providers, such as Napster founder Fanning (Shawn Fanning), and individual users involved in file sharing. Since the end of 1999, the American Record Industry Association (RIAA), the US record Industry authority, led major record companies to prosecute Napster, and from September 2003 onwards RIAA filed lawsuits against 11,456 Internet users of the US illegally downloading music.　　Chen, CEO of Whale Music Network, in his book The Journey of Entrepreneurship: Why Google chose me, restores the details at the time when almost everyone is downloading pirated music for free, "people jokingly dubbed the 11456 to be Lotto winners." But these prosecutions have not curbed the illegal downloading of online music, making it even more rampant. Even more frightening, this series of moves has put the record company into a unjust position. At the end of 2001, record companies began to realise that network distribution channels were a gap that they could not circumvent.　　As a result, 3 of the 5 major record companies-Warner (Warner), EMI and Bodman (BMG)-Established musicnet network stores, and Sony and Global (UNIVERSAL) followed suit with Pressplay. At that time, the 5 major record companies almost monopolized 80% of the music market, to other competitors not to buy the lawsuit, music net and press play rely on genuine copyright once again dominate the network music. But the services they provide do not attract enough users. The music is limited by the fact that the record company only opens part of the download. Second, the record companies to prevent downloading music is easy to copy, additional set a number of technical restrictions, such as downloading music can be copied the number of times, can play time and so on. The limited openness of these "touches" and the "fee-free" model can only push users to search for richer downloads.　　These two music stores have been closed in two years. The record company's self-improvement after desperate resistance has not had much effect, on the one hand because the internet has changed the music product form, from the entity to the intangible; On the other hand, the pricing standards for intangible products have changed.　　We can read a lot of news, free to watch a lot of video, "Free" has become the Internet's most basic gene, which makes the traditional mode of development for many years of the music industry is difficult to be compatible. At the same time, the music industry yesterday's prosperity has become the biggest burden of its transformation-the highly developed music industry, its industrial concentration is very high, the 5 major record companies occupy the dominant position of the industry, they did not carry outThe power of radical change. In this context, the record company has not relied on the huge copyright resources to form a strong network channel business, also failed to completely curb the continued proliferation of pirated music.　　As channel Power has turned from one-way to multi-directional, the record companies have found themselves without a trump card after missing the opportunity to embrace new technology. Large-scale value transfer even though the spread of internet piracy has put the record company in a mess, at least it has helped the record company-making the singers more famous.　　While large supermarkets such as Wal-Mart have reduced the number of shelves available for CDs, many singers ' music still finds their listeners on the internet, which is not a good thing for singers to increase their influence. In the face of the singer's personal brand establishment, the music industry is experiencing a large-scale transfer of value. Madonna left Warner Records in 2007 to the bosom of Live Nation, the world's largest live-show company. In 2009, UK live performances exceeded the sale of physical records for the first time.　　As an experiential consumption that cannot be replicated and pirated, live performance has become the only incremental market in the overall decline of the music industry. A collection of live performances-music festivals began to wind up. As the organizer of the British Glastonbury Music Festival (Glastonbury Festival), score Fiddler Music Group (score Fiddler Music Group) managing Director Melvin Ben (Melvin Benn) in 2007 The Financial Times reported a good news, "from 2003 onwards, the performance ticket sales rate of 10% year-on-year increase." Not only in the large outdoor music festival market, but also in small indoor performance. "Before the advent of the ipod, the record companies were touring concerts for singers, and this was done to stimulate the sale of CDs that would bring profits to the company," said Harvey Goldsmith, a concert producer renowned in the field, in the same story. But now it's completely reversed. Live performances have become more powerful and even dominate the global music market. "At the time, almost every record company owner was going to be talking about a 360-degree management company," he said.　　From artist brokers to live performances, the record company hopes to unearth the commercial value of the singer by 360 degrees and equally. Like many great innovations, "360-degree management companies" is also the product of Doom. If the singer and the record company say they want to finish a record in 18 months, but only sell hundreds of copies in half a year, do you think there will be a record company to heed the offer? So the singer has to provide other earnings for the record company to compensate for the loss of the physical record market, and the record company is happy to run the singer as a brand.　　"Band as Brand" is a popular and pleasing tone to the record company. But this has also attracted many people in the industry's opposition and strong doubts. This break music productionCan the pattern of division of labour be sustainable for a long time?　　Can record companies get out of trouble? The typical business model of the music industry is that the singer and the record company contract, the record company obtains from the singer's record sale to obtain the share, simultaneously the singer and the scene performer, the brokerage company and so on separately contracts, for other business activities.　　But now the record companies are using a "360 contract" to incorporate a package of business activities that should be carried out independently, whether it's publishing, advertising, touring or other forms of business income, record companies can share a slice to compensate for the loss of the core record business. However, for influential singers, this kind of contract can not be signed. After the internet has magnified personal brand and personal influence, the record company's help to the singer appears to be negligible. Big-name artists have left the record company to choose Solo. By 2007, the Eagles had released a best-selling album with the help of no record company.　　The British Radio Head Band (Radiohead) has abandoned EMI recordings, releasing its own digital album directly on the internet. The radio head of a rock band seems to have more experimental spirit. October 10, 2007, the name "In Rainbows" of the digital album was put to its official website radio-head.com sale, the price can be customized by the user, even if the input 0 also can get 160kps of unencrypted MP3. Although the content of the entire album soon flooded the web, but fans know that the sale of money can be directly to their idols, we still have creators, and even the average bid reached 4.5 pounds.　　Although the price is slightly lower than the average itunes store album, there is a surprising result. With this experimental pioneer, many singers follow suit. In an effort to salute Radiohead, Oasis has also made a free download of their new single. A singer who has left the record company is still a powerful player, but a record company that loses a singer becomes vulnerable. Record companies are betting on the most uncertain individuals in the process of large value shifts. But the singer will retire and the tide will change. And the only one who can be obedient and earn money for thousands of years is the music copyright lying in the database.　　How to realize and enlarge the value of music copyright is the fundamental and long-term stable income source of the record company. When the network channel business basically completes the first wave of predatory growth, several big giants surface, the copyright issue becomes the competition between the competitor, the big crocodile and the small shrimp each other the tool, the pair throws "the rotten egg". Like the video site in the accumulation of a large number of users, rushed to spend a lot of money to buy genuine content, delete pirated content to "wash the white" themselves, online music is also experiencing the copyright issue of torture. This is a great opportunity for record companies to catch up again and think about the path of development for the next 10 years. or lose.The PC Internet age record company, will again lose the opportunity of mobile Internet. Destruction and rebirth when we talk about music again, context has been defined in the mobile internet age, and intelligent terminals make a lot of things possible. What does listening to music become a multiple-choice question, stereo, computer, IPod, ITouch, cell phone or car music player? It is no longer pure auditory enjoyment for people's lives, but becomes an application scenario, and online listening or offline listening is only a combination of application scenarios. The ipod era allows people to have 1000 songs in their pockets, and the cloud music service, which is a music, lets a huge crowd follow the user. The era of a cloud of multiple screens makes the music playback terminal diversified, but also makes music and Internet service providers, hardware manufacturers and so on strong correlation.　　This is a new opportunity for the music industry. The music industry should realize that when music has entered the cross development of many industries, whether it is the plundering of the technology side or the outworn of the content side, will not form a total win, only the integration of resources to succeed, and this role is not limited to the third callers play. The music industry has a desire to embrace technology and push for change, and the Internet is a world of people who really love music.　　But the music industry and the local improvement of war and retreat can not help it to recreate a beautiful new world, only to destroy the old system, the establishment of a new order to the rebirth of fire. First, the internet has repeatedly compressed the original physical sales channels of record companies, and physical recordings have become intangible music documents, and the core assets of the record company are left with intellectual property that is protected by law but is always violated. Unable to control the spread of the channel and intangible product form, making the record company as being cut down in the middle, and the previous purchase of CD consumers completely lost contact, become an Internet tide in a duckweed. As a content provider, record companies have struggled to build their own channels and operations on the Internet through technical means, but they have not succeeded.　　The reason is that the Internet free spirit of the great changes in user values, making users more cautious about the choice of paid products, but also the proliferation of Internet piracy environment. But more importantly, the record companies have taken limited resources, paid to open, and hope that Internet users will be able to pay as much as a physical record. However, the limited open content is only part of the record company's huge music, in the classic repertoire, the record company has taken the reservation measure, avoids any mistake to become the pirate source.　　But many individuals who have more "open" values than record companies have uploaded their own CDs and shared them for free. When the record companies found that "let users pay" became less easy, they switched to a music licensing bargain with a network service provider who wanted to collaborate. This idea of profiting from the channel is not wrong.　　The success of the itunes Music store in 2003 had cheered the 5 major record labels, with 70% per cent of revenues divided into record companies and 700 million dollars in 3. But this for the 90 's in the last century, the record industry, which sells more than 30 billion of dollars a year, does not know whether to be happy or not. Apple's success lies in the wonderful combination of software and hardware, and the building of a walled garden.　　In the control of the terminal situation, genuine music paid to download channels can be effective. However, Yahoo, Microsoft and even Amazon have been involved in the network music services, without its own playback terminal support, but also the use of paid download mode. Although the number of users are not small, but this is tantamount to the record company set up their own network sales channels, in the same content, users will not hesitate to choose free away from pay. Sure enough, the attempts of the families to fail, the cooperation of the record companies are also gradually withdrawn.　　This should be a cautionary tale for record companies, how to compete with the free in the absence of a network distribution channel and no control over the playback terminal?　　The answer may be that the record companies are reluctant to admit it--that's free. In fact, the record labels for singles, whether 0.99 dollars or 100 dollars, as long as there is a price tag exists for the individual users can find a free download source is no difference. Because there is an essential difference between free and paid fees, the price level is no different for individual users who have a free download source. And the record companies have the courage to provide free content to consumers, with an open mind and technology business cooperation, in exchange for music licensing or income sharing as the main form of profit.　　This is whether the record company dares to destroy the original business model, graft itself into more industrial platforms, and make a profit through a more diversified application scenario. This change will not happen overnight. "In the 90 's, the record industry had a strong position, huge revenue and sales channels, and it was impossible to say that the next day would be abandoned, and 100% would embrace new technology." "But after 10 years of procrastination, there's not much to lose," Chen said in an interview with business value. "The value of music copyright has been underestimated for the past more than 10 years, but now the discussion of copyright values and the crusade against piracy are bringing new opportunities for copyright owners."　　The theme of the annual digital music report published by the IFPI International Record Association in 2011 is that "the government can reverse the tide of piracy", and the release of copyright value will be more evident in the coming years. But from another point of view, the improvement of copyright environment will also create an illusion, even copyright is overvalued by the copyright party. Baidu, which has been sitting in the dock since 2005 because of MP3 's alleged piracy, only announced the launch of a genuine music platform today and promised to open the interface to music-holders, share music and gain revenue. But these can carry out, also need to see May music platform after the online Baidu action. and January or March record company Yunpeng and other musicians to every guest, 91 games, entertainment portals and other enterprises issued an open letter in the hope that Baidu MP3 to give up piracy, stop in Baidu MP3 put ads. The concluding remarks are a good description of the correct attitude that copyright users should have-"even if you don'tLove music, but please respect the music, even if you do not respect the music, but please respect the law.　　"On the one hand, looking for a new mode of cooperation on the one hand and prevent the back of the road, the future of music in the end where?" The coexistence of multiple business models global digital music revenues reached $4.6 billion trillion in 2010, up 6% from the previous year, according to figures released by the IFPI International Record Association, and more than 400 licensed music services.　　Music companies are learning to meet the demand for consumers to buy and listen to music and to increase revenues through a diverse partnership, while digital music has accounted for 29% of the 2010 record company's revenues. So far, the record companies have a more diverse partner.　　There are advertising-supported music services such as Spotify, Deezer and We7, Internet service providers such as Denmark's TDC, Terra in Brazil and Sky in Britain, as well as mobile operators Vodafone, handset makers Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and Hulu, an online video site. And the introduction of cloud music concept, as well as Apple, Amazon and other companies in the rapid practice, so that music from the cloud to a series of internet terminals, smartphones, games consoles, televisions and Blu-ray players eventually formed a home entertainment system.　　These new forms of music services will bring more copyright benefits to music companies. Outside the internet, music and video service providers Vevo and MTV are also attracting a large number of television viewers, and advertisers have been extremely favored.　　Because of its precise crowd segmentation is the target customers of fashion brand. In addition to the direct consumption of music content itself, there are more use of music elements of the application appears. Among them, the music game is a repeated birth miracle field.　　The 2005 video game Guitar Hero, which has earned 1 billion dollars in just 3 years, has stimulated real song sales, although it complains of too little licensing fees. Want to know how hot the game is? Aerosmith, an old Song of American rock band, published in 1974, "Mahouve Old song and Dance" was launched in "Guitar Hero", statistics from the monitored itunes and other genuine download sites showed a 446% jump in single downloads.　　The music industry is amazed by the effectiveness of its marketing capabilities, and Vivendi, the parent company of Universal Records, directly buys the Guitar Hero's publisher Activision into its business. After "Guitar Hero" dug up the 60-70-year rock classic of the last century, the Tapulous company produced an iphone app that used contemporary pop singers ' music as well. The phone game, called Tap Tap Revenge, gained 1 million users in the first month of landing in the App Store. And 2009, Universal Records also found Tapulous company, signed a series of association, I hope tapulous Company to help its brand name of the singer to create a corresponding mobile phone game, so there is "Lady Gaga revenge" appearance.　　But in 2010, Tapulous was accidentally bought by Disney. These examples are just to show that the record companies may not have to worry about the continued decline in CD sales and the repeated ban on piracy, because music is deriving more diverse features and forms in front of consumers.　　And the record companies are not directly dealing with independent consumers, but a new group of players in the music industry-those who are packaging for music two times and serving as conduits. "Whether it's advertising-supported media like MTV, or value-added service-type ringtones, cloud services, or music games, if the 3 revenue lines with a large user base can be divided into 50% for copyright and the recording industry, can't the recording industry feed itself?" "This is Chen for the Future music industry," The ideal design, "globally, if these 3 kinds of big business models coexist, the record industry to 3 models unified open, in less than 5 years, the digital music industry in the world should be a hundreds of billions of dollars on the scale." "Today, the opportunity has emerged, but the rules of the game have not been established, the proportion has not become a practice."　　At this point, there are "not too many to lose" record companies, it is time to take a sharp attitude, to shabby new. The music of the future, will not die nor old, it just needs to be presented in a more advanced form of organization. When this 10-year music and technology again to look, may both sides be able to find too late tacit understanding.