I have a friend who’s steeped deep in the music industry here in Jamaica. As a studio engineer she’s worked with everybody really from Shaggy, Sean Paul, Toots to others emerging. We’ve had many conversations as had certain players in the industry as to why Reggae music is not selling, what infrastructure is needed to set up the industry for future success. I happened on this blog post by a colleague of mine GERD LEONHARD over at mediafuturist.com, so I had to share.
1. Truly collaborate to arrive at sweeping and effective solutions: the music industry has been notorious for in-fighting, wide-spread distrust, clubbiness and ludicrously fragmented business procedures and licensing rules. We need an industry-wide innovation initiative that looks at new business models from a global joint perspective of labels and publishers, artists and managers, agents and promoters, startups and societies. We need to rethink our traditional business rules and put the cards on the table – or that very table will start to burn down while we’re sitting at it.
2. Watch and listen to the kids i.e. the digital natives, and then offer business models that will serve them in the way they want to be served, not as we would prefer them to be served. This is seriously ingrained problem in the music industry: all too often, we are assuming the ‘consumer’ aka user to be different than they really are, and / or we are thinking of them to act like we do. This is a deadly mistake, as it will be those very same 15 year old kids that do Facebook, Twitter, Loopt, Spotify, Songza or Youtube that are our future customers. This ignorance has cost us billions already so let’s stop acting like we can control them or tell them what to do. MORE
