It will obviously be a startup company that solves this problem, and technology will be involved, but it is not fundamentally a technology problem. It's primarily a problem of misunderstood economics.
Instead of trying to monetize recorded music, which has virtually no hope of maintaining the artificial scarcity (and thus salability) it enjoyed during the last century, musicians need to return to their roots and find new ways to monetize live performance and other real-time interactions. Recorded music should become a loss-leader for these kinds of transactions. You may not get a $100 or even a two-drink minimum for "tickets" to a live stream, but you might also fill a few orders of magnitude more "seats".
The ultimate unit of marketable scarcity is immediacy. There is only one "now". Once it's gone, you can never, ever have it again. Barring the mass-availability of time travel, "now" isn't going to be commoditized, so it ought to be a fairly safe thing to base your business on. For example, "we'll post the recording for free next month, but if you want to see it happen right now, you pay (directly or indirectly) for access." Whatever drives the last nail in the coffin of the labels, I'll gladly wager 5 years of my life in a startup that it's going to involve this principle.
Second, there's a problem of social conditioning. Not so much on the demand side, but on the supply side. Musicians are taught to worship blindly at the alter of intellectual property. When Napster first appeared, I was a student at Berklee College of Music. That was pretty much ground zero and I remember it feeling like armageddon. Selling IP was all that is good and holy. To most of my musician friends and acquaintances, it still is.
This bias has to be overcome by helping musicians make more money from non-IP sources than from IP. That is the only thing that will convince them to throw away everything they've ever learned about their own industry, and throw off the yokes of their voluntary servitude.
With a nod to Etienne de la Boetie: "I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces."
As an aside, my startup is out to make the music business a better place for musicians and their fans. We're looking for a UX/graphic designer who's also passionate about the profession of music. We can offer room, board and equity for the right person. Email me if you're interested (address in profile).
Instead of trying to monetize recorded music, which has virtually no hope of maintaining the artificial scarcity (and thus salability) it enjoyed during the last century, musicians need to return to their roots and find new ways to monetize live performance and other real-time interactions. Recorded music should become a loss-leader for these kinds of transactions. You may not get a $100 or even a two-drink minimum for "tickets" to a live stream, but you might also fill a few orders of magnitude more "seats".
The ultimate unit of marketable scarcity is immediacy. There is only one "now". Once it's gone, you can never, ever have it again. Barring the mass-availability of time travel, "now" isn't going to be commoditized, so it ought to be a fairly safe thing to base your business on. For example, "we'll post the recording for free next month, but if you want to see it happen right now, you pay (directly or indirectly) for access." Whatever drives the last nail in the coffin of the labels, I'll gladly wager 5 years of my life in a startup that it's going to involve this principle.
Second, there's a problem of social conditioning. Not so much on the demand side, but on the supply side. Musicians are taught to worship blindly at the alter of intellectual property. When Napster first appeared, I was a student at Berklee College of Music. That was pretty much ground zero and I remember it feeling like armageddon. Selling IP was all that is good and holy. To most of my musician friends and acquaintances, it still is.
This bias has to be overcome by helping musicians make more money from non-IP sources than from IP. That is the only thing that will convince them to throw away everything they've ever learned about their own industry, and throw off the yokes of their voluntary servitude.
With a nod to Etienne de la Boetie: "I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces."
As an aside, my startup is out to make the music business a better place for musicians and their fans. We're looking for a UX/graphic designer who's also passionate about the profession of music. We can offer room, board and equity for the right person. Email me if you're interested (address in profile).