I’ve spent the last few hours this morning using the new MySpace Music product – searching for music, adding it to playlists and my profile, and listening. It’s far from perfect (more on that below). But MySpace has done something incredible at a big picture level: they’ve created both a compelling music experience for users as well as a realistic, long term business model for labels and artists in a world where recorded music moves towards free.
The Music Experience
MySpace music combines free on-demand streaming music with buyable downloads from Amazon, ringtones and video and other content. Soon the service will offer artist merchandise (tshirts, etc.) and concert tickets.
Users can create public or private playlists and embed music onto their profile pages. A nice touch – 65% of MySpace users add songs to their profile, and MySpace aggregates every song you’ve added to your profile and makes an initial playlist out of it for you. Artist pages, which previously only had a few promotional tracks, now include entire catalogs of their music. Any song can be clicked and added to a playlist.
The user experience is an 8 out of 10. Even though EMI’s catalog hasn’t been fully uploaded yet, every song I searched for was available, even some obscure tracks. Search works extremely well, and adding tracks to playlists is intuitive. Depth of catalog and usability is far beyond what other free streaming services like Last.fm and iMeem currently offer. And when it comes to listening to music, the pop out player, pictured above, is excellent. I just wish the pop out player had the ability to search and add music to playlists on the fly.
MySpace Music also lets users see what their friends are adding to playlists in an activity-stream like list on the music dashboard (MySpace COO Amit Kapur, it tells me, just added Electric Feel by MGMT). With a click, I can add that song to any of my playlists, too.
Soon all this playlist data will let MySpace do even more with recommendations. You won’t just see top 100 lists across music categories. You’ll also see top songs from your friends, or from people like you, etc.
So why is the experience just an 8/10? For now only U.S. users can access the new music content. Everyone else has to wait for licensing deals to be negotiated.
And there’s lots of work to do on the product itself. There’s no way to share public playlists, for example. And unlike iMeem, MySpace Music doesn’t yet offer the ability to embed the music player into other sites. Also, my browser crashed repeatedly tonight while I was testing the service.
A Business Model
The big labels own around 40% of MySpace Music. MySpace owns the other 60%, and presumably new employees, like the pending CEO hire, will dilute everyone.
That 40% may be worth as much as $800 million already, on paper at least. So right off the bat labels are pretty happy.
Labels make more money every time a song is streamed. 20 billion or so song streams are initiated per month on MySpace today (many of them from auto-plays when profiles are loaded). That number is going to go way, way up. Streams are calculated based on complicated contracts that look at full plays and partial plays, so it’s nearly impossible to determine fees that will be paid to labels. But it’s certainly likely to be in the tens of millions of dollars annually, and possibly a lot more.
Labels also get a cut of ad revenue brought in to the joint venture, and when ringtones and downloads are sold they get a piece of that, too.
Some of this money may even make its way to the artists.
Indie labels are in a great position, too. They don’t have equity but they get paid for streams and downloads. And they have all the tools and promotion features that the big labels have. It appears to be an even playing field, and I’m already finding some great music from artists I’ve never heard of.
MySpace says that merchandise and ticket sales will go online soon as well, providing more opportunities for artist and label revenue.
The trojan horse here is that MySpace is making artist pages canonical. If you really like an artist, you can stream every song they’ve recorded for free from their MySpace page. And see their concert schedule. And buy tickets to those concerts. And a Tshirt. And see music videos and other video content. It’s going to be the place you go to get news about them and listen to their music.
It’s a great resource for users, and it’s likely to become the center of the revenue ecosystem for artists, particularly unsigned artists starting to make a name for themselves.
The Future Of Recorded Music Is Free, And MySpace Just Took Another Step In That Direction
Just a year and a half ago it wasn’t clear if the music industry would ever give up on DRM. People were calling me crazy for saying that the price of music must inevitably tend towards free because anyone can copy any song for free.
But today the labels have all but given up on DRM, and users can now play virtually any song ever recorded on demand for free. MySpace has created the first ecosystem that has a shot of producing sustainable revenue streams for artists based on advertising, merchandise and concert sales.
If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is – free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts.
A lot of positive press is rolling in around this launch, and it’s much deserved.
The next best thing to Deezer… MySpace is a great tool for musicians (my female-fronted death metal band has been selling CDs like crazy whereas few people go to our regular .com site)…
Just wait until this goes mobile…
Ubiquitous internet + free streaming of infinite catalogue = IPOD KILLER = no reason to ever buy music again.
Will MySpace for iphone work as nicely as Pandora?
OR, will MySpace decide to NEVER GO MOBILE?
MySpace is mobile (m.myspace.com) and has an iPhone app and upcoming Blackberry app. As for whether the music service will go mobile, that’s anyone’s guess. But yeah – the iPod killer – no doubt about that
myspace is the best website to be on if u dont have on u are gay.
Is this thing available outside the U.S.? you know, the sun shines here two!!
BTW, congratulation to TC on your feedburner count, now way over 1Megabyte users.
The music belongs to MySpace. That’s something that FB can’t take away from it.
Do we know how exclusive these labels will be to MySpace?
This is most likely an experiment with a limited time frame. I don’t doubt that they will work with another portal if it seems to make more economical sense.
Just like how you can download music from iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody etc…
Amazon was mentioned in the beginning – are they the ones selling the music files? Does MySpace just get a cut of the sales?
Is this thing available outside the U.S.?
don’t be stupid. hulu solved tv piracy according to execs. they don’t need this to be available outside the US because that’s how far their worldview extends.
This is a puff piece, c’mon. Questions you should be asking:
Who gets first dibs on frontpage real estate? Erm, Universal maybe? Great, definitely a level playing field then.
Will my (unsigned) band get a cut of revenue too? No, didn’t think so.
Any recommendation engine? No? Jeez even iTunes wised up with Genius.
What, ultimately, are they doing that isn’t already being done elsewhere, and without so much intrusive advertising?
There is a rec engine is there. The population of 120mil users. Myspace wised up in that way. Why build a automated rec eng that supposedly mimics human interaction dynamics, when you have 120mil users already interacting in their respective domains?
How is sharing playlists recommendation? I still have to search through a ton of content to find stuff I like, to share with my friends, same way it’s always been on Myspace, no? (And most of my friends stopped using Myspace years ago anyway.) Or am I missing something?
Good point. MySpace have a real rec. engine, rather than a simulated one. Great potential. But not sure that this gives unsigned bands anywhere near an equal footing. More like they now get lost further down the pile…
JR: I totally see your pt.
So basically, you want a list of top recommended content automatically sent to you instead of you searching for them. This pose yet another question: when will you as a user be ever satisfied with what a automated system recommends?
The rec eng can learn but how much numerical crunching does it need to predict every mood you have at every hour? For that kind of effort just so every user gets the best recommended list of infotainment, I’d rather that the crunching goes to finding the next Mersenne prime number which may actually be a contribution to mankind. Because the fact remains: You as a user will never be satisfied with anything.
So here I have a piece of good news and a bad one for you.
Here’s the good news. Tons of geeks are working towards the perfect recommendation engine, including those folks at eharmony.com. As of now, no industry leader.
And here’s the bad news. Human beings is part of ANY automated or simulated rec engine. Frankly, these geeks have reached a plateau. The day you can accurately model the human cognitive abilities from a mathematical perspective is the day it will go beyond this plateau. That day, my friend, is still extremely far down this road and I “recommend” that you rather not wait around for it for too long. This recommendation doesn’t even require a rec engine. It’s from me, another human being.
I’ve been working on an experimental music search engine that uses the myspace music catalog, you can check it out at http://musedot.com. it’s not exactly recommendations, but the focus is on music discovery. I’m still trying to figure out what the new myspace music means for my project, but I doubt it will have a tremendous strategic impact. I’d love to get some feedback from music fans.
According to Mr. Arrington:
“Indie labels are in a great position, too. They don’t have equity but they get paid for streams and downloads. And they have all the tools and promotion features that the big labels have. It appears to be an even playing field, and I’m already finding some great music from artists I’ve never heard of.”
I’m an artist on MySpace and have found no option for independent artists on indie labels to contact MySpace about getting paid per click.
its a breakthrough, and arrington has characterized it as such fairly. i would say kudos to him for being fair and not dissing it just cause it was myspace and not facebook.
Once again, it’s too cluttered for me to become a loyal user. Additionally, until they start catering to the artists that are not mainstream, I could really care less. It’s a work-in-progress, but they got a waaaayyyysss to go IMO.
Wow. Great article and a very good explanation of what MySpace Music is doing. It is great that they have the backing and support of the big name record labels.
A small but diligent startup based in San Francisco called Reble is doing something similar (http://www.reble.fm).
They allow peers and friends to share music with real-time streaming from one node to another and gather analytic’s. They have been working on an engine for such intelligent mining that would allow concert ticket sales/promotions/ song launches, music related merchandising, etc. People should check them out, infact Myspace should check them out. Small but a very good team.
SG
Since you seem to understand the model preaty well maybe you can help me understand how do the labels make money from the public streaming music for free? aside from advertising of course…Mike says in his article “Labels make more money every time a song is streamed” is this only from advertising or are there other means of income?
thanks
Good question, no answer, oh well.
is it just me or is there no link to the actual site
I was surprised to read you see this as a step in the right direction. I see it as an extension of a broken Music Industry into an online network. So now Rupert Murdoch owns 60% of to the big fours 40%. How can this be a step in the right direction?
There were some hiccups this morning in my chrome browser, but that seems to be resolved very quickly. I really dig that I can get music recommendations from my friends. Using your own social network to discover new music is much better than listing to a radio station.
Love it.
I still see independents suffering from this trend towards free music… The mention of ‘free marketing’ in the last paragraph of the article won’t really help out the smaller outfits who just want to get their music out & don’t have any merchandise, tour dates or any other revenue streams to fall back on.
I make music for a small record company in the UK that has occasionally had some good support from radio shows and DJs, but are light years away from thinking about chart positions, premium advertisers, merchandise and sold-out concerts… all we’ve got is the music. Ten or fifteen years ago this would have been less of a problem – people would happily spend an hour thumbing through new releases in a local record store – but with the proliferation of free music I think there’ll be a gulf between those who are earning a lot and those who are making nothing,
Having spent most of my working life in the music industry as a Manager, who nurtured a handful of acts who went on to be internationally successful and many more whose music I still love today, but nevertheless didn’t get their big break, I’m ambivalent still as to whether we are making progress or dumbing down creative quality across the globe.
On the one hand some of the DAT’s I have of acts you’ve never heard of are still some of the best I’ve ever listened to and the new platforms are providing easier routes to get those to wider audiences to mutual benefit. On the other hand though, I think what people forget is that without the machinery, money and skill of most of the big Record Labels that are currently being Lehmanised, I doubt most of the revered artists of ours, or our parents generations, would have happened virally by social networking had it existed then.
Given that no pure socially networked album release will ever recoup a million dollars of recording costs and several million in marketing from advertising, I personally think we bite the hand that feeds us at our peril, by de-valuing what Record Labels do. Sure some of them are blood sucking b****s, take my word for it, but actually most provide a filter against the overwhelming sea of average and as long as millions of people still check in at the same time every day for Sex and The City, Friends or Eastenders etc. then I also feel we are still a long way off people not wanting ‘blockbuster artists’ and do hope that once all the idealists have finished watching their anarchy play out, they’ll once again look for quality, scale and exclusivity for the very best musicians. After all, what happens to all those kids who wish they could be famous if their best hope is 5000 Facebook fans and whatever CPM fraction that relates to in royalties, based on those current business models.
All the labels are in my opinion once again heading like lemmings towards the abyss if they think that a CPM revenue model will actually deliver hard cash.
Anyway, that’s what we’re planning ahead for as some of you know…
Watch this space – jan [at] http://www.famebook.com
“Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is – free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts”
How can you have charts if nobody is buying anything?
The most downloaded or streamed tracks will top the charts, whether anyone pays or not.
I remain skeptical about any business model that includes the major labels. They’re a greedy bunch
If that last sentence becomes true, this would mean an end to anything other than popular music. Isn’t it already driven too much by what the labels tell us we want to listen to? Tell me anyone would listen to most of these artists if they weren’t shoved down our throats!
This would mean an end to the independent/small time artists. Those artists that have day jobs, so they can’t tour often. Making a recording costs money, and I see no problem with someone trying to recoup those costs and get some compensation for their efforts.
yes, for both sellers and buyers, just as yesterday became about “wtf am i going to do with all these cds?”, today is becoming “wtf will we do with all these drm-protected tracks?”
we’ll see how it goes. what artists and labels (especially we independents) most need from the web is as much automation of word-of-mouth (per se) as possible, because there’s two edges to the sword: on one side, yes it’s all about the increasingly long tail, mega-niches and what not. on the other side, despite how music “wants to be shared”, all the increasing personalization services make it all the more easy for the individual consumer to tend to just their individualized tastes.
in other words, it’s all about helping consumers become automatic advocates and promoters of struggling artists. there are a lot of people who want to help spread the word about unknown acts they like, but sites need to do as much as they can to help them do so without having to even think about it. that’s the only way to build up a proper ecosystem, one where a) the mass-marketed, corporately correct and manufactured “hit” becomes increasingly impotent, b) the zillions of unknown artists who don’t produce good work stay unknown, and yet c) the unknown artists who actually do produce good work get increasingly discovered by their target markets.
maybe work or not work, Time will tell us.
I don’t understand with this whole big labels being greedy and indie bands get screwed thing.
I can find music by some of the most obscure bands out there. Anyone care for Northern Picture Library or maybe Mephisto Walz?
Ads will end up paying for the music. The more popular the artist’s music is the more ads revenue they will receive from MySpace Music, apart from the merchandising and concert tickets.
Good analysis Mr. Arrington
I think that I really great app would be the ability to determine where other people with similarly enabled devices were.
You would set up a list of trusted people, with whom you would be ahppy to share your location. They would be able to see in real time where you were, and you would know their location too. It would be great if mulitple people ised this at teh same time. I can imagine a situation (we’ve all been there) when you are trying to describe to people where you are in a busy shopping street, so that you can meet up. This would enable you to say, ‘I’m here, come join me’. Friends need never be lost again.
Imagine giving the device to your kids and you would always know where they were (permissions an issue I guess).
Imagine entering a bar. You fix your location just before you enter. ‘I’m in here’ you tell your friends. They know – no more need to look the address of that bar up to find you.
I think that the social possibilities are endless. I can just see Kevin Rose having it switched on all the time, so that people like you are aware of EVERY place that he goes.
Nathan.
This sounds like a sureshot
I still don’t understand where they’re getting the music from. I know you state that they have deals with all the majors… but for example… if I search for the band “Tool” – I find all these tracks with different art, meta data, etc… and I’m pretty sure the band is very against digital distribution. So are these TOOL songs I’m finding just tracks that people have uploaded to fake profiles? …so confusing.
This has to be making imeem, playlist, iLike, last.fm, etc worried over their future growth potential and viability.
FIM should just by Pandora and plug their IP directly into MySpace.
I wonder how long before some of the other streaming companies cry fowl over this because supposedly with all the majors being involved the 1 cent streaming fee has been removed
i wish it wasn’t so buggy or else i would be applauding it right now. i’ve had so many issues today with artist accounts. i can’t wait until they fix these to be able to get full-use out of this product
I doubt it, but I’m not convinced that TC is going to give a really honest review given that it worked with MySpace at its TC50 party. Clearly, you’re not going to s*it where you eat.
Michael you have been drinking the kool aid
This article pretty could pretyt much cover what imeem, last.fm and deezer have been doing for the last 6 months.
(and the sound quality on myspace is vastly inferior)
I’d honestly like to see how the catalogs of all the sites compare, since I’m pretty sure that myspace isn’t going to be packed with all the B-Sides, remixes and live versions that imeem fans love to share.
The only aspect sound quality has concerning SN sites is their upload limit per track. Higher quality songs = Larger file sizes.
In some ways, this is revolutionary. In other ways, I simply don’t get it.
It’s great for new music for sure. However for older artists the experience sucks. Which is fine perhaps if this is all about promoting artists who are out touring and whatnot. But less good if you’re thinking about this as a substitute for Rhapsody, etc.
Also, the process of looking for music while listening to music is near impossible because almost every page on MySpace auto-plays something. So if you have the player open in another window and are browsing MySpace looking for new tunes…well, good luck with that.
Finally, the lack of a consistent UX on the pages is confusing.
I haven’t used MySpace all that much so may be missing something. Having said that, my guess is this is only going to get better over time and, at least for new music, this absolutely confirms the theory of Mike and others that music is rapidly approaching the price of free.
For you and the other geezers that complain about auto-playing music and other technological wizardry, you can change and adjust these options in your personal settings. (^_^)
I’m disappointed in the new MySpace Music. I was hoping for something with a similar interface to Rhapsody, where you can actually browse artists and their albums.
The search is still terrible — you have to try and distinguish between the artists’ profile pages and their “MySpace Music” pages.
And the My Music interface is clumsy… searching for music in that tiny little frame is a nightmare.
I’ll give it a shot.
“as well as a realistic, long term business model for labels and artists in a world where recorded music moves towards free.”
Why the hell should music be free? It’s artistic value deems thats you should pay for it. This is not an anti-napster comment, I just don’t understand why Michael believes that music that unique artists create should be available legally for free…
Indeed. When is the last time Mr. Arrington got a Van Gogh original for free? Or a print rather? What about a photo-copied book?
The problem isn’t making it free. The problem is making it desirable, making it worth purchasing.
This article is an advertisment hehehe
Wow I should buy amazon stocks or is too late:-)
…and another thing!
Would Michael Arrington be so revered without Techcrunch or is Techcrunch only a brand because of Michael?
…and that’s the nub of it, because unless we want to drown in a sea of poorly recorded self-indulgent c**p and hope once in a while to stumble across some quality it has to be united in familiar places where we might congregate….like Techcrunch. This idea that MySpace or Facebook can achieve that virally from its masses is a fool’s gold non-return valve which will in my view end in tears.
If I’m wrong then the next logical conclusion is that all media companies will become irrelevant and we’ll collectively create our own news, music, films etc. and pass them around our friends within one or two environments…
…and if that’s the case, who’s left to pay for this advertising which is supposed to be supporting it all?
jan [at] famebook.com
@Jan – I think the most important distinction in this whole conversation is between “free” and “valueless”. MySpace Music is “free” yet it’s far from “valueless”. In face, MySpace Music has performed an incredible feat of alchemy by taking something that’s free and creating $2 billion worth of value (at least paper value) from it. That’s pretty impressive.
What shifts here is value exchange. Rather than exchanging money for music I am now exchanging attention for music. And what MySpace and others have found is that attention is increasingly valuable in this new world we’re moving into.
Media companies won’t become irrelevant unless they cling to outdated business models. Some will of course which will open up opportunities for start-ups like Topspin to come in and capture the value they’re forgoing.
Hi Jon – good comment! I still think that getting excited about values based on a ‘promise’ of ad revenues materialising and other subsequent monetization is especially Lehmanesque and potentially suicidal. Most obvious to me is that everyone wants to be an ocean and the resulting cauldron that is the fight for platform dominance, severely discourages anyone building decent ships worth paying to sail in if that analogy makes sense.
I look forward to calmer waters and some pleasurable sailing and would happily pay for the boat, but would always consider the water free of charge…
http://www.famebook.com
Doing a review for clients, and I can say right now that I’m shocked at this review. MySpace Music is downright awful. As Rogee outlines above, the search experience is ridiculous. Finding music to add to your playlist is a total chore.
I wrote an article for Radio & Records back in the nineties about how “The Thieves Do It Better.” I could easily write one now called “Rhapsody (and even Zune) Does It Better.” The only thing going for MySpace Music right now is the fact that is free.
I wish Yahoo had not been so short-sighted and abandoned music. They had the interface and the ability to create an ad-supported model that would be actually useful, as opposed to this “let’s pimp as many page views as possible while people are looking for a song” model.
Sweet.
Awful service:
– Can’t fast forward, or skip to any part of a song
– Many songs are not the ones that they claim to be
– Not all songs can be played (or bought)
– Some songs will play only as a sample
– Its extremely hard to find the player that has search in it, it’s as if they hid it on purpose: http://music.my...n=music.mymusic
– The ring tone offer is deceitful, you won’t get ring tones for the artist you’re looking for, you always get the same Jamster screen, and it stops the music playback, very bad user experience.
Only good things it has for it, is the whole playlist management and featured playlists. Seems very raw still. I don’t get how a company with such resources releases such a noob service.
If you are an unsigned artist, can you make money off this in some way?
Also, this update totally screws up every customized band design there is… that’s a huge loss to artists who have spent several thousands of dollars (from sites like bandspaces.com) getting a customized site to fit their image.
Not at all. Check Masmod’s page. It’s custom and hasn’t changed a bit. You need to do your homework on which web designers you work with that are costing you “several thousands of dollars,” which is WAAAAY to much to begin with. You’ve been had, my friend.
I went to his site and I don’t see the music player anywhere…
I’ve never paid that much as I am a musician and graphic designer. As a graphic designer, I can tell you a $2000-3000 is not “way too much,” especially when dealing with myspace’s horrible standards-ignorant code. Bandspaces.com itself has produced sites for Dave Matthews Band, Joss Stone, Maroon 5, Hedley, etc. These are fairly high-profile sites, which now need attention because the music player has thrown things off.
This is pretty disappointing for non-americans. I’m in Canada and my music is on myspace but I won’t be able to profit from this at all. Taking a look at what I’ve listened to lately, there isn’t a single US artist in the entire list.
The internet is becoming increasingly cut off from non-US users. No Hulu. No Pandora. No restricted movie trailers (requires US ID) and on and on.. it’s a real annoyance.. as in my friends swear out loud and smash the mouse kind of annoyance because it’s cropping up everywhere.
Judging by what’s happening with much older sites and services, it doesn’t look like the big players will negotiate Non-US licences anytime in the near future.. maybe never.
usaww.myspace.com?
you want to move here and pay for the Bush binge?
So much for trying to one thing right, sounds like another boring cluster F*** of a website: Yawn
http://www.mysp...urismfoundation
Yeah, I’d love to see whatever piece of paper exists at Myspace Music HQ that defines “Independent Label.” I never cared about my music being streamed for free, but today marks the day that independent labels according to whatever definition they’ve come up with are entitled to stream royalties, while bands like my own on an independent label (and backed by BMI which is a whole other can of worms!) see nothing.
I don’t expect preferential treatment to Universal Music, but how in the world is one independent label any more valid than another?
Yet another thing the major labels will corrupt.
A lot of bitter Facebook employees here aren’t there?
my what dot com? Yawn.
Is there something I’m missing, or is it just impossible to find songs on MySpace Music? It seems to just give random results from disparate profiles, which are often tagged wrong.
well after all which is the best music-on-demand, please tell me
Is Myspace making a comeback? Facebook rocks.
I’m really surprised to see such a positive review of the MySpace Music here…I got all excited thinking maybe MySpace had done something right finally. But the search is terrible, as many have mentioned. Why when I search for a band do I get repeats of tracks, some of which have album art, others a generic MySpace logo? Why are some tracks only samples still? (Other services like Last.fm also have some full tracks and some samples, but they’re clearly marked which is which before you start playing them.) NOT every song is addable to a playlist – I just pulled up a Silversun Pickups song, and the add to playlist button was greyed out. And so was the “buy album” button.
Why can I not click on the album title and see the full list of the album’s tracks? The UI is NOT intuitive, as you suggest it is, and it is not convenient. Plus, it’s downright misleading – I looked up “The Bird and the Bee” and the artist name in the display is cut off at “the bird and th…”; which makes it impossible to tell right off that several of the tracks are actually by “The Bird and the Bee Sides,” a completely different band. (The buy buttons aren’t working for The Bird and the Bee, either, and I know their albums are available on Amazon MP3.)
As far as finding all the music you looked for and finding whole catalogs rather than just a few tracks, I looked up four or five LA bands (not incredibly obscure ones either; ones that are fairly well known in indie rock circles), and couldn’t find anything more than samples or the couple of tracks they had on their profiles already. Is this just MySpace catering to the big labels?
I don’t know whether MySpace Music just isn’t ready for prime time or if it’s just another example of a crappy product from MySpace, but it in no way deserves the praise you’ve lavished on it here. Both Last.fm and iMeem have it beat by miles in terms of user experience.
As great as this new MySpace Music seems to be, I can’t help but to think what musicians are thinking when they are telling them that their music is free. Is it just me or is there a difference between music being a free commodity vs a saturation of the market with mediocre music. Saturating the market with mediocre music and production is what led to the overall decrease of music sales. Iinstead of fixing the root of the issue, they are turning the music industry into TV II, free entertainment with advertising revenue. Musicians need to speak up. I understand that this is easier to monetise, but bands that are great and can connect with an audience are selling music, because people want to buy it. To conclude that there is no demand for music anymore is absurd.