The music industry is reinventing itself. That says something about a sector notoriously slow to adapt to change. And a crew headed by Lady Gaga seems to be showing the way.
The New York Times reports that Lady Gaga's new album, "Born This Way" sold 1,108,000 copies in the United States in its first week. Sounds impressive? Not quite. Trouble is some 662,000 of those sales, or about 60 percent, were digital downloads and most of these sold for 99 cents through a deal with Amazon. So what's the value of the album then?
As the New York Times says, albums are no longer the main source of the artist's income. Albums are now marketing tools for tours, endorsements and merchandise sales.
Albums are also being used for marketing in other ways. Management Today tells us how an ordinary British Indie band, the Kaiser Chiefs, are letting fans choose 10 out of a possible 20 tracks to download. Fans can then design the cover – all for the bargain price of £7.50 – and even post their own versions on their Facebook and Twitter pages, and make £1 out of every copy of they manage to sell. It's all about getting the band's name out.
As the magazine's Emma Haslett writes: "Gone are the days of rushing home from the shops with a 12-inch picture disc clutched in their sweaty paws and spending the afternoon listening to it all the way through: instead, the advent of the shuffle button means people prefer to mix things up. And because people listen to music on the move, as well as at home, it means they listen to it a lot more, too."
If the music industry can reshape itself, so can other sectors. The newspaper industry, now dying from falling circulation and ad revenues, is a case in point.
no comment untill now