Coldplay to Release Single Over the Internet at No Charge. A Look At Digital Rights Management for Music and the Diminishing Role of Record Labels
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In 2007, Radiohead a British Band, launched its album online and ditched EMI, one of the World’s Biggest Record Labels. Sometime that year, the band Koopa became the first band to enter the top 40 (UK Charts) without ever having a record deal, or a record in the shops. “We built our own website. Then we started advertising that on Google, places like that. From there it was just getting on MySpace and our website, and making sure you’re keeping people up to date with regular newsletters, messages and blogs on MySpace.”, says Joe Murphy from the band.
“From MySpace people were taking our banners and things like that, and putting them on their MySpace pages and we thought we could take that further and have things on MySpace and our website that people can download or send to their friends, just to invite them to check out the band.”
Here’s another interesting fact documented by The Economist - IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.
Incidentally it has been learnt that British Rockers Coldplay are also following the Radiohead model and giving away the first single from their new album over the Internet. The single will be available for free for a week starting today. The album is expected to launch on June 12.
While Coldplay’s move isn’t exactly like the one followed by Radiohead, because they haven’t offered the entire album to listeners or at least they haven’t planed to, it shows a definite trend. Bands probably do not need the backing of music companies to sell their singles or albums with the proliferation of new technology on the Internet. With easy access to new technology for distribution over the Internet, at affordable prices, the input that music companies such as EMI, Universal, and Sony BMG can have on shaping the career of bands is becoming limited. That, is reflecting in their share prices as well. The smallest major labels, EMI and Warner Music, are struggling most visibly. Warner Music’s share price has fallen to $4.75, 72% lower than its IPO price in 2005, and it is weighed down by debt.
In India, we recently saw the launch of Fropper’s Jukebox which has sourced over 15, 000 songs from various labels such as Venus, Saregama and Tips amongst others. Fropper has plans of expanding its song base to over 100000 songs in the next 3 months and is also set to launch many new channels in addition to those that are currently available. Regional content for the site has been sourced through top labels like Aditya Music, Krunal Music and Sagarika Audio to name a few. The thing to note however, is that these songs are not downloadable.
Yash Raj Films offers Digital Music Downloads and so does Rajshri. We haven’t however seen any individual band in India launch it’s music online without the help of a label – that may be due to limited Internet penetration and also a relative dearth of talent. With respect to films, one generally does not expect a breakout to happen because most music rights are lapped up by big music companies such as Tips (which does not offer Digital Downloads – that was what I found atleast).
MySpace has grand plans to launch Indian Talent using its music centric social networking platform. Maybe that will show the way for young Indian bands.
In India, one might however want to look at a model where music can be downloaded and paid for through the mobile phone. That can happen through GPRS. For now though, that model might have to wait because currently Indian Mobile is more like a Walled Garden.
Rajat Barjatiya’s Akbar Birbal Remixed seems to be showing the way (although its not music centric, it has music as an integral part of the franchise). That may however, be due to Mr. Barjatiya’s negotiating power and the backing of a relatively big production house.
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parikrama gave their songs online for free download long back - http://parikrama.com/home.html
hey manuscrypts - thanks for pointing that out - i wasn’t aware of it. I’d like to see a mainstream Indian Band do this as well!