Finally they're starting to understand! Marketwatch is reporting that according to EMI's CEO, "the music CD is dead". Not as if it hasn't been obvious for the last 7 years or anything. Well, at least they're catching on. Better late than never! Choice quotes from the sparse article:
"You're not going to offer your mother-in-law iTunes downloads for Christmas," he said. "But we have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content."Record companies will need to make CDs more attractive to the consumer, he said."By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material," Levy said.
Not a big surprise for anyone here, I hope! I guess we have to do this in baby steps.
The next little step to to realize that digital copying is a rule of the market now. This is a very big bite for normal people, so it might take the big labels some serious time to understand. Anything that can be made digital, can and will be copied. There is no DRM that can keep your computer from making internal copies of a song while it's being played, or transmitted. As the saying goes: build a better mousetrap... This makes for some very significant changes to Supply and Demand.
Once you wrap your head around the idea that uncontrolled copying of digital content is inevitable, the next big bite is to realize: this is a good thing for the music business. Don't expect those dinosaurs at the RIAA to pick up on this one for a loooooong time though.
