SociaLight Media Blog

It’s prediction time.

Ever since Napster went mainstream in 1999 (wow, a whole decade ago), the music industry - both artists and record labels - have been unable to escape the vicious tailspin caused by P2P software. Not since the incandescent light bulb left wax makers in the dark has a new technology so swiftly decimated an entire industry. P2P has changed the playing field that the RIAA built by allowing users to “share” songs and software - mostly illegally - with other users, enabling them to acquire copyrighted material without paying for it.

Even with all of the lawsuits the RIAA has thrown at P2P users over the past decade, and after the millions of dollars of fines people have had to pay for illegally downloading music, P2P is still posing a huge threat to the existance of the record industry. Is there a common ground that the RIAA and its consumers can agree on? Is there a solution that will revive the record industry?

How about this? With the release of RockBand 2 and Guitar Hero 4: World Tour (there are eight total games: two RockBands, four Guitar Heros, and two Guitar Hero expansion games - 80’s Edition and Aerosmith) it’s obvious that the trend of music-inspired video games isn’t a flash in the pan; it’ll be here for a while. Even with the recent release of these two games, there are three more on the way - one is all Beatles songs, another is all Metallica, and the other is all ACDC. Why not leverage it? The systems that these games are played on have internet connections. Why not offer ALL songs owned by the record companies available online for download? At a slightly higher price per song than you could find at the iTunes Store, you could actually be playing your favorite songs. Technology has reached a point were virtually anyone (my friend’s kid-sister is 13 and has been downloading music for years) can download a song - they don’t need to buy it from a store. What they still have to buy from a store is music to play in their RockBand or Guitar Hero games (until it becomes mainstream for people to program their own songs, which may not be too far off).

Yes, some extra songs are offered online through various sources, including the online portals of the games themselves, but I’m talking about everything. Standardize it. Make the songs available for playing through my game, listening to through my console, downloadable to my computer, uploadable to my mp3 player - hell, send them to my phone as a ringtone! I’ll pay for that! If you’re offering real value to the consumer, they will pay for it. Just don’t expect your consumers, who can very easily download a single song that they like to their computer, to purchase an entire album - with two good songs and thirteen terrible ones - from you for $20. Especially in this economy.