I’ve picked on journalism enough in this blog that I thought I would spread the love to another dino-media; the music industry and their distribution model (and specifically the RIAA).
The tricky thing about music distribution services is gaining the install base. You have to develop a network and gain enough users, which is expensive. Or you can go the disruptive route like pandora, last.fm and Napster (pre Metallica destruction), which is difficult to monetize because the RIAA is made up of medieval land barons.
I think the time is right for someone to cut the legs out from under all of them. Introduce a service that makes it irrelevant for indie bands to get a label. Get enough good content and you don’t have to play their game. I know there are several services that try and do this, Pod Show and their Pod Safe Music Network is the closest to accomplishing this (there’s a reason most of these bands aren’t signed). Honestly, MySpace is in the best situation to do this but they are owned by people who have a vested interest in the medieval land baron model.
You need to have access to both a network for distribution and a network of content. Most companies focus on building the distribution network. This is what Satellite Radio, iTunes, Slacker and all of the new startups are doing. This is why the RIAA holds the reigns. They control the network of content.
Podshow has been using podcasters as their distribution network and are building their own network of content. It still remains to be seen if they will be able to branch out beyond podcasting, which I think they will need to do in order to be successful.
