Record Industry In Shift To Streaming?

[koganbot]

A Jukebox on MySpace

Article in New York Times a couple of days ago, saying that the three largest record companies and some indies plan to stream huge hunks of their music through MySpace (not clear how much: all of it?). Not sure how to interpret this:

(1) Record cos. belatedly recognizing inevitable and shifting focus to using music to sell advertising rather than just downloads and CDs, but this is too late because illegal downloads and iTunes and YouTube have already gotten the jump and that's where people will continue to go.

OR

(2) This actually is a significant shift because it makes streaming the main vehicle for music consumption and makes advertising the main product (so the record cos. are doing an end-run around iTunes and going head-to-head with YouTube).

OR

(3) Somewhere in-between, record cos. using this to promote downloads as well as seeing if people will shift from buying to streaming if virtually everything is streamed.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Google is unusual in that - and I'm not an expert here, it's been years since I had much to do with the ad/media sector - it does sell ads based on clickthroughs. A lot of online advertising, probably including what Myspace Music would be looking to sell, is more akin to TV advertising: clickthroughs are a nice bonus, but the promotional message is all in the ad animation and execution. But it's getting people to accept those ads and sit through them that's the issue. (I don't know what kind of headway the freebies-for-ads models are making in other areas, though: it's been "about to take off" in mobile for a year or two, but perhaps it has now taken off - my eye is very much off the ball I fear.)

I think portability is a big issue in music - most phones sold now has some kind of music capacity, and MP3 players among younger people have reached huge penetration levels. But advertising is a bigger one.