Total Music Experiment - Music Industry a step behind once again

No other industry has been as un-adaptive to the changes brought about by the web than the music industry. Forget web 2.0, they are still trying to figure out a Web 1.0 strategy. TechCruch recently posted about the death of the record industry's TotalMusic project.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/08/confirmed-totalmusic-is-dead/

Essentially the initial idea of the TotalMusic project was a joint venture between the record labels (Sony BMG and Universal) that would bake the concept and cost subscription music into MP3 devices (For example, pay $350 for a player instead of $250 and get unlimited lifetime downloads). For anti-trust reasons that strategy didn't work out to well so they eventually turned their attention to creating a free, advertising-supported streaming service that would be licensed or white-labeled to other Websites. Each stream would link directly to a paid digital download. Well supposedly now that has failed.

The question is how can the record industry stay relevant when they have been pushed out of the distribution chain? The answer probably doesn't lie in finding a way back into the chain (that opportunity has probably been long lost). But maybe its about creating value by finding new ways to target consumers based on their listening and purchasing behaviors (how Pandora's music project was not a project of the record industry is beyond me!).

The record labels still distribute a large portion of the music in the US and with that can come data. When a person purchases music at a Virgin Megastore what else do they buy? The music preferences of an individual may uniquely tell a story about the listener and that information compiled in an effective way could allow you to target not only music recommendations but also other consumer purchase recommendations. Ok, maybe the connections wouldn't be so explicit at first but I bet if they started collecting some data about listening and buying preferences they would see some solid connections.

Start with gathering information about your users, then see who would be willing to pay for that information.

Hey... thats what worked for Google.