As a soon to be master’s degree graduate from Full Sail
University, I have to say I feel extremely secure in my future career if only
for two reasons. I understand digital marketing and the consumer's desire for free will.
The Internet has forever changed the music industry and it’s
only going to change more. We see CD sales dropping more every year and ITunes sales
going up. People are purchases singles and ignoring albums.
I would like to make a prediction. Within 5 short years CD’s
will be no more common than Cassette tapes. There will just be no need for
them.
With hard drives getting bigger, internet connections
getting faster, and MP3 players getting cheaper it’s only a matter of time
before the digital music stores offer downloads with CD sound quality. When
that happens there will be no reason to spend the extra money and time to go to
a physical store and purchase music that will only end up on your phone or IPod
anyways.
Consumers have made it clear to the music industry time and
time again that they want singles, not albums with a few good songs and a bunch
of boring filler songs. The industry said no because printing CD’s was too
expensive for the low price point of singles. Well now the option exists and
consumers are eating it up.
Radio is going to have to change too. People want variety
and yet radio still plays the same 5 songs over and over again for months
before adding new songs to the playlist. The radio industry assumed their
business model was better because satellite radio didn’t catch on as fast as
predicted. But services like Pandora have proven that people do in fact want
personalized variety.
Consumers want a say in what they get. You don’t see people
lining up at grocery stores and saying, “give me whatever food you want me to
eat”. No, people are far too selective for that. People love to exercise their
free will. It’s the only real power anyone has. Radio is going to change or die
and may be too late for them to choose. Thank you Pandora, radio’s sweet angel
of death.
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