I generally like reading Seth Godin’s blog. However, this post on the digital music economy isn’t very helpful, in my opinion.
“A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.”
Yes – 0% of a large number is still 0. But 0.5% of a large number.. is a big number, too.
What I think that article is telling us is that people are only willing to pay for .5% of music available online.
It speaks nothing to the relative popularity of said music – just to it’s profitability. I legally obtain lots of music. I buy CDs, use iTunes, stream radio, etc.
I also find freely-available songs from artists, and download them from their websites.
Also note – of the 13,000,000 songs available, 10,000,000 never had any purchases made. That means that 3,000,000 of them did – which means there was at least enough interest on some folks’ parts to give it a shot.
I think that means that most people won’t pay for the crap that’s shoved out the doors, and only want the good stuff.
You used to be stuck with 10 songs you didn’t want along with the 2-4 you did off a given album – the article says this means the bad songs were financing the good ones. That’s backwards: it was/is the good ones financing the bad ones. Now that people can get just the ones they want (ie, the good ones), we’re seeing how much of what is produced is really just junk.