Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Selling CDs at specific venues like movie soundtrack CDs at movie theaters and selling CDs at concerts

See Prince's idea to include his new CD "Musicology" as part of his concert ticket price may be the beginning of a music industry revolution.


https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/music_reporter_display.jsp?vn...

A cursory review of the music industry indicates that file sharing is a problem that needs to be solved, but it is not crippling the music industry. Product quality may be a bigger issue. Personally, I think your question is more of a big brand vs. small brand question and this problem has gone largely unchanged in the last ten years. Small brands compete with big brands by offering a superior product, being responsive to customer “wants”, and overall being more nimble than the big brands…to start. Marketing is an ephemeral art. You can emulate the marketing strategies of successful independent artists, but in the end, it will be your marketing innovations that lead to success.

Below is a link to an article that concludes by saying: John Schwartz points out in today’s New York Times, “Critics of the industry’s stance have long suggested that other factors might be contributing to the drop in sales, including a slow economy, fewer new releases and a consolidation of radio networks that has resulted in less variety on the airwaves.” I have read other articles that indicate that cutbacks in developing new product have had a big impact on the overall sales for major music labels.

https://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1386&trk=nl

Here is the link to the Harvard study on music downloading:

https://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

The quick answer to your question may be elusive today, so I suggest you track what the industry closely for what emerges. A good place to start is:https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/itunesandhttps://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rap/The iTunes green paper contains much of the leading though on this topic.