As a former business student and a current law student, two aspects from the presentation on classical recording were of interest to me. The first was the notion that recent increases in vinyl sales may suggest that current music listeners have realized the poor sound quality of today’s music and have decided to do something about it.
If this is the case, then is a return to vinyl is part of a sustainable business model for the music industry? I posit that vinyl will follow a traditional product life cycle, peaking in the near future and then declining. A brief google search on the current vinyl market revealed three important facts. First, most vinyl consumers can be segmented into three categories: audiophiles, collectors and disc jockeys. Second, mainstream record companies are producing new vinyl albums. Finally, the price point of new vinyl albums ranges from average to expensive.
To me, the combination of these factors dooms the music industry to committing the mistakes of the past. While it can be argued that the vinyl trend has begun to and will continue to penetrate larger groups of consumers than the three mentioned, this success will not be sustained. Music consumers will find themselves in a similar situation as in the past: a medium in the hands of a few record labels, which in turn, can and likely will exert upward pressure over prices. These companies will be motivated to price these albums high because of their novelty value and because they are desperate for revenue. This in turn will push this larger group of consumers back towards familiar habits of downloading free mp3s.
The second aspect of the presentation that I wanted to reflect on was its central message that the future of the music industry is the artist. This conclusion has become a growing consensus in our class as all the student presentations made some variation of the same claim. With increases in recording technology and decreases in price, the vertically integrated musician is a reality. This trend represents a full circle that started with artist controlled content, which increasingly shifted towards record industry control and has now come back around to the artist. With the return to artist control in mind, I think that the role of lawyer in the music industry may also revert back to an earlier stage.
The vertically integrated artist may be able to record, produce and distribute his or her record, but may not know how to do this in a way that minimizes outsourcing costs. This may suggest a greater role for contract lawyers within the music industry. If this were the case, then it would be a welcome change as the current emphasis on IP has at times put lawyer and musician at odds with one another. It is my thought that this new paradigm will create a real opportunity for lawyers and musicians to act as partners in contract law and perhaps extend this collaborative attitude to IP law.
I like thinking about new ways to re-cast the lawyer-artist relationship. The oppositional, gate-keeping, parental role at the moment seems awkward.
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