Legal Research

Libraries, Music and the Internet

By admin

Does your library collect and circulate music? (Sheet, CD, Cassette, Streaming, Vinyl, instruments, etc.?) Some interesting (at least to me) stuff about the current state of music in the world.

The State of Internet Music on YouTube, Pandora, iTunes, and Facebook

Some pithy quotes:

“More people are engaged with music than ever before,” said Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records and the New Music Seminar. “It’s a hockey stick going up; it’s an incredible opportunity that so far has eluded us.”

There is a shift from albums to singles.

“Of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy; more than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies. In fact, just 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, an astonishing figure given that these numbers combine physical and digital album sales. And for physical sales alone? According to Garland, only 2% of new albums on Soundscan sold over 5,000 copies–that’s a skydiver’s plummet from the golden era of the music industry. ”

“The music business historically has been built around albums,” explained Silverman. “This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don’t listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs.”

“YouTube is increasingly the category killer,” argued Garland. “When people ask me what is the biggest name in music in my opinion, they want me to say Apple. I usually answer: YouTube.”

“Pandora is now the most popular Internet radio service, with a 52% market share, close to 60 million registered users, and more than 1 billion stations.” “Pandora now represents 1.7% of all radio listening.”

Read the full post for more.

If these shifts have happened then we can ask ourselves in libraries:

1. Are we album or song oriented?
2. Do we create or use search tools for albums, artists and songs?
3. Do we catalogue by genre?
4. Are we oriented to physical formats alone?
5. Can we ‘lend’ a streaming format?
6. Do we use the promotion tools on YouTube like music videos?

Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are in the top ten YouTube videos – of all time.

Got songs?

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on August 01, 2010 (boomark / email).