music business

After many many years studying the music business, today I have made one final conclusion: as it currently stands the business of music is doomed because practitioners have failed in one core element of business. 

Keep close to your customer. Understand them, surprise and delight them, use them, and most importantly, maintain a close relationship with them.  Those in the music industry have perhaps considered themselves too cool and are perhaps too out of touch to identify, understand and acknowledge consumer needs. Instead they have sued them, overcharged them, ignored them, failed to include them, and not delivered what they want.

Case in point: Music Victoria, which has been nominated as the saviour of the music industry in Victoria, recently undertook a comprehensive survey of the music industry.   Q1 - no category for music consumer. FAIL.  I questioned this and got a quick response: "I'd say there was no 'consumer' category because their survey was based on people with involvement in the music industry." OK so let's take the music consumer out of the industry and what have we left? ummm, licensing music for ads and film soundtracks and games. Oblivian