music

It was over six years ago that I first subscribed to the eMusic digital music service, and over three years since I started my blog Swindleeeee!!!!! to provide an outlet for my eMusic-related musings. My posting frequency (never that high) has in recent months fallen off drastically. I either don’t have anything I want to write about eMusic, or I don’t have time to write anything. Rather than have Swindleeeee!!!!! join the millions of other blogs that have dribbled off into nothingness, I’ve decided to give it a dignified exit....

I’m contemplating ending my Swindleeeee!!!!! blog and moving all the old posts over to my regular blog, though that might not happen for a while. In the meantime I’ve started posting some things over at my other blog that might be of interest to anyone still reading this one. The latest one is a long post (over 7,000 words!) on the rather oddball idea of applying Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation to music....

As all long-time eMusic watchers are aware, eMusic’s business model has always been based on the “health club” model, i.e., the assumption that a certain percentage of customers will pay for but not use the service. In eMusic’s case that corresponds to subscribers who download fewer tracks per month than they’re paying for. The result of these unused tracks or digital “breakage” (as Digital Audio Insider refers to the phenomenon) is that the per-track payout from eMusic to labels was somewhat higher than it would be otherwise....

UPDATE: This was very much a stream of consciousness blog post, where I wrote down my thoughts as they occurred to me. Among other things, this meant that it lacked a good summary of what it is actually supposed to be about. The basic idea was/is to take Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation in business and apply it to music and (by extension) to other arts, with a goal of sketching out a “unified field theory” that (with suitable elaboration) could potentially explain how music evolves not only from an aesthetic perspective but also in terms of the sociology and economics of the communities of composers, performers, critics, educators, audiences, etc....

Given the extent to which Michael Jackson the person was crushed beneath the weight of Michael Jackson the commercial phenomenon, it’s sadly appropriate that his death should allow Sony Music Entertainment and eMusic to conduct a natural experiment in maximizing profits through price discrimination. Jackson’s death has rekindled interest in his music, to the point where Michael Jackson albums now dominate the charts at the iTunes Store and Amazon. As far as I can tell all the Michael Jackson digital releases on the iTunes Store are being sold at full-price; the same is true for Michael Jackson releases in MP3 format at Amazon....