I'm frustrated with music. All around me I see great technological innovations yet none of it has made a meaningful impact on the music industry. There is certainly a demand for it: music is the most popular form of human entertainment. By my count about half of the top 100 Twitter users are musicians or musical artists. Further, good music is incredibly addictive and is proven have a psychoactive effect on our brains. To me, this equals missed opportunity.
The big incongruity lies between what music people want versus what music they can get. People want more music. There is more music being created now more than ever and musical tastes are diversifying. Despite this, people are getting the same music they have always had access to because, even though more music is being created, the power of distribution is still held by the industry oligarchs. And therein is the problem with the biggest music broadcasting platforms -- internet and terrestrial radio. Both mediums distribute effectively the same music but package it up in slightly different ways. I personally love Rdio and pay $5 a month for it, but the experience there is exceedingly similar to Spotify, and the music I get there is exactly the same as the music I can download on iTunes (or Amazon), or download illegally (or borrow from a friend), or listen to on Pandora (or Last.fm), or even listen to on my local radio station if I'm lucky. Music, it seems, is being commoditized.
What we need are novel and valuable ways to bring new music to the mass market. Most important is empowering the creators of music to do more with their fans and unlock new monetization channels. The answer I think is building awesome experiences on top of music, where the musical product itself is a unique function of the platform. Critical to this is mobile because it will become the atomic unit of computing, if it is not already. This is something I am working on. Stay tuned.
The big incongruity lies between what music people want versus what music they can get. People want more music. There is more music being created now more than ever and musical tastes are diversifying. Despite this, people are getting the same music they have always had access to because, even though more music is being created, the power of distribution is still held by the industry oligarchs. And therein is the problem with the biggest music broadcasting platforms -- internet and terrestrial radio. Both mediums distribute effectively the same music but package it up in slightly different ways. I personally love Rdio and pay $5 a month for it, but the experience there is exceedingly similar to Spotify, and the music I get there is exactly the same as the music I can download on iTunes (or Amazon), or download illegally (or borrow from a friend), or listen to on Pandora (or Last.fm), or even listen to on my local radio station if I'm lucky. Music, it seems, is being commoditized.
What we need are novel and valuable ways to bring new music to the mass market. Most important is empowering the creators of music to do more with their fans and unlock new monetization channels. The answer I think is building awesome experiences on top of music, where the musical product itself is a unique function of the platform. Critical to this is mobile because it will become the atomic unit of computing, if it is not already. This is something I am working on. Stay tuned.
