Music 3.0 and the rocky pre-media past

I recently explored how the changing consumer demand and routes to market had disrupted the old paradigm of music supply, but the disruptive technologies that forced the music industry to rethink its strategy also played an important role in redefining the pre-media industries involvement in artwork and marketing material creation.

Gary already touched upon the days of old in the late 80’s early 90’s where the formats where large with the 12inch and 7ich vinyl artworks and the multiple folded cassette inserts; this was the same time that Laserdisc hardware had matured and also had to be distributed in these large format packages. Still some years off mainstream was the era of the CD & DVD which would of course dominate the consumer market. CD had been around for a while yet the transition in the publishers was a bumpy road as the vinyl format still ruled whilst the consumer got used to the digital age. The cost of technology to use these now seemingly small and fragile discs came within reach of the average household and along with this trend the pre-media market whad to adapt and change change as well. While the early nineties saw vinyl and cassette slowly slip away, the requirement to transition and operate on the smaller, more manageable scale of CD was becoming a reality. As the work moved from bench planning, to computer aided design, and the operational efficiency of the production was increased the pre-media companies were facing new challenges. Also they had to endure a drop in income as the old formats slowly disappeared, but a new lease of life with the new format coming in and they needed more efficiency, more productivity and faster turnaround times since the studio’s now realised the future was compact disc and they floundered to transition their old vinyl artworks into the new, much smaller compact disc format.

Music 2.0 and beyond

The music industry is going through a transition from what they called Music 1.0 to the now named Music 2.0. This transition is well documented by authors such as Steve Knopper, Gerd Leonhard, Chris Anderson and many others who have charted the changes in the creation, the content and the distribution.

1gb MP3 Player

 

Music 2.0 has seen the raise of the internet changing the way the music industry has needed to approach the distribution, they once fought against the illegal distributors, people like Napster and shut them down for providing a distribution service to individual consumers, at the time no one in the music industry was providing an accessible way for the mass of connected consumers to access the content in a manner that was affordable, the consumers desire to hold the actual psychical copy declined as the WinAmp provided a way to listen on your PC and with the electronics industry providing a whirlwind of consumer devices to play the new digital content, content the consumers ripped and distributed themselves. Sites like MP3.com, Cductive and eMusic felt a groundswell of consumers looking to find the music content for free. But the labels wouldn’t sign deals to distribute music electronically, those that did like Sony tried to charge $3.50 per track that turned off the early adopters who were willing to pay, turning them to the ever increase sources for illegal content, and why not it was easy!