THE MUSIC WORLD (Hypebot) – Years after Napster, the major labels still seem to believe that heavy handed negotiations and lawsuits are the answer to the downturn.
I left MidemNet and Midem last month with a certain sense of hope. The "insiders" were telling me that the music industry had finally moved beyond confrontation to collaboration. See, for example at how well mobile and the music industry are working together.
But given recent moves by the recording industry from Muxtape to pulling videos from YouTube, a well as, a number of new lawsuits against music tech startups prove that my optimism was unfounded. I've just written about this troubling trend on the MidemNet blog in "Are We Really Moving From Control To Collaboration?", so I won't repeat my arguments here.
Music industry consultant Ted Cohen of TAG Strategic also chose the MidemNet blog to express his concern that labels and licensing are stifling innovation. As Ted states, ”It's Time To Get On The Same Page". Ted is 100% correct. Particularly with all of the lessons learned and so much at stake, why can't we all just get along?
The Midem team has decided to keep their blog active year round to provide the global music industry with a place for opinion and discussion. This discussion will continue there as well as here on Hypebot. After all, the first step away from confrontation towards collaboration is communication.
