The Experience of Music

[This entry was originally published as an opinion piece in Music Ally, a European music consultancy.]

The boot print was still clearly visible on my forehead when I stumbled out of Detroit’s State Theatre into the early morning grime of Woodward Ave. I hadn’t been more exhausted, or exhilarated, from a live show since I had played the part of Max at the first Lollapalooza festival a few years earlier. There I had danced for hours with the other Wild Things, high on the grassy hill of nearby Pine Knob Music Theatre, dodging flames from makeshift bonfires radiating the unnatural colors of burning blankets, trash, and suddenly-unnecessary clothing.

At its core, music is communication. Whether experienced with a thousand other people in an amphitheatre, or alone in a darkened bedroom, the value of music is in its ability to connect us all in impossibly complex ways. Like music, mobile communications is all about personal interactions. The way we engage with our mobile device is as personal and diverse as how we experience music. The mobile phone is now at the center of the communication and entertainment universe for an entire new generation, and as we watch the mobile industry converge with the internet before our eyes, we are witnessing the birth of the most empowering personal technology in history. And by providing such powerful and new ways for people to interact, the mobile phone represents an opportunity of unparalleled magnitude for a struggling music industry.

In the business of music, it has become all too common to measure value in ‘units.’ These measures emerged in an era when the production, marketing, and distribution of sound recordings were difficult and expensive problems, forcing the value of the industry to be tied very closely to its ability to solve them. The disruption and chaos that followed the emergence of the first peer-to-peer services on the internet was inevitable: too much revenue came from distribution, and distribution was suddenly completely and utterly free.

But music is not a download. Nor is music a CD, a ringtone, nor any other mechanical representation or reproduction of sound waves. Clearly, no jewel case could contain my Where The Wild Things Are experience of Lollapalooza some seventeen years ago, and no stream of ones and zeros can ever replicate the mingling sensations of ringing ears and metallic taste in my mouth that I associate with that Nine Inch Nails show.

If the music industry is to regain its footing, it must go back to the business of enhancing the experience of music, and break its unhealthy dependency on the mechanics (and, perhaps, monetization) of distribution. Mobile technology is the perfect platform to simultaneously enhance the musical experience while allowing for substantial revenue potential for those who would take a holistic approach.

Ironically, the dominant mobile entertainment value chain today looks a lot like a physical distribution model. High production costs, tightly-controlled distribution channels, and limited retail space are strange characteristics for a digital environment, but they persist in mobile due to a legacy of restrictive and anti-competitive business practices in the telecom industry.

Fortunately this model, like the physical distribution model before it, is quickly becoming an anachronism. Mobile phones have become full-fledged internet devices, and the same market forces that provide the beautiful mess of innovation that is the internet today are quickly converging on the mobile space. Though the promise of a truly open mobile environment remains elusive, there is an emerging new mobile economy that promises to dramatically change the mobile industry for the benefit of all.

Change, especially disintermediation, is always resisted by those with a vested interest in the status quo. But fighting technological advances has historically been a doomed strategy. Indeed, it always will be. By providing zero-cost distribution, technology has fundamentally and irrevocably altered the economic landscape of the music industry. The toothpaste is out of the (you)tube, and no amount of litigation or legislation can change that.

Indeed, society itself is changed by technology. We simply are not the same people we were before the internet, and the mobile generation now coming of age has an identity and set of expectations that are very different from that of their parents.

The fluidity of distribution, and the resulting fluidity of value chains and of society as a whole, has created completely new levels of interaction with music. In mobile, especially, we see emerging artists using text messaging to communicate directly with their fans, harnessing the promotional value of ringtones to virally market themselves, and providing over-the-air downloads of “behind the scenes” videos that fans can enjoy on their phones anywhere. If the spirit of an open mobile ecosystem were embraced fully by the music industry as a whole, we would undoubtedly see huge markets emerge for impulse purchasing of concert tickets, merchandise, and a million other things besides.

Mobile represents an incredible opportunity for the music industry, but the true potential can only be realized by working in an open environment to enhance the experience of music, rather than trying to control its expression. Openness encourages a vastly higher level of engagement, such as my experience at Lollapalooza so many years ago, and can serve as the foundation of a valuable and profitable modern music industry.

By fully embracing the mobile music experience we find more than ample opportunity to compensate for the loss of the industry’s historic profit centers.