Is Digital Rights Management Going to Rescue the Pop Music Industry?

 Is Digital Rights Management Going to Rescue the Pop Music Industry?

There is little question that the internet has been the most significant catalyst for change in corporate patterns during the past decade to two decades. This tremendous force has had an impact on almost every industry and market. The music industry, however, has been through the most profound transformation and has faced the greatest difficulty in keeping up with, adapting to, and surviving the unprecedented wave of change brought about by the rise of cyberspace.


The music industry faced its first big threat with the advent of cyberspace, which was a radical change in the way music was sold to music lovers all over the globe. What happened next was nothing short of an avalanche: the majority of people who bought music did so online, leaving traditional record stores and retail outlets in the dust. Unfortunately, there was no single website responsible for the transformation that could be traced to the massive flood of customers.

As a result of a sea change in the way in which independent record companies and musicians conduct business online, music fans started purchasing CDs, concert tickets, and other merchandise directly from artists and record labels on the internet, with instant downloads available.

While this paradigm shift in consumer behavior did cause significant changes to the business, they paled in comparison to the upheavals that the internet was about to bring to the music industry. As a whole, the music industry was in grave danger from the impending next wave of upheaval, which might have permanently destroyed it. 

With the advent of file-sharing applications like Kazaa, Limeware, and BitTorrent, music fans were able to instantly gain access to an infinite library of music at no cost by downloading it from the computer of another internet user.

As a whole, the music industry felt the devastating effects of the precipitous decline in music sales caused by these two factors. Executives in the music industry first didn't know what to do to curb the massive file-sharing trend. They used litigation and other punitive measures to try to bring the software services that supplied the networks to users to a halt. 

While these lawsuits dragged on and consumed substantial funds, the deluge of free music streaming online persisted. Even worse, if they succeeded in slowing down one file-sharing network, it appeared like dozens more sprung up to take its place, creating what felt like a nightmare scenario of ongoing lawsuits against an ever-increasing adversary.

Public appeals to music lovers were yet another effort to bring attention to the fact that new music would cease to exist if artists were not compensated. In fact, it appeared that the inverse was true. 

There appeared to be an exponential growth in both the quantity and quality of high-quality music in this emerging market as an increasing number of independent musicians started to use file sharing as a promotional tool.

This technique, dubbed DRM, seemed to be the last-ditch effort. Digital rights management (DRM) is a digital "lock" that should be included in all music posted on the internet. Only consumers with the proper authorization might listen to music protected by digital rights management. This looked like a good idea at first. 

However, not even digital rights management could stem the tide of money lost due to file sharing. Additionally, cybercriminals were eager to figure out how to bypass any technological safeguards put in place by the music industry.

Thus, as we approach the second half of the first decade of this century, the music industry is figuring out how to collaborate with this new market for music instead of fighting it. There appears to be a new solution on the horizon, one that is customer-centric rather than client-centrically dictated, by taking cues from the digital customer service practices of independent labels and learning from their experiences. Everything feels right, like that was always the way everything should have been. 

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