The interviews below featuring Terry McBride—CEO of Nettwerk—offer terrific insight to the digital era of music. Terry points out that the ways in which we consume music are changing rapidly—largely due to smartphones—and that the “emotional glue” between fans and musicians is the essence of music business.
With the smartphones coming, and all these apps coming, the music business gets one more kick at the can, and I hope they don’t fight this one, because there’s a huge opportune to grow the business faster than what they’ve ever considered. I think there’s a huge sense of optimism for the first time in about five years that this business can actually grow. –Terry McBride in his 2009 interview with tech reporter Matt Hartley [video above].
Music is becoming more of a service than a product and Terry believes that in these digital times, context trumps content, access trumps ownership, and customer service is as important as ever. P2P filesharing should cease to be an issue as listeners increasingly prefer instant-access streams.
The second interview details the history of the Nettwerk Music Group as a DIY all-in-one company that developed by adapting to meet the needs of musicians and their fans. Towards the end he talks about joint ventures between musicians and non-music brands as being likely in the next five years.
I really think that the paradigm is shifting. I think within the next five years you’re going to have other brands inside the market signing artists. Brands will look at this going, well, we already use music within all of our TV, and radio, and, you know, internet media. Um, why don’t we just sign the artist? –Terry McBride, in his 2008 CMU-Tube interview [video below].
On my previous post, Musicians—Money Is Not Motivation, Dave MacDonald had commented that Terry McBride recently spoke positively about the music industry at TEDxVancouver in November 2009. That video isn’t available yet, but I hope they air it soon on TEDxTalks—I’ll keep you posted.
[homepage thumbnail photo: Flickr/stephen_dyrgas]
