La industria de la música cae, y algo nuevo surge

Esta semana Radiohead sacó un nuevo disco, pero no a través de una disquera, sino a través de internet. Ya antes lo había hecho Prince. Ahora Madonna deja a Warner Music, la disquera de toda su vida, y firma un contrato de 120 millones con una empresa productora de conciertos. Internet ha puesto todo el modelo de negocio de las disqueras de cabeza. Y no es culpa de los jóvenes del mundo que bajan música de la red. Y los artistas lo han entendido. No se puede combatir la piratería. El negocio ahora son los conciertos, el merchandising, y dejar la avaricia y dejar que la gente pague lo que guste y pague mucho menos por su música, como ha hecho iTunes de Apple. Duncan Riley explica más en Tech Crunch:

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Madonna Dumps Record Industry

Duncan Riley

Since reporting Monday that Nine Inch Nails had dumped its record label and was to offer future albums direct to the public, Oasis and Jamiroquai have also joined the move away from the record industry, but the biggest announcement of all is news today that Madonna has dumped the record industry.

According to reports, Madonna has signed a $120million deal with L.A. based concert promotion firm Live Nation to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license Madonna’s name.

Whilst the deal differs from Nine Inch Nails in that Madonna is not offering direct-to-public albums, Live Nation isn’t a record company. The deal shows that even for a world famous act, a record company is no longer required in the days of digital downloads and P2P music sharing.

The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.