Something isn't right

Last week the musician Prince announced that his latest album would be given away free in conjunction with a UK newspaper. You can read an update here on the story.

Now I posted a couples times on the state of play of the music industry ( you can read my early post here and here). I resisted posting about the Prince story because I wanted to see how the side of the record labels would respond. I am dishearten to see that the same defensive posture of the wanning medium of the album still holds.

Why after a decade of decreasing sales have record labels not developed new avenues to generate income. We have music downloads widely available now but record labels didn't invent that as much as try to jump on the band wagon.

When will see the next era of engaging record music ushered in? It looks like the way of the record store is over. I would definitely be trying to get out of the selling businesses and move towards creating value around music inline with a new generation of music lovers who don't even have the context of only having music available through physical objects like CDs.

Not easy at all, but it has to happen and better to be one of the first right