Sony Music Cuts Off Third Party Licensing

I laid this out in another post and thread when this Sony news was first brought up. The music industry's business model will completely change when the market transition to digital products and streaming services are complete. In that future time which is nearing rapidly, it will require a far less extensive corporate structure to support what is mostly a digital licensing model.

Those current employees dealing with reissue labels and physical media distribtution? Eliminated sooner rather than later with this strategic decision. You need a much less costly and expansive corporate structure to support the digital licensing business. The labels will shrink in size over the coming decade, even as profit margins remain healthy.

Eliminating the diminishing CD market now is in their best long-term interests. CDs are getting squeezed out of retail due to their lower profit margins. This is just the first phase in a long transformation process as the major music labels enter their 21st Century business model and leave behind how they've operated since records were first invented.

 

Sure, that goes without saying. I'm just surprised sometimes when I see legit record shops selling what are obviously bootleg pressings of albums that, in some cases, are available legitimately. So, someone's buying them, I guess? I just fear we might see more of this now.

 

Where there is demand, someone will step in and try to fill it and make money. And idiots are plentiful, I don't see that changing either.

 

Not dead yet

 

This is like a sheet music publisher hoping that there end up being so many gramophone companies that the general public gets sick of them, then Joe Public says **** this and back comes a sheet music resurgence.

 

Bite me

 

Yeah, I was aware of that. I used to have The Edsel reissue of the debut. Wish I'd kept it. I do have Wow and Grape Jam on Sundazed. Got the whole discography on Lp.

 

I thought "paid subscribers" were the best kind, and far better than free-bee-fly-by-nights?

 

This is a real shame, the reality is it was always the business part of 'the music business' rather than the music bit, there are some great reissue labels out there giving those of us that still buy CDs and records some excellent stuff, all we can do is hope for the best as the industry does everything it can to keep the vaults locked.

It's ironic that in a technology-filled world where stuff gets more and more accessible music availability looks as though it's going to be ever-diminishing like the last of the water running through the plughole in a bathtub, sigh...

 

how far can they push it though......especially when theres youtube that has everything for free, and if they pull the music from that or start charging more for youtube....people can always get it for free by torrenting/downloading if they really need to, theres a million ways to find whatever they want...... is music is important to enough young people to charge a real premium? ....i think they'll go slowly or those alexas will be doorstops pretty soon. . i guess this explains the glut of expensive box sets with the outtakes/ covers we've been always dreaming of...get out while the goings good

 

Are Sony and all its affiliated record labels still owned by Bertelsmann (of Sony BMG fame)?
Is this move to end 3rd party licensing meant to cut off the "long tail" with the goal of selling more current product over the long haul?

 

Ok

 

With Alexa devices, etc. I am more apt to stream stuff such as Old Time Radio, etc. than stuff such as Spotify and Pandora on these devices.

 

No, Sony bought out Bertelsmann's remaining interest in 2008. Bertelsmann did restart BMG as a record label, but it's a new and separate venture.

 

I absolutely hope you're correct...

I'm sincerely worried that you actually are correct.

 

Exactly. Been saying this for at least 10 years., if not 20.

"Nawww, there will always be something better to make it compete" Not if you lose control over what you can watch/listen/do.

 

So then the blame should go to the label/owner’s high licensing fees, not the streaming services.

 

The streaming services play their role. They deceptively bring in subscriptions because of the cheap cost, knowing full-well they will not be able to sustain it. They take the losses now, so they can raise the prices later when millions of consumers solely rely on the service.

 

Did you actually read what I said in context before you posted?

Spotify's ONLY revenue stream is paid subscribers. Google and Apple can bleed money on music streaming and still be hugely profitable because they have othe revenue streams. So they can endure years of losses if they choose to.

If Spotify makes no money on streaming (and they never have), they eventually they will just go bankrtupt.

 

So there comes a time when the music industry manages to do everything that will make the public sour on them.

1) With the death of the full-service pop music station, there is no percieved concensus as to whether you are in tune with the rest of your world, in terms of taste. This lack of generality diminishes the idea of "hits" to the point where you can't take your cultural cues from your one link to current styles and taste via the most popular entertaiment medium humans have ever seen...let alone a stream where you control the inclusion or exclusion of what you might encounter.

2) The lack of generalities in what you think your peers are listening to, leads you to seek your own choices...the very thing that's been a thorn in the record industry's hunger for sales for a century: demand for variety causes the industry to expend too much time, effort and budget creating music that costs them the same amount as music by legit superstars, but the return is much less.

3) Profit motive causes the music to begin to cost more, keeping pace with, and often surpassing, cost of living. But, without the visible consensus of one's peers, nobody is aware of how "valuable" the music is.

4) Lack of percieved "value" makes consumers less interested in product, as they find other ways to spend their leisure (raquetball, or making a peanut butter sandwich). Causing music industry to raise prices some more to shore-up the market dip. And now, the only way the publc has to make a generalized observance about the popularity of music is...it's for the well-to-do.

5) And suddenly, as before the advent of music made for teens, it's an expensive, culturally-oblivious status symbol.

Just my take on this.

 

Does this mean no Pink Floyd "Animals" SACD?

 

Netflix has been slowly raising prices. The music services will too.

 

I’ve been thinking of that myself, but hasn’t Floyd retained the rights to their back catalogue?

 

Yes it has retained the rights to their back catalog.

 

Netflix also offers a lot of original content.

They are slowly moving away from hosting other content to becoming more like a 21st century HBO.