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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Can the music industry deliver a Tidal wave of exclusives?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 13 April 2015
Fresh on the back of the big Tidal relaunch, CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke considers what an exclusives-driven streaming sector might look like in the latest CMU Trends Report.
With the all-new Tidal promising content exclusives a plenty, and Apple expected to likewise distinguish its new Beats/iTunes streaming service with exclusive albums and tracks when it launches later this year, Cooke notes the problems with artists doing exclusivity deals with a streaming platform. “Exclusives in the streaming domain are very different to exclusivity deals between artists and record shops or download stores, in that they make a much bigger demand on the fan”, he writes.
“In the latter cases”, he continues, “a consumer may have to visit a record shop or download store they would not otherwise frequent, but once they have bought the CD or the digital music file (assuming, as it usually will be these days, that file is DRM-free), the fan can then play the album or song on their usual playback device of choice, alongside all their other favourite records”.
“If an artist makes their music exclusively available to a streaming service – especially a subscription-based DSP – then that forces the fan to change the way they listen to music, and to move their custom to another provider on an ongoing rather than one-off basis. And if a consumer’s favourite A-list artists all do exclusivity deals with different services, that creates a dilemma for the fan. Would they really subscribe to multiple services at any one time?”
To read the full article, which considers some of the other challenges around streaming exclusives, and proposes some solutions, get yourself a copy of the latest CMU Trends Report by going premium today! Click here to sign up for just £60 for the next twelve months.
