And talking of the future of the music industry, and dissing major record companies, the boss of Canada based Nettwerk Music Group, Terry McBride, has said the music industry should become less album focused, and recognise that in the digital domain sales of individual songs are more important.
According to Jam Showbiz, McBride told the Transmission music conference in Vancouver this week: "We've got ourselves in this situation where our metric system of measurement is an album. What's an album have to do with music? An album has nothing to do with creating a song".
McBride has long been a critic of the way the major record companies have responded to the internet, in particular in launching litigation against individuals who share music online. With that in mind he continued: "Music is more popular than it's ever been. It's a matter of looking at that behaviour and learning how to market that behaviour versus fight that behaviour".
McBride suggested record companies should look to new business models that capitalise on file sharing. Technology is available, he said, that means labels can encourage fans to share their music for previewing purposes, with preview tracks that have a sell through system inbuilt. He concluded: "Stop talking about having kids transfer music to every device they have. Just do it. You can do it right now. There's nothing stopping you. The only thing that's stopping you are your egos".