"Keep Them Ringing"
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Music Publishers |
The cash register never stops ringing. Profit nowadays for record companies does not just come from "brick and mortar" stores anymore. Much of the revenue stream comes from the virtual world and its nascent digital transaction.
Years ago, most of a record company's profit came from selling music commodities and "old world" albums. (Yes, most of the posters back then were free.) But since the inception of the internet and the growing popularity of online downloads and digital music purchase, CDs and albums are now sold at a loss; music contents and tracks are the new drivers of bottom line profits for record companies.
Nowadays, you have digital albums, downloadable tracks bundled with a few images, maybe a video clip also, and some some ring tones thrown in with a ring back tune. Think of it as a customized album by a cash-burning fanatic. It helps that paid membership sites have the technology to track individuals and their preference to better fine tune their future alerts or offerings. At a relatively cheap price compared to CDs, you have customers opening their wallets more for the power of customizing music according to their taste, and record company moguls are happier than ever.
The explosive growth of digital music player sales and the integration of the mobile phone as a digital audio player ensure that future revenue streams show strong promise. You also have TFT screens that offer richer image quality (in case you want to have Beyonce's pic to go with her latest dance tune), plus mobile providers' increasing capability to offer downloadable music, images, video clips and e-commerce payment convenience, you have a captured market who knows what they want and are willing to spend to get it and more.
With an average revenue rising each year, the possibilities of greater profit from digital transactions are limitless; perhaps bounded only by man's imagination.
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Brian Cook is a freelance writer whose articles on music and songwriting have appeared on many websites.
You can find more of these at SongwritersGuide.com.
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