As a music lover, I’m obviously excited about the fact that it will soon be possible to download The Beatles’ back catalogue on iTunes (although I have to worry about anyone who doesn’t own most of it already). But what would really please me is if it was possible to download lots more stuff, too.
Let me explain; I’m a Luddite at heart and so still own a lot of vinyl. Whilst digging through my records the other day I came across a song I love that was only ever released on vinyl (4hero’s remix of Nuyorican Soul’s Black Gold Of The Sun since you ask), and thought that it would be great to download a digital version for my iPod – legally! Having drawn a blank on iTunes and then emusic, I Google’d it. But instead of finding somewhere that was offering downloads of the track, I found sites that are turning into the Wikipedia of the music world – discogs.com, last.fm, and hundreds of lyric sites.
So why can’t I download my song, how could this be fixed, and what the hell does any of this have to do with SEO or Web 2.0?
Well, the reason I can’t download it is that the record companies still have vast amounts of music that has never been digitised or released, probably due to the cost. How could this be fixed? Simple: spend some money, that’s how. The long tail theory has shown that there is money in the smallest amounts of demand, so investing in a fully digitised back catalogue would make sense.
For the record companies to take advantage of this though, they would need to start selling the music online themselves, something they are unwilling to do at present. From conversations with people who work in the music industry, they simply don’t see themselves as retailers.
But, if they looked at the success of the sites I mentioned before, they could sell this stuff with minimal effort. By creating landing pages for every artist in the catalogue, including lyrics, user-generated content, links to fan sites, etc., these pages would soon be surfing the top of the rankings. Imagine if last.fm allowed you to download tracks (again, something that last.fm apparently don’t want to do) – with its, rankings it would surely make a tidy sum.
So Mr & Mrs Record Company – lose your fear of retailing, copy the likes of last.fm and the lyrics sites, and SEO your back catalogues. You can even have this advice free of charge – just make sure that the 1st track you digitise and optimise is Black Gold Of The Sun and that I get a copy for free!
