"The classic Chinese curse- May you live in interesting times..."

Last night I had an argument with my best friend. It was near epic, and it was on the topic of this post . . . so I’m approaching today's entry with kid gloves.

You may think it's odd to bringing corporate merger news into a teen music services blog. That’s actually what the disagreement was about last night: my friend doesn’t think anything big is going to change anytime soon in the way Americans approach music. (Ok, so maybe I simplified the argument a little . . .)

I, on the other hand, think that:

(1) huge changes are afoot in the music business

(2) news from these last few weeks spotlight symptoms of the oncoming shifts and

(3) the shifts are going to quickly affect the way everyday people buy, share and access music.

However, I can be an idiot at times – particularly when I try to explain what’s crunching away in the magic box of technology and/or commerce. For instance, even the letters DRM give me a headache. But here . . . I'll just let you decide whether these are worth bothering with.

The stories:

Item #1
Corporate giants are starting to consistently prefer online marketing (esp. YouTube and MySpace) to TV marketing. Even TV marketing is prefering social network online marketing.

"Marketing yourself online is 100% cheaper than marketing yourself offline," said Sumant Sridharan, director of product management at LiveDigital.

Item #2
More record labels are jumping on the “Let’s offer our music FREE . . . . (sort of)” bandwagon with SpiralFrog.

I'll be honest I never thought I'd see a time when record companies agreed to give their music away online for free. . . Maybe everyone involved in SpiralFrog believes that it will lead people further and further into legitimate music - and that they'll start wanting to pay for it.

Item #4
MySpace has teamed up with Napster founder Shawn Fanning to offer paid downloads -- in straight-up MP3 format.

Also, MySpace execs say they devised the move deliberately to pull the rug out from under Itunes. Once downloaded, users can transfer, upload, use the files however they want. At .43 a pop, this looks like it will put substantial music promotional power with MySpace. (Much more than they already have, I mean.)

Item #5
Meanwhile, label promoters are abandoning old promotional tactics, pulling every trick out of the bag – ORPGs, viral marketing, etc. trying to keep up.

(Also see "How to sell a smash hit" -- p. 19 in the September 7th Rolling Stone.)

Item #4
And Tower Records is approaching liquidation.

I could very well be wrong, but it sure looks to me as though. . .
there’s some sort of revolution afoot.