Free Music

On his personal Music Industry Blog, Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan has a post entitled 2008: The Year of Free Music.

Mark writes:

2008 was the year in which the music industry accepted the fact that the only way to fight free is with free. That the only way to engage young digital consumers that have grown up with file sharing is to offer them something genuinely comparable in experience and price (i.e. free). Back in 2005 I wrote in a Jupiter report that if the industry didn’t start offering these young consumers free music they would become a demographic time bomb for future music revenues. Now finally we’re seeing these strategies starting to happen.

I disagree.

In 2008 the music industry granted licenses to ad-supported music streaming and downloading services under usurious conditions that guarantee failure. The industry throws scraps to free while it continues its rain dance to the music selling gods.

When the epitaph of recorded music sales is written, 2008 will be nothing more than the year that the delusions of 2007 continued.