Peter Gabriel: Digital Music Downloading's Future 99
securitas writes "CNN International's Becky Anderson interviews musician and OD2 online music service co-founder Peter Gabriel about the future of digital music downloads. The interview covers Gabriel's motivations in starting OD2, how technology has changed the music industry business model in the favor of artists and away from the big record labels, and where the small, independent artist fits in. Gabriel's words have weight because of his insights as both a musician/artist and a businessman who guided a digital music on demand distribution (OD2) and download service to success."
Last hope for the independents (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that this is something that everyone outside of the time/warner, sony, etc cartels who want to be in the music industry need to take heed of. If the big boys are consolidating, then maybe the smaller labels and distributors should put aside their personal ambitions and look at the larger picture...before they're written out of it.
Re:Last hope for the independents (Score:2, Insightful)
OD2 still here, yea, but a success? (Score:4, Insightful)
Durrr... I dig Peter Gabriel, and I dig this concept, but, uh, success? Can we have any stats to back that up?
In January, it seemed [slashdot.org] like the store had varying rights per label, delivering only Windows Media songs. Varying DRM'd files with fine print? Ok, I guess people were buying [slashdot.org] into it when they introduced that penny per streaming song thing.
Outside of that I've seen no press releases or 3rd party sites talking about OD2 as a "success". Are we qualifying it by the fact that they're still here after 6 months? The submission just feels weird to me.. I couldn't even find any stats thru google [google.com].
(again, I dig Mr. Gabriel, and I appreciate him and Mr. Eno coming up with a new concept. It's nice for iTunes to have competition.. but I need to see some numbers to endear a service with only DRM'd WM9 files servicing 3-4 countries of the EU as a "success". Even the BBC [bbc.co.uk] calls them a success with no numbers!)
Won't work, unless..... (Score:4, Insightful)