MidemNet 2010: Ted Cohen hails ‘music as a service’
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TAG Strategic’s Ted Cohen kicked off MidemNet 2010 this morning, with a speech outlining what’s working for him when it comes to monetising music. The flippant answer would be ‘consultancy’, of course.
The actual answer? Cohen introduced the day with a note of positivity. “We spent the first ten years talking about the future. Well, it’s now,” he said. “Our industry remains in flux, it continues to contract, and probably will a little bit longer. But I firmly believe we’re at the low point, but we’re going to come out of this.”
Cohen said he believes that “we really are decisively moving from music as a product to music as a service… this isn’t my opinion, this is fact.”
Moving onto the monetising question, Cohen looked back to the days of the original Napster, and pointed out that 11 years later, the industry is still wrestling with issues around this. He hailed last week’s news that Pandora is now profitable, too.
“Next week in San Francisco, Apple is poised to make some big announcements that will move things along even further,” he continued. “We don’t know what they’re gonna announce, but whatever it is, it’s going to shake things up.”
Cohen also said monetising music is still about experimentation. “We need to try things… people will pay for music, but you have to show them the value.”
He said it has to be based on a deep catalogue, rich recommendation tools, good personalisation – “what are the 15 songs I’m going to listen to this evening? That’s what I’ll pay for – give me those 15 songs” – and also the ability to share that experience with friends.
January 29th, 2010 at 10:50 am
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