I’m kind of glad that Andrew Dubber — a professor of music in Britain — got threatened by a record industry executive for writing about downloading on his blog, because otherwise I never would have come across his New Music Strategies blog and that would have been a shame. He posts a lot of smart things about the music industry, and his latest post is no exception: it’s called 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online, and while I usually hate the “10 Things” style of list, this one is a keeper. His list includes:
3. Opinion Leaders Rule: We know the importance of radio and press. There are now new opinion leaders who will tell your story with credibility. You need to find out who they are — or better yet, become one of them.
6. Web 2.0: Forget being a destination — become an environment. Let your customers tag and sort your catalogue. Open up for user-generated content. Your website is not a brochure — it’s a place where people gather and connect with you and with each other.
8. Cross-promote: Your online stuff is not a replacement for your offline stuff, and nor does it exist independently of it. Figure out how to make the two genuinely intersect.
11. The Death of Scarcity: Understand that the economics of the internet is fundamentally different to the economics of the world of shelves and limited stock. Know that you could give away 2 million copies of your record in order to sell a thousand.
20. Forget product — sell relationship: The old model of music business is dominated by the sale of an individual artefact for a set sum of money. iTunes is still completely old school. The new model is about starting an ongoing economic relationship with a community of fans.
I encourage you to read the entire thing.