I was recently introduced to the idea of "the monolith", an industry term used to describe a portable device, one small enough to fit in one's hand, which contains the entirety of all commercially available music.
The term was introduced back when the iPod's memory capacity was exponentially growing as music's availability for free was on the rise (Sound familiar...?). These discussions in the early 2000s revolved around the question of what would happen when these forces reached their inevitable terminus - Every commercially available song, obtainable at no cost, and stored on a device that could fit in one's hand?
I would argue, and many I think would agree, that we have already reached that day. Does this mean that the music industry is already over? of course not. Anyone with half an understanding of how to navigate the Internet could easily find and obtain most commercially available content for free. The price and size of external hard drives exponentially decreasing (a quick google search found a 2 terabyte hard drive for $115.00 - which could store about 500,000 songs at 4mb a song) means that storing every single available song is quite feasible within a modest budget as well. These factors leading to the conclusion that the construction of a monolith type device is reasonably conceivable.
Instead of philosophizing on its effect on the state of intellectual property rights or what this means for the major label music industry models, it got me thinking about consumer behavior - my behavior in particular. What would I do if someone handed me a monolith? I thought about this for a while and realized that I would probably put it down, let it sit somewhere safe, and go back to it later. I would not know where to begin. How does one start to access all that content?
Essentially the Internet connection that is allowing me to post these thoughts, is also connecting me to the monolith. Any song in the monolith is only a google search away from me right now, but do I spent my days feverishly trying to access it all? of course not. The future of music is not in controlling assets, its in controlling the exploration into these assets. The monolith is incomprehensible and overwhelming, therefore consumers will need help in discovering what they want.
Think of it as a tour guide on vacation. An entire city lay at my disposal, but I don't know how to best access it with the limited time that I have. I want the highlights and I will gladly pay for the best if it is delivered to me by a credible and reasonable source. Whether that's a travel book or an exclusive tour, consumer's are willing to pay for this convenience of access. In a climate where anything is available, the future of selling music is a retailer's ability to guide consumer's to their new music.
Many sources online provide this guide, but few if any do it within a digital retail frame work. If we are not beyond the era of monetizing songs on a consumer level, the value of music is the subject of my next post, then I believe it is this service that many consumer's would prefer, and pay for, over independently tackling the massive expanse of the monolith.
Some will say this exploratory task is controlled by journalistic entities and that mixing commerce with objectified criticism is doomed to fail, but I think consumer's within the Internet are caring less about these blurring lines. Sites like Pitchfork have their fingers in the honey jar with their annual festival in Chicago and smaller blogs are also straddling the fence with their own promoted shows on a much smaller scale. If they are able to monetize the performance aspect of the music industry without consumer outcry, what's to say these lines won't blur more?
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