One of the biggest topics of discussion in the music world is the automatic inclusion of U2's latest effort with your new Apple product. This sheds light into something called windowing that could be the future of the music industry. As the music industry changes, people are finding it harder to share music with their friends that are all using different services. Getting around both of these issues just became easier thanks to Bop.fm.
Windowing is something that has been seen in the movie industry but not music. It is basically giving exclusives to one format in different regions. U2 was released solely with Apple for a month but it could have been straight to Spotify in England. There are many ways this can happen. As with movies, music could be released to different services at different times and through any other ways a user can differentiate from another.
If the music industry moves to this tactic it would be hard to blame them. There is money to be made in windowing and recent reports suggest that income is down. The data shown at the right was provided by the Recording Industry Association of America for 2013. Another report produced by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for global data suggests that trade revenue for the recorded music industry was down 3.9% in 2013.
This week Apple made a statement that they are working with U2 on a new digital music format, which tends to mean a new file type. What is built into that file type is unknown, but it could make windowing even easier, specifically to Apple.
That should not be an issue if you use Bop.fm. They have a deal with Beats Music to go along with Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube and more. Just this week they added Pandora so that all the song a user has liked on Pandora can be aggregated much quicker.
Worlds | Listen for costless at bop.fm
Bop.fm came out from the popular Y Combinator seed accelerator that also spurred the creation of reddit and Airbnb, along with many other startups. In July CEO and Co-founder Shehzad Daredia and co-founder Stefan Gomez announced that they had raised $2 million in Series A funding to help fight fragmentation. The CEO told The Wall Street Journal that the money is going to be used for hiring and to help artists generate value through social-sharing.
"The users win because they get a comprehensive and anonymous tier of music, the music services get a performance-based marketing channel, artists and labels win because we promote the healthy, paid, legal adoption of music that promotes monetization rather than piracy."-Shehzad to Business Insider
Windowing is a side thought with sharing at the core of the platform that is still new in the world of music metadata. They have introduced Verified Artists pages where musicians like Wiz Khalifa or Paul McCartney curate and share their own playlists. They have built in enough code to determine a default service and know where a song may live in its highest quality on the many different music services. Of course those defaults can be influenced by what monetizes better or if a user has access to certain inline services.
Bop.fm makes its money by taking a small commission from the inline services for each new subscriber it refers. Some of the discussion around this model is that it may not be sustainable.
They will also have competition along the way and reading the comments section of other pieces on Bop.fm will show that users are trying to drum up comparisons with Last.fm and Discogs, among others. When speaking with VAVEL regarding potential competition or threats to long term goals, Bop.fm was not concerned stating, "At the moment, we're focused on creating the best user experience layer across different music services, countries, and devices. Our secret sauce, so to speak, is the technology behind making it all work seamlessly. Our long-term goal is to be the one-stop shop for music and we have a number of key partnerships and relations with investors that are helping us achieve that."
In regard to creating their own revenue, they stated, "We have some plans for monetization, but as I mentioned above, we're putting our heads down on the product first."
Bop.fm is trying to drive up revenue across the music industry but have stuck their head in to digital music in a tumultuous time. They will find some bumps along the way. Some artists have chosen not to be included on services like Spotify, but now they are appearing on a inline music service through a YouTube video that they may or may not have uploaded. Of course the video used is often the official Vevo version. Regardless, that is something Bop.fm can easily wash their hands of and have the artist take it up with YouTube directly.
Bop.fm is looking to expand their service with mobile phone apps, the ability to leverage a local library and other ways to make the user feel like they own their music data. Shehzad told Robert Scoble at Rackspace that the crowded digital music space created the need for Bop.fm and now they want to be the best client. They will look to kick in third party services and continue to push users to upgrade their services with the inline service of their choice. Of course Bop.fm will be looking to personalize the experience that they feel will help the music industry rebound.
Philip Inghelbrecht, the co-founder of Shazam, believes that windowing is coming and Bop.fm is, in part, counting on it for their relevancy. Piracy could reach an all-time high if the music industry goes that way, but this new service is a way to get music legally. Will users feel like they own their music? That is what Bop.fm is working on. Getting in on it now will put one ahead of the curve and allow users to built their own personal music narrative. There are still some growing pains, but this is going down the right track and if they can make good on their future plans, Bop.fm may have just created a new mold.
