The music industry and ECM

As I was walking my dog the other day and listening to music on my iPhone via a service called Songza I started to realize that for all the complaining that the music industry makes about piracy and illegal downloads; are they shedding alligator tears?

Because if you think about what radio or music distribution was before and what it is now things have definitely changed. In the past you had a record shop, radio (AM and FM), concerts and such as formal channels of distribution and access. Now with the internet and broadband capabilities plus things like satellite radio, radio type services such as Songza and others; musicians and the music companies have more channels of distribution. Plus with the ability to customize your material or playlists; access to unknown artists increases. For example a band such as The Stronoway would probably never have made it past UK FM stations in the past but due to the vast array of access and channel they now have a strong fan base on a global basis. Now most of the services like Spotify etc provide access and control of content.

So what can ECM technology or use learn from the music industry since both are concerned about control, access and security.

When you have more channels of access and a higher degree of granularity of the information about the user (consumer or creator ) of content one should be able to distribute information in more types of structure and kind without the risk of losing confidentiality or proprietary information.

Just an initial thought will require more analysis. And as well what can the ECM technologies teach the music industry on controlling content.