Newspapers and Music: The Market Doesn't Care About You

Scott Karp over at Publishing2 has a great post entitled: The Market and the Internet Don’t Care If You Make Money. It opened my eyes to how some industrys feel the need to hold out there hands and demand for new media to give them money: Music, News, and Books.

Scott cites Seth Godin by saying:

You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It’s not “how can the market make me money” it’s “how can I do things for this market.”

I am going to type this again because we deserve to remember this: “It’s not how can the market make me money it’s how can I do things for this market.” Traditional entertainment media has persued new media with swords drawn ready for battle.

“This isn’t how we did it in the past. I am going to sue as many people as possible until they stop downloading our music” I’m sorry to break it to you big suit record label exec, the world is changing. The market is shifting to where music is not worth what it was in the past. You can no longer sell 10-20 million albums and fuel an empire.

The newspaper and music industry need to stop focusing on how to reap the same profit margins that they did in the 1980’s and start thinking about the new world. The world of lightning fast communication. The world where I can listen to a song and then download it. While getting a news story from a FRIEND in Seattle.

NOT YOU.

Scott says it best:

The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money.

Nobody has the right to a business model.

Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.

And let the market happen.

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