Peter Kafka on Tech Ticker

Everyone seems to have an opinion on what ails the music industry. In this Yahoo! Finance Tech Ticker video interview, Silicon Insider managing editor, Peter Kafka proposes that labels drop supporting new music and focus on their valuable catalogs. Doing so would leave the door open to independent labels to figure out how to sell music in a digital era.

Then again, if things continue the way they are, major labels will end up getting dropped from the stock exchanges anyway, once their stock drops below a buck for a few quarters. Once that happens, they could feasibly take themselves private and go back to the way things used to be. Cultivating artists instead of churning out pop crap to see if it sticks to the wall.

On the other side, Sony Music Entertainment, the new entity born out of BMG’s desire to extract itself from the music business, may know something we don’t. Or, they may be doing exactly what Kafka thinks is going to happen, control the masters of all those hits over the last 50 + years and/or simply control the music in a convergence strategy tied to their original video content.

We’ll keep watching and waiting for the music giants to figure it all out, while the digital era continues to chip away at their profits.

In this video interview with Portfolio Magazine, Korean music executive Jin-Young Park discusses broadband penetration in South Korea and how that has affected music sales and what he believes is the death of the album as we know it. He sees a future in singles sales and the band as a brand, it’s name plastered over phone cards, devices, merchandise and a host of other marketable products.

What may be great for the pop-star isn’t as appealing to musicians who are cautious about selling out. The jury is still out on how those artists are going to survive in a music business that could ultimately be even more damaged by aligning itself with corporations than actually being about the music and the fan first. If music fans are willing to accept the double-edged trade off, then take the check and cash it.

Former Talking Head’s frontman gives his take on how emerging artists should look at the music industry situation.

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