Note from Anastasia: Paul MacGregor covers Generation Y from a global perspective for Ypulse. He emailed me to say that he had an idea for a post, started writing and then couldn't stop. Here is Part One of Paul's take on the future of music.

Part One: Music as a fast moving consumable product

The music industry across the world is in trouble. Artists are getting dropped, labels are struggling to pay their bills and music retail stores are closing up shop. Technology is the undisputed facilitator in this trend, as legal music downloads are not off-setting dwindling CD sales. But who is really to blame? If you believe the music industry then it's the consumer. They are just not buying music anymore, they are downloading it for free. But this is only part of the picture.

When I was 15 and going through my hairy grunge phase, I lacked a girlfriend, but had a killer tape cassette tape collection. It was well researched, precisely complied and filled my floor to ceiling bookcase. However I can honestly say that maybe five of them were originals, the others were copied off friends. In the eyes of the law, I was a criminal, but we were all doing it. We were kids, we didn't have any money and nothing was going to stop us listening to the bands we loved. So what's the difference now in the ripped MP3 world?

Well the difference is big, whereas I was a dedicated indie kid, young people today have a much wider taste in music. Your average 15 year old today doesn't consume one album a month as we did, they are doing it on a daily basis. The volume of individual music consumption is just so much bigger these days.

Music has become a fast moving consumable product.

Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of The Future of Music.

The role of technology is immense as it acts as an accelerant to music taste and choice. Young people are no longer influenced solely by their friends, monthly magazines or their favorite weekly music TV show. The internet plays a huge role across swathes of the population in the introduction, education and most importantly peer-to-peer dispersion of new music.

If we take a step back at this point and consider that young people are listening to more music and the internet provides a superb new marketing channel, then the music industry should be making more money then it ever has. More demand across a wider market, it's a dream scenario. But no, although technology creates the need, it also satisfies it, for free. Illegal downloads, whether they be straight off the internet or ripped from your friends CD's are nicely filling the gap.

The underlying issue for the music industry today is the same as it has always been, your ordinary teenager doesn't see music as a business, it's their life. Why should they pay something which defines them as a person as much as clothes they wear, the team they support, or the friends they keep?

In essence, music is a medium, not a product. The explosion of MP3 music devices has not been equaled by the growth of legal (and targeted) platforms from which consumers can download the music they want to want to listen to. We therefore have a massive supply issue and not necessarily a criminal one as the music industry leads us to believe. In a world of endless consumption how can the music industry deliver paid-for products in a targeted and affordable manner?

In Part Two, I will look at examples from across the world of how the music industry is trying to keep up with the speed of consumption and ensure that its bottom line stays intact.

About Paul: Paul MacGregor is based in Australia and operates threebillion.com. threebillion is a web-based news feed dedicated to the business behind youth culture. The site takes a global view on youth and follows what they're up to and what businesses are trying to sell them. You can contact Paul here.

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