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Digital Music in Turkey

The Turkish blog world is abuzz with the move by Turk Telekom (the Turkish broadband semi-monopoly) to offer unlimited Turkish music downloads to broadband subscribers.

The move is interesting in that it may provide a solution to the messy Turkish online music market.  All digital rights to Turkish music has so far been held hostage by MUYAP (Turkish ASCAP), who had built a service infrastructure and has been requiring any player to guarantee a $400K/year royalties.  So far, two companies had decided to pay this and sales have been dismal.

The right thing to do for TTNet (Turk Telekom's broadband subsidiary) would be to launch this new service as a platform, with extensive APIs.  There are a number of exciting applications looking to add value in this area and now it looks like a monopoly's controlling their destiny.

Nokia's Music Moves

Rafat Ali writes about the first major music move by Nokia. I find it exciting, because unlike Sony Ericsson, they seem to be paying much more attention to the content side.

I have contended for a while that there may be close to 100 million iPods sold, but this year alone, multiples of that will be sold in mp3 capable mobile handsets just this year.  iPod resembles a platform, but the true digital music revolution will take place over mobiles.  It looks like this may be the beginning.

Music Search

David Byrne is predicting a need for music search in a recent journal entry:

Soon enough a site will open that is like a Google search for music downloads — downloads that are not copy-protected but you still pay for.
...
Consumers don’t care who they buy them from if the interface is easy and intuitive. Soon enough iTunes consumers will find they have reached the 5th authorized player on their tracks and the frustration will set in when they can’t listen to the music they paid for. They’ll start to look elsewhere.

Music Business Difficulties

Last week I touched on the major squeeze in the music business, and referred to what Beck thought about this (via Fred Wilson).  I would give the topic a rest for a while, except I just heard on TV, the following quote by Bulent Forta, the head of MUYAP, Turkish Phonographic Industry Society.

"We are looking for a solution where the consumer gets the content for free, but the rights holders get their due compensation."

In effect, he's calling for music commoditization.  Currently, there's a campaign in Turkey by Pepsi, where over 1 million are songs are available for free-downloads for Pepsi drinkers.  I think this is bad news for the musician as an artist, and will force a bi-polarization of the music scene.

On one end will be many, fragmented small bands, with their local loyal fans and MySpace page.  On the other, will be the mega bands, which will have to turn into media companies, with multiple offerings - albums, concerts, videos, backstage content, communities, etc.

A critical opportunity emerges here for filtering the crowded end of the spectrum.  That's why I am very bullish of the filtering models such as Last.fm, Pandora, and even Digg.

Duran Duran Concert on Second LIfe

I had previously commented on the American Apparel store opening on Second Life, the online 3D digital world, which is imagined, created and owned by the residents.  Now, Duran Duran, the post-punk new-wave rockers enjoying a comeback, are establishing a virtual presence on SL.



With the pressures on music revenues, it's inspiring to see some bands make bold moves.  However, the critical side of this piece of news is how significant SL has become, with close to 400K members.

What is a Record?

If you still have any doubt that you'll hear that question soon from your <15 year-old child, here's a piece of news for you.

In early April, "Crazy", a digital-only release by Gnarls Barkley, hit the #1 spot in the UK charts.  This is based entirely on downloads.  There is no physical release of this song. (You can watch the "Crazy" video here.)

Fred has posted about their incredible popularity, driven primarily by MySpace. He concludes:

That's never happened before.  But it will again, and again, and again.

The cool thing about the story is that, unlike the pre-packaged formula pop that has invaded the music scene (think Ashlee Simpson - who the hell decided that she had to be famous??), Gnarls Barkley's success comes through immense filtering.  You can immediately hear it in its quality, pointed out by Bob Lefsetz.

Those who are worried about the digital distribution's negative impact on music should be comforted that digital distribution helps democratization, which helps good music to rise to the top.