Hello boys and girls, today’s lesson is about how you as a business relate to your customers. Let’s look at the RIAA and how they look at their customers.
Mitch Bainwol
He’s the CEO of the RIAA.
Here’s a snippet from his official bio on the RIAA website:
Bainwol joined the RIAA as CEO in 2003 following a twenty-five year career in federal policy-making and politics. Since joining the RIAA, Bainwol has helped lead the music industry’s campaign to curb piracy and transition its business to the digital world.
Let’s be clear:
1) Bainwol has done NOTHING to effectively curb piracy.
2) Bainwol has NOT willingly or effectively transitioned [the RIAA’s] business to the digital world.
Their Playbook
Force your customers into the paradigm you want to push
The RIAA wants you to buy CDs. It has NOT embraced the digital distribution and discovery models. They’ve fought it tooth-and-nail every step of the way. They fought Pandora, Last.fm and iTunes. Now it’s Spotify that’s having trouble.
It is out of the decisions to make digital distribution complicated that the RIAA thought it could keep the CD party going a little longer. They feared digital; it was out of their control.
You see many people don’t think of music piracy as “music piracy.” They think of it as “downloading songs.” They just want to get music onto their iPods easily. What they want, is an easy system to search for ANY music they want and then use it how they see fit. The iTunes store tried to make it easy but the RIAA made that cumbersome, by requiring DRM…to confound and confuse the pirates. So pirates just went around it and created their own methods to share music which was easier for people that could’ve potentially been customers. Pirates made it easier and with a larger volume of content, than the content owners themselves.
Treat your customers as thieves
Suing single mothers for $222,000 for 24 songs does not stop piracy, it just makes the RIAA look like a bunch of insensitive thugs and gives pirates a reason to want to bring the whole thing down.
Nevermind the amount of money people have spent first buying vinyl records, then tapes, then CDs, and now digital content, if you steal a song–even if you intend to buy it later–you are a pirate and you should have to pay and exorbitant fine. This is how the RIAA looks at it. Very black and white.
Sharing music is NOT, I repeat, NOT a pathway for others to discover music from friends. It is thievery and punishable by a stiff penalty.
What my playbook would’ve been
Embrace Digital
Give your customers content how they want it and when they want it…instantly! Embrace the overhead-less, raw material-less, ALL digital formats that people want. If people want to buy music digitally, make it available. Don’t force them to buy a CD because they will find a way to get it digitally. And the answer is not: “go out to a store, buy the CD, come home and import it.” We have the technology, let’s use it.
Think about it…it’s easier than EVER to buy music. In some cases, it’s a one click process. Imagine if the music industry capitalized on that instead of making us jump through hoops.
“Reward” your customers for updating to a new format.
Something that ALWAYS bothered be: My mom had a ton of Beatles records. Then she bought the CDs. Now she’s supposed to buy them digitally?
How about something simple? A USB dongle that scans the barcode on a CD case and automatically starts a download? You could even sell that hardware for a cost.
How about when I put a CD in my computer and it accesses the CDDB, the tracks automatically start to download from the store? Make it even easier than waiting for it to import. Even give them a free track or two for joining the digital age and helping to move towards an instant gratification, instant payment, and raw material and shipping-less paradigm.
It’s even an opportunity to upsell…
When I start downloading, take me to a page and show me other albums by the same artist. Show me similar artists. Give me a special deal to entice me to buy more music. It’s only 1-click to another sale.
Reward your customers for encouraging others to buy music, like an affiliate.
Right now, when I recommend music to people. I go to Amazon.com, I find the album and I send an affiliate link to the other person for the digital MP3 tracks. I’m now a music salesman. If someone buys an album, I get a percentage. I’m incentivized to make recommendations now. You know what I’ll probably do with that money? BUY MORE MUSIC.
There could’ve been something built into the technology, rather than DRM, that enabled people to share music to make money or credits for themselves. This could’ve been done years ago!
This is all part of treating your customers like part of your company, like part of the marketing department. Instead of looking at each of the customers as a possible music thief, why not focus on those that want to buy music and will buy music.
Is it too late?
Instead of looking for the offenders, why didn’t they just make it easy for people to NOT steal music. People want to support their favorite musicians, they want to buy music. They just don’t want to do it if it’s not on their terms. It should be easy and cost effective.
Right now we’re at a point where people are so used to being able to get music for free and with more choice and higher quality than what is legitimately offered that I wonder whether we’ve past the point where we can turn the music industry ship around?
Gone are the days of crappy music for too much money, sorry Bainwol. People want choice. The long tail wins here. Deal with it.