Rumors of the death of the digital music industry are greatly exaggerated, says former Last.fm executive Matthew Hawn. While there may not be much room for profiting from recorded music any more, an entire generation of companies are building a different, more exciting future.
Dollar Shave Club, the seemingly too-good-to-be-true promise of razors every month for only $1, has raised almost $10 million in a Series A funding round for international expansion (with Canada to start), and growth into other men’s product verticals, although they wouldn’t say which ones.
I probably shouldn’t talk so much about traditional media, but my digital music forecast report is coming soon. Meanwhile, here are two intriguing, not to say contrary, points of view on modern media. Venrock’s David Pakman points out that compared with traditional media, digital media usually cuts consumer prices, breaks up bundles and results in an an overall smaller pie. That last point is controversial – any net increase in consumption is outweighed by the first two characteristics. But it’s certainly the case in music so far. In a comment response, Pakman says he doesn’t think existing media companies will be able to accommodate this. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban makes a pretty good case that “big media isn’t as stupid as it used to be,” and that the traditional TV industry is better off than you might expect.
The search for MySpace Music CEO just got a bit more competitive: The longtime CEO of online music service eMusic David Pakman is leaving, a…
For a while there, eMusic was notable as the online music retailer that didn’t have DRM, but that differentiator is pretty much gone. During…