The Global Forces Inspiring a New Narrative of Progress”

The article “The Global Forces Inspiring a New Narrative of Progress” describes the music industry so well. Back in the early ages of Napster, technology disrupted the music industry, and made it not profitable to produce music.  However, since then technology has also been the driver that revitalized the industry with data analysis. With this “digitization”, as referred to by the article, it has led to companies being able to pursue revenue and profit goals more efficiently.  The article states that “ensuring alignment between a company’s digital and its corporate strategy appears to be one of the factors differentiating winners and losers”. This is precisely what is happening right now with music companies trying to compete with Spotify. Long established record labels understand if they don’t keep up with the change, they will be out of business. With the growth of digital streaming companies, Old record label companies are needing to adjust their digital and corporate strategies. For example, Spotify acquired a blockchain company in order to expand its categorization abilities of data.  In return, Warner Music acquired a data company that specializes in using an algorithm to search for new unsigned artist.

What is happening is that companies like Warner Music are also needing to put a digital clause in its music licensing contracts. I have a friend whose job is strictly to take music that did not have a digital contract written into it when the record was produced and somehow outline digital fees in order for it to be streamed for monetization.  This is because Warner Music is trying to match their digital and corporate strategies.  I also believe that a lot of music companies probably never imagined themselves looking into acquiring data companies but because of technology, it is a must. This ties into what the article says is causing costumers to have an “ever-expanding menu of goods and services to choose from, some of which are free.” We see this with Netflix, though not free, collecting data in order to have specialized genres. In relation to music, artists are now having to categorize their music into “moods”. This is because streaming software allow customers to choose music by saying “play something happy”. This adds to the never-ending selection of products customers have. With this capability customers are subscribing to premium services. As the article says, it is interesting to see how customers will want to pay for premium services, especially as the number of them grows.

It is also interesting that by the year 2020 the number of devices connected to Wi-Fi will surpass the amount of the world population. In terms of cyber security this information is frightening. There have be an increase of hacking/ leaks of information. I believe what will happen is we will see an increase of cyber security companies that one day will be run by an oligarchy of companies. From a consumer perspective, it is intimidating how much of my information is out there for a company to use and also some of that information is bound the be hacked someday.