The Hook: What does Steve Jobs' passing mean for the music biz?

25 October 2011

by Lars Brandle

Rohit Talwar
CEO, Fast Future
If anything, in future you'll see even more innovation around tools and applications for the sector from other vendors. I think some innovators may have been held back because they felt the iPod and iPad had gained a stranglehold on the attention of both the artists and the music consumer - particularly at the mass end of the market. With Steve Jobs' passing, even though he had already left, people outside Apple may wonder if the company will go into a prolonged period of strategic drift and lose its expected dominance of the next decade. As a result you might see other device vendors push their current offerings more aggressively. I think you'll also see a lot more competition around future offerings as rivals will have more confidence bringing to market new devices and apps for other manufacturers' devices.

Paul Scaife
Publisher, Record Of The Day
Steve Jobs always treated music itself with the greatest reverence. In his passing we can hope, as with any corporation who loses a leader, that the core values live on. Apple may not ultimately be led by one individual with his phenomenal vision, but he had many years at the company - and early warning his time was to come - to ensure the innovation culture thrives. As Jobs passes, Apple continues to push the envelope for music services with initiatives like iCloud and iTunes Match. Even without its charismatic CEO, Apple remains the dominant digital music player and unpredictable trend setter.

Julian Knowles
Professor of Music and Sound at QUT, and President of Q Music
Job’s brilliance at leading the major paradigm shifts in personal computing is broadly acknowledged. The most significant of these was a vision for the convergence of proprietary hardware platforms and content distribution. This was unfolded ahead of the curve of developments in pervasive computing and wireless technology, leading to tremendous success in the content distribution market. This resulted in a level of market concentration verging on the monopolistic, leading to questions around the fairness of deals offered to content creators and suppliers. Most record industry participants have been uncomfortable about Apple’s market domination with iTunes. The question on everyone’s lips is whether Apple will be able to continue its dominance in the music market, now that it has lost its father figure. Many industry observers doubt it will.

The technology business demands constant innovation in order for a company to hold market share. If product innovation slows, then opportunities will arise for competitors to gain traction. Within weeks of the passing of Jobs, strong rumours have been circulating that Google will shortly launch its “cloud based” music store on the Android operating system. Such an assault would seem inevitable from a company with tremendous resources and huge market penetration in related areas. Job’s passing may well create the necessary hiatus in Apple’s operation for competitors to gain ground. We may see a swing away from Apple’s market dominance in the recorded music market if a well-designed and strongly-marketed Android/cloud system is launched at a time when Apple does not have any strong cloud based offerings. This depends on strong growth and further refinement of the Android operating system. Given all of this, the loss of this visionary may well have some flow-on benefits to the record industry, but there are many contingent factors in the technology world.

Brian Burgess
Executive Editor, groovypost.com
Steve Jobs was a visionary who transformed the music business as we knew it. His vision of music distribution was as elegant as the devices he produced. With digital delivery and the success of iTunes, musicians are able to distribute their music on their terms. He inspired a generation of musicians to be their own company. Now bands and solo artists can deliver music to a global audience. They become producers, marketers and distributors of their craft, and are able to keep the profit for reinvestment into their art.

The music industry is just now starting to adopt the vision Steve had for music distribution in 2001 – when he first announced the iPod and iTunes. Ten years later, record companies realise the benefit of this model. With his passing, does it mean the success of digital music distribution goes away? Hardly.

Jakomi Mathews
Managing Director, Music Void Consultancy Limited
Jobs created a place for music to be purchased online amongst the scourge of piracy. With the creation of the iPod and then iTunes combined with great UX, Steve managed to secure control of the music business in the digital music realm and this all came down to control over the retail price of music. Labels only have themselves to blame for allowing Apple to devalue the price of music in the eye of the consumer. It was a master move which allowed Apple to become the global monopoly player in terms of a la carte sales. Apple has the labels by the cajones and will continue to do so for some time to come.

Jobs’ passing means labels will hopefully wise up and allow a level playing field where new music services like Google Music and Amazon are provided with equal terms to become real competitors. This should enable more consumer choice and a return to true competitive retail where even labels have a decent spread of digital music retailers - much like they did with traditional retail in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s about true competition, folks. Closed ecosystem innovation will hopefully die and a new, more open Apple will evolve...enabling a truly competitive music business in the 21st century.

Kelli Richards
CEO, All Access Group
As an Apple Insider, it’s bittersweet to reflect on the backlash that music will experience without Steve Jobs forging a path through technology. (I worked at Apple – in music – during the “dark days”, when Jobs wasn’t sitting on the throne – when our ideas weren’t held up for collaboration and launched to the universe to change the world). Once Jobs was back at Apple, with his unique passion and sense for what the consumer wanted, almost every project he took on was the right thing at the right time. Not just the likes of iPad, iPod, iPhone. The Apple stores themselves redefined retail. Even as Jobs moved music out of stores and into the digital universe -- and killed megaliths like Tower Records in a single blow -- he also understood that retail and community are vital. And the beat goes on.

With the controversy around clouds and lockers, especially in music, it is the trusted brand of Apple that will bring clouds away from the status of rebel and into the accepted mainstream, carving out legitimacy for a niche in digital that is long overdue. Perhaps music will finally stop bleeding revenue? But we have a problem. The guy that inspired this boundless thinking, creativity and risk taking, who fearlessly demanded greatness from everyone around him... simply isn’t here any more. We’ve seen Apple without Steve Jobs; I was there to see it first-hand. Will a great thinker step in and continue Apple’s impact, and legacy? It is possible. Will another Steve Jobs come along in our lifetime? Unlikely.