Columbia Records' Big Red program

I'm reading this giant article on Rick Rubin, over at the NYT, and this bit jumped out a bit, although it's a great article overall, and includes thoughts from Rubin on moving to blanket licensing rather than item sales. It's one of those snippets that everyone knows but it's nice to see it covered by a Grande Dame of journalism, but the whole thing is really worth a read if you're interested in (or affected by) the changes overdue in the music industry:

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rubin's co-head at the label, and Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red — Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience.

"The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I — and Rick — already knew," DiDia told me afterward. "The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."

Word of mouth.. and probably found on the internet, in the main?

I can't imagine the radio situation would be exactly the same in the UK, the BBC's radio offerings being what they are (good, ad-free, as hip as you could hope for from a giant media corp), but otherwise I'm sure it's the same.

What comes after Facebook, me wonders? Bebo, probably.

(via BoingBoing)

p.s. I'm posting from behind the Great Firewall of China. It's slow. Flickr pictures don't load. Wikipedia is blocked. SMTP is playing up, so if you're expecting a reply from me on stuff, it might take a while, sorry :-/

Comments

[mac]

myspace is over? then what's the point of even being on the internet?

also...virb is the new myspace.