Digital Trends

While the term “MP3” was once synonymous with piracy and “digital music distribution” an implicitly underground activity, a bevy of pioneering digital music companies and increased record company flexibility have begun to reign in the digital Wild West, presenting appealing legal alternatives to the old ways. One company called Slacker, canned the old downloading model in favor of a new form of Internet radio, which allows nitpicking users to tune playlists to their liking without the monotony of handpicking songs – all for free. Following the release of the Slacker Portable, we sat down with seasoned digital music vet Jonathan Sasse, Slacker’s vice president of marketing and former CEO of iRiver America, to get his take on the future of digital music, record companies, piracy, and course, Slacker.

Digital Trends (DT): Do you think that, for digital music distribution to succeed in the future, piracy is going to have to be ultimately snuffed out? Or do you think there’s a niche there for legal music distribution to survive even if piracy is always an option to people?

Jonathan Sasse (JS): At the end of the day, everybody believes that if a legitimate service can be just as easy if not easier than stealing stuff, then people will do it… Today piracy is still obviously an option for a lot of people, but for most people it’s probably more effort than they care to put into getting digital content, even more so than some of these other legitimate services.

From our perspective, we’re offering a fantastic free service to people. The free service is pretty compelling, and we don’t think people who are getting a great free service will be terribly inspired to go out and do what it takes to get pirated content.

It will always be there. It will always be that other option. But I think for mainstream consumers, it’s already become a bigger hurdle than it’s worth. 

DT: With this transition to digital music distribution, do you think that traditional record companies will survive? Or do you think there will be some shift or transition?

JS: I think they’ll certainly survive. They have a tremendous amount of resources and while they may have been slowed down, especially early on, I think it’s clear to them that digital initiatives and content delivery are high on the list of things to solve and things to enable… The fact that we licensed all of our content from all the labels shows that they’re taking a step forward. You have to push, enable and support these types of services.

Things will change. We’ve already seen a decline in physical media. There are different types of measurements for album sales today than there were even a few years ago. I think that they’ll repurpose their efforts and focus on the ways that people want to get content. In many ways, they may be driving that, and coming up with different types of solutions. But in a lot of ways it’s up to companies like us to help them to find new use policies and new types of licensing and new types of applications for those licenses. To find models that consumers really like, that they’re willing to use and that they really enjoy listening to. And I think the labels are already coming around. Like I said, they tremendous resources and they have a lot of incentives to make it work at this point. They’ll certainly survive, but there will be a shift. We’re seeing the shift starting already.

DT: How receptive have record labels been to Slacker’s model of distribution?

JS: They’ve been great. We’ve been able to get deals that most Internet radio companies wouldn’t even try to get. They’ve been supportive, they’ve signed the deals. We’ve got good licenses in places with all the majors and most of the indies, and we’re working through the publishing deals… I spend a good portion of every week meeting with the companies and finding new ways to market, new ways to promote, and they’ve been very supportive of that.

DT: Do you see the future of music distribution moving away from on-demand models?

I think there’s always going to be an on-demand component. There’s always going to be people who want to hear a particular song, or a particular album. I believe that’s not going to be something that’s going to go away. But from an entertainment perspective, of listening to music and enjoying music content, and discovering new music, and listening to your favorites, the radio model fits very, very nicely. For the times when people want to be more forward and go get an album, or go get a song, or amass a library, that type of on-demand access to the songs they like – it’s still very important. People are going to want that. But I think that the model of just using on-demand to get access to music is something that’s going to change.