PROVIDING FREE MUSIC OVER THE INTERNET
Making Profits Out of an Ad-based Business Model
Dimitrios Margounakis, Dionysios Politis
Multimedia Lab, Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Christina Boutsouki
Department of Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Keywords: Music Industry, Online Music Distribution, Business Models, Digital Content, Advertising.
Abstract: The digital revolution and the new way of thinking in the 21
st
century (as a result of the rapid evolution of
technology) inevitably affect the music industry. Innovative kinds of e-business, which are virtual and
evolve dynamically in a digital environment, tend to prevail the traditional retail stores. The traditional
models should be revised, and new business models should be created, in order the electronic business to
succeed. Information technologies (IT) would have the main role in the new business models, while new
features will reconstruct the processes and the relations that constitute the music industry value chain. The
new face of music e-commerce requires new strategies and new B2C and B2B models. Such a model is the
advertisement model (ad-based model). Advertisements could be used as an alternative way of making
profits, instead of selling music, since Internet users are yet quite familiar with free music downloading. The
core idea of the proposed model of the paper is the distribution of free music with embedded sound
advertisement spots of sponsors over the Internet. Certain improvements on the model design can lead to an
integrated combination of the two most promising models: the ad-based and the subscription model.
1 INTRODUCTION
New digital technologies change radically the way
that music is distributed and “consumed”. The music
industry should be foreseeing and adaptive to these
changes, in order to maintain its competitive
advantage. The last years' decrease in the sales of
recording products worldwide and the consumers'
denial of paying for music leads inevitably the music
industry to revising its traditional business strategies.
The profitability of the music industry can be
maintained in the future only if consumers are
willing to pay for the music they “consume”, or
alternative ways of revenue are found. The
development of legal alternatives for music
“downloading” does not only fight the Internet
piracy, but also creates an opportunity for the
development of new income sources.
2 EXISTING BUSINESS MODELS
Many researchers have investigated the ways, which
may transform the face of music industry and
several new business models have been proposed.
Kwork, Lang, and Tam (2002) state that a music
distribution model may succeed in the digital world
only if the content is sufficiently protected. Gehrke
and Anding (2003) have proposed a peer-to-peer
(P2P) system, according to which each user pays for
songs downloading and gets paid for songs offering
for download. Different proposals from different
points of view can be found at (IFPI, 2002), (IFPI,
2004), and (Oberholzer & Strumpf, 2004).
As far as the recording production procedure
followed the classic way (Bockstedt, Kauffman, &
Riggins, 2005), there was only one business model:
the traditional model. With the advent of the Internet
and digital media, this model differentiated and, as a
result, two new business models occurred: network
models and hybrid models. An easy-to-use
framework is presented in this paper in order to
classify the models into 4 categories (Fig. 1):
93
Margounakis D., Politis D. and Boutsouki C. (2006).
PROVIDING FREE MUSIC OVER THE INTERNET - Making Profits Out of an Ad-based Business Model.
In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and
e-Government / e-Learning, pages 93-99
DOI: 10.5220/0001250800930099
Copyright
c
SciTePress
1. Traditional models (physical
distribution / physical product)
2. Network models (online distribution /
digital product)
3. Hybrid models (physical distribution /
digital product OR online distribution /
physical product)
4. Mobile distribution models
Figure 1: A framework for business models in the music
industry. The arrow shows the transition from the
traditional model to the Internet models thorough hybrid
forms.
A lot of the newly appeared models are
classified as Network models, especially the purely
Internet models (prevention model, ad-supported
model, subscription model, music locker, ala carte,
etc.). Surveys about these models could be found in
(Fischbeck, 2000) and (Dubosson-Torbay, Pigneur,
& Usunier, 2004). The proposed model in this paper
is based on the ad-based model (or advertisement
model), which is presented in the next section.
3 THE ADVERTISEMENT
MODEL
The advertisement business model could be defined
as a strategic business model, whose main (and
determinative) source of income is advertising, and
not the provided service (usually free) to the
customer.
This model is very common in e-businesses (e.g.
Google), where several ways of advertising –
sponsorships from third parties are used. On-line
advertising is used more and more lately, since it has
many advantages comparing to traditional
advertising (TV, radio, magazines etc.). Another
reason for the on-line advertising growth is the big
increase of Internet users. Advertising over the
Internet (or on-line advertising) is the kind of
advertising that makes exclusive use of the Internet
(in particular the Internet’ s main service: World
Wide Web) as a means of promotion and
communication (Zeff & Aronson, 1997).
A web advertisement could be of several types:
banners, massive advertisement e-mails, logos,
promotional websites, hyperlinks, pop-up windows
etc. The main reason for a company to use on-line
advertising is that the evolution in multimedia
technology allows the transmission of big volumes
of information to a large number of recipients (target
groups) with minimal cost, but also with
significantly low cost for the readjustment of the
message content (even for ad-targeting)
(Gleason,1995) (Boyce, 1999).
The use of the advertisement model for music
distribution via Internet is not a new idea. There
should a legal way for the audience to get what they
wanted: free music. Therefore, some sites started
using advertising as an alternative way for collecting
revenues, while the most of the other models were
selling (and still sell) music. For example, EverAd
started in 1998 to provide ad banners together with
downloads of several types. As far as music is
concerned, EverAd signed with: over 12 music sites
in two years in order to distribute their content (the
famous www.Listen.com is among them), 60 labels
and over 40 companies-sponsors (Hansen, 2000).
EverAd uses encryption technologies that restrain
the use of the downloaded music files, so as they can
be reproduced only in parallel with the appearance
of visual ad spots on the computer’s monitor.
Another approach of the model (though not in the
Internet environment) is the case of SingTel Mobile
in Singapore. After only a few months from the
beginning of the service, thousands of people
registered in SingTel Mobile, so as they win 2
minutes of free local or long-distance calls from
their mobile telephone, every time they listened to a
10-seconds advertisement spot before their calls
(Eklund, 2001). SingTel started this program in co-
operation with Spotcast, which specializes in
advertisements transmission. SingTel paid $600,000
to Spotcast for the software platform and still pays
current maintenance fees. Spotcast’ s technology
gives SingTel the capability of creating detailed
profiles of its subscribers and therefore sending
personal ad spots to them, according to their profile
(ad-targeting). SingTel recouped its initial
investment from ad revenues in about a year
(Turban, King, Lee & Viehland, 2004).
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
94
3.1 Making Profits Out of
Advertisements or
Subscriptions?
Internet in its present form provides many services
to the users for free. However there is one fact:
someone has to pay for these services. The solution
to this is found in sponsorships: there are sponsors
that pay for the services. Another issue is that if you
don’t give something for free, a competitor will do
it. In this case, the competition simply delays the
cost of free services. Sooner or later, the business
should bring in profits. This means that the
competitors should adopt a profitable business
model.
The main revenue models for Internet services
are two: the subscription model (users pay a
subscription for the service on a monthly or annual
basis), and the ad-based model, where users click on
a banner and the sponsors pay to the service provider
an amount of money (in proportion to clicks). This is
a great opportunity for e-marketers. As the number
of free services go up, those free service providers
will want to collect money through sponsors and the
more they want to collect the better it is for e-
marketers because it gives them better opportunity
for marketing (Aleem, 2005).
All in all users will expect subscription-based
models to be replaced with ad-based revenue models
provided ads don’t act as an annoyance. As data
mining technologies and methodologies evolve, ad
targeting will improve. At present some sites have
resorted to obtrusive ads — the kind that users must
click to proceed to the site content (Aleem, 2005).
There are two points about the question:
Subscription or Advertising? Some analysts believe
that the subscription models, in which labels have
unlimited access to the content for a certain value,
offer the greatest hope for a viable music business
Internet model. On the other hand, other analysts
believe that free content will always be more
attractive than any payment plan, so the demand for
ad-supported music will grow faster than the
demand for subscription services. Moreover, Internet
advertising is becoming more and more intelligent,
resulting to profits for e-marketers and companies
that use it as a main income resource.
Figure 2 shows the prevailing ways, with which
labels win money from e-business. The graph is
based on a research with interviews and
questionnaires to 250 label managers in 10 countries
of Europe (Krueger, Swatman & van der Beek,
2004).
Although the digital content sales comprise the
main income source, this is true only in a small
percentage, since only 34,7% of the labels claim to
win money that way. Online advertising stands in
the 4
th
position (after the indirect merchandise sales
and the newsletters) with 18,4%. At the same time
however, the use of advertisements as an income
resource is a rapidly evolving area, which is
predicted to bring great numbers for use and
profitability in the near future.
It would be logic to conclude that the best
solution at the moment is a model that combines the
two ways: the subscription- and the ad-based. Such
an integrated model for music distribution over the
Internet is presented in the next section.
4 THE SOUND-EMBEDDED
ADVERTISEMENT MODEL
The proposed model of this paper can be seen in
figures 3 and 4. It is a purely Internet-based model,
without, however, prohibiting the selling of physical
CDs through the e-shop. One can clearly see from
the figures that the core of all the transactions and
the component relations in the model is an e-shop (if
we finally accept that there is no physical CDs
distribution, then the shop does not even need a
warehouse, so the model presents an absolutely
virtual shop).
The central idea of the model is the distribution
of music with embedded sound advertisements
within a musical piece. The basic model can be
called (and will be from now on through this paper)
Sound-Embedded Advertisement Model (SEAM). If
this basic model is integrated with the functions of
other already existed models, then SEAM turns to
the Integrated Sound-Embedded Advertisement
Model (ISEAM).
The basic model SEAM supports the one-way
business-client relation, where the client uses the
service absolutely free (therefore the term ‘client’
proves to be improper – the term ‘user’ will be used
Figure 2: Labels incomings from Internet.
PROVIDING FREE MUSIC OVER THE INTERNET - Making Profits Out of an Ad-based Business Model
95
from now on). The user is able of downloading any
number of full MP3 songs free of charge
. However,
those songs contain sound advertisements (just like
radio spots) during the song. All the music files will
lie on the central database of the e-shop’s server and
will be provided by the labels.
Figure 3: The basic Sound-Embedded Advertisement
Model (SEAM).
The economic structure of the basic model is
explained next: Each company/ organization that is
promoted through the musical songs pays the
proportional value to the e-shop for the
advertisement. Likewise, the labels themselves can
promote their own products (e.g. a new release
promoted in a song of another artist, even an artist
belonging to another label!). These spots will also
cost some money from the label to the e-shop. In
order any conflicts to be avoided, the distribution
and the placement of the advertisement spots is
suggested to be in absolute province of the e-shop,
after an agreement with the interested parts. In other
words, since a song is added on the server collection,
this could bear any advertisement spot.
Figure 4: The Integrated Sound-Embedded Advertisement
Model (ISEAM).
The labels gain money from the e-shop in
proportion to the downloaded songs. According to
the SEAM model, the artists and the rest stakeholders
are paid by the labels, so there is a profit margin for
both sides (e-shop & labels).
A main parameter, which differentiates SEAM
from ISEAM, is that in the second integrated model,
the artists are paid directly from the e-intermediary,
absolving the labels this way from portion sharing.
The reason why this is possible in the integrated
model is that the business-client relation is yet a
two-ways relation (and the word ‘client’ is proper in
this case). This means more effective incomings for
the e-shop, which can allow the artists rights
payment again in proportion to the sold musical
pieces.
ISEAM is not limited to free musical pieces
offering to the customers. This is used as a
promotional tool, so as the visitors to finally become
subscribers of the site, either using a subscription
model, or an a la carte model. Namely, the final aim
is the visitors starting buying full musical pieces,
which are ‘clean’ (without advertisements), through
the Internet.
Since the final aim of the integrated model is
selling, more marketing actions must be taken by the
owners of the e-shop, in order the site to be more
attractive to people. Although the stand-alone idea
of free downloading of music files with embedded
advertisements is really attractive, other traditional
techniques can also be used (free samples
downloading, e.g. 30 sec. of a song in low or high
sound quality – with or without advertisements). If
the subscription of a small amount of people is
finally achieved, then we can discuss about more
money flowing into the e-shop and therefore greater
flexibility at issues like co-operation with external
sponsors, labels etc.
4.1 Observations
On that score, a short discussion (observations and
declarations) about the proposed model follows.
First of all, a very crucial factor of the success of
the model is the advertisements embedment
procedure. Management of the e-shop should pay
much attention to this procedure, since it comprises
the business metacenter. It is obvious that the
advertisements should not be annoying to the
audient, otherwise he/she will not be in favour of the
site, or even worse he/she will discredit it. Of
course, an ad spot or a speaker that edges into a song
during a radio program may sometimes be annoying,
but not always. Specialized researchers have to
judge which parts of the songs are advisable of
putting the spots into. Also, another issue is the
appropriate duration of the spots. For example, a
spot that interrupts a musical piece, while the artist
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
96
is singing, is unacceptable. On the other hand, it is
better this to be done on an orchestral part of the
song. There are many difficulties for analysis at this
point, e.g. hip-hop pieces with many and long lyrics
should be analysed by specialised musicians,
psychologists and marketing consultants.
One could wonder: Finally, what’ s the difference
with radio? There are many differences. First of all,
since we are not talking about streaming audio, but
MP3 downloading, there is not a music sequence
that plays repeatedly, but a chosen file collection on
the hard disk of the user, who is able to use it as he
wishes. Moreover, the user is not in need of being
online to play his music. In other words, the user has
all the advantages of an MP3 collection. The only
“strike” may be the obligatory audience of ad spots,
which is however counterbalanced by the free
supply of all the music files. We should mention at
this point that the system makes no difference from
radio from the sponsors’ point of view. This a big
advantage, because the essence of the model can
therefore be perceived by a conventional
organization just like radio advertising. Thereby, the
sponsor can compare the pricing with the
corresponding radio advertisement. Another
advantage (comparing to the radio case) is that
SEAM addresses a much larger number of people
worldwide: all the Internet visitors.
Another major aspect for all new models of music
distribution via Internet is piracy. Some more
experienced users may wonder why they should use
SEAM or ISEAM, while they can (in many other
ways) find the same songs in MP3 format over the
Internet for free without embedded advertisements.
This is a crucial question for all proposed models in
the new music community. The answer is: there is
no meaning in seeking for solutions for the music
industry, if piracy is not eliminated and people
don’t comprehend that the copyrighted music
files sharing via Internet is illegal. Obviously,
without this premise, the function of SEAM (or any
other model) is destined to fail. All the proposed and
applied models repose on the assumption that more
and more people (music consumers) start to be
conscious of the law’s copyright issues.
Some comparisons should also be done here to
ad-based models that use visual advertisements (like
TV spots). Visual spots are usually pop-up windows
that the user is constrained to view in order to
reproduce his music (usually streams) on his PC. It
is true that visual spots are more impressive than the
audio ones. But they could be more disturbing to the
user than the audio spots, because they get at the
user’s concentration and attention to his work. Also,
the user is used to listen to (and not view) ad spots
while listening to music (from radio). Regarding the
issue of the ad targeting (passing its message to the
music audient), it is more likely to happen to the
audio case. For example, the user may move the
window of the visual ad somewhere at an edge of
the screen (if he is not allowed to shut it at all). And
even worse: the user may just listen to music and not
be in front of his PC monitor, resulting to never
viewing the ad (visual ads don’t include sounds). On
the contrary, the only way of not listening to an
audio advertisement of SEAM is by forwarding the
song at the time of the spot (which is practically
farfetched· stopping a song for a few seconds is not
worth it!).
4.2 Argumentation
Some explanations, concerning why this model has
been chosen and designed like this, are given in this
section.
First of all, SEAM is free of charge. There are
three reasons for this choice:
1. The listeners, who have experience on
using the new technology and music
downloading, are used in getting what they
want for free (even if that is illegal) and
will not easily accept a different way.
2. There are still many people who haven’t
apprehended the added value (and the
proprieties) of music files and streams yet.
3. There is still hesitation in using credit cards
and giving personal information on the web
for a lot of people in many countries.
Consequently, the transition from free music to
charging music is difficult (for the present)
(Simpson, 2002). Although some online ventures
that function in a subscription base have started to
develop, it is still too early to say that the
subscription model is a profitable model.
Nevertheless, the integrated ISEAM encases some
subscription functions.
Also, SEAM is a pure network model. We
should not ignore the recent trend towards e-shops,
which is the emanation of technologic evolution.
Researchers like Durlacher (2001) believe that
digital distribution will constitute the basic form of
music distribution in the future, while free
downloading will hold on and bear down all the
efforts of music industry to destroy its influence.
According to him, the only way to encourage the
customers to buy digital music is to provide very
high quality, comfort, easiness and added value to
the products, so as they can be more attractive than
free access to music.
Because of the fact that ad-based models do not
constitute a new idea, but they pre-exist and work
(e.g. EverAd), the choice of SEAM attributes has
PROVIDING FREE MUSIC OVER THE INTERNET - Making Profits Out of an Ad-based Business Model
97
been done in a way that service differentiation is
achieved. We consider that this is the most
favourable way for a model to succeed in the present
music industry environment. A totally new model
would bear a great risk in manifestation with
uncertain results. On the contrary, an already tested
(and accepted by many people) model, like the
advertisement model, is a very good base for a new
proposal. Moreover, a business model should be
differentiated from its uniform ones, in order to
succeed. The music product in question cannot be
differentiated: digital music files are as they are, and
should be delivered through Internet. When the
product is not possible to be differentiated, the secret
for somebody to prevail his competitors is usually
the increase of services that add value to the product
and the improvement of their quality (Kotler, 2000).
The customers in SEAM are the sponsor-
companies in essence, not the music audience.
Taking into account this fact, the added-value
services are obvious: ‘smart’ advertisement on
certain target groups and intelligent systems for
better ad-targeting are options that any advertised
organization would wish to have. Moreover, the
users will be completely satisfied from the free
music distribution via Internet.
5 IMPLEMENTATION AND
LIMITATIONS
Some problems and limitations at the
implementation of SEAM and ISEAM are
mentioned in this section. We will examine some
general problems for all the network models and
then make them specific to the proposed one. We
will also discuss some more specific limitations.
A major issue for online music distribution is
DRM – Digital Rights Management. The great
number of DRM technologies and their licensing
costs has increased the cost for a content distribution
e-business so much, diminishing therefore the
feasibility rate. Selling music without DRM
technologies over the Internet contains the risk of
Internet piracy and that’s why many labels insist on
their use on all business models (Virtanen, 2003). A
model like SEAM should use such mechanisms for
many reasons. The most important of them is for
gaining the support of labels and independent artists.
The point here is that the peculiarity of the ad spots
in the model requires the development of specialized
DRM systems, which will increase the already high
costs of those technologies.
If we examine the case of materializing such a
model in a domestic market (e.g. Greece), then
several problems arise. Because of the high costs,
online music shops are profitable only if there is
great demand. In Greece, as well as in other
countries, the domestic market is small and the
potential target group of pure network shops is still
relatively insufficient. Moreover, it is not desirable
from consumers to download (how about buying)
music from the Internet without a broadband
connection, because of the cost and the slow transfer
through a modem or an ISDN connection. xDSL
technologies (and also T1,T3) that offer a great deal
of speed, are not yet common in our country and
cost quite a lot for an average user. Apart from these
problems, Virtanen (2003) mentions also others
(while describing the case of Finland about the
adaptation of music distribution over the Internet),
e.g. the slow learning and acceptance of the new
way of buying from domestic consumers.
Although the technologic aspects on the
implementation of the model are not the subject of
this paper, we could nevertheless provide some
relevant guidelines. As Durlacher (2001) states,
quality and added value on products and services are
the key factors for any new Internet model to
succeed. On this direction, a suggestion for the
model implementation is CDI (Content Distribution
Internetworking) networks, with which 4 really
important quality factors could be achieved to our
model (Cushnie, Lopes & Hutchison, 2002):
1. Improvement in network performance
2. Reduced distribution costs for content
providers
3. Branding of products and services
4. QoS mechanisms and quarantees
6 CONCLUSIONS
Theoretically, the proposed model could be vital and
successful under certain conditions. If we accept the
fact that the future of the music industry is the
distribution of digital content via Internet, then
SEAM stands on the evolution peak, since it is
purely a network model.
The key factor to success is the free service
offering. Many different payment-based models may
be successfully developed in the future, but free
content distribution (even including embedded
advertisements) will always comprise a tempting
proposal, even if it concerns a user trial before the
buying of the original recording.
An electronic model turns to be successful, only
if it is widely accepted by people. SEAM (in
particular) creates a perpetual circle of success: more
and more people will download files and, as a result,
more and more sponsors will promote their services
through the portal. As long as these numbers grow,
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
98
labels will repose their recording products to the
portal. Moreover, the more the titles that are offered
by the model are, the more the consumers will
become, and the circle goes on the same way (Fig.
5).
The circle of the figure makes sense, since the
consumers are the factor that `prescribes' the success
of a market and the strategic moves of the
stakeholders. Relative researches (Krueger,
Swatman, & Van der Beek, 2004) have shown that
the customers mostly affect strategic decisions of
labels. Consequently, labels are `sentenced' to follow
the proposed model, if it is to be accepted by the
consumers. This is inevitable but may come late in
time (labels have proved their latency in adopting
new technologies, having being stuck to the old
structure of music industry for a long time)
(Virtanen, 2003).
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