Mobile Entertainment

That era set the template for the record industry that has endured to this day, with vast record sales, lucrative tours and pampered artists performing and writing their own material.

Reading it, however, you see how established models can change quickly (prior to the LA Scene, the industry was New York-based, singles-driven and employed teams of songwriters pumping out tunes for specialist performers). Clearly, another seismic shift is under way again now.

With the rise of digital downloads and mass file sharing, it’s just possible that the notion of paying directly for recorded music could disappear entirely. Every week brings a new and significant shift in the approach of the industry as it tries to adapt.

At first securing downloads with DRM seemed to be universally accepted as a means of protecting music. But that consensus has gone: EMI is already offering DRM-free tracks on iTunes, Universal has experimented with the concept and this week Warner agreed to sell MP3 downloads via Amazon, which only offers DRM-free tracks.

Can it be that the majors are finally accepting it’s just not viable to sell digital music as they do CDs? Pushing ‘a la carte’ downloads of tracks secured with complex DRM protection will never replace the income generated by hundreds of millions of retail CD sales. With album sales in the UK down 10 per cent in 2007 (according to trade group BPI), the matter gets more pressing by the day.

One radical response to this is Universal’s Total Music idea, which proposes to replace individual music sales with a fee buried within the price of a supporting hardware product. The first major collaboration would appear to be Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ programme, which was announced last month and will enable buyers of certain Nokia handsets to get free Universal songs for a year (with Nokia paying a fee to the label).

Clearly Total Music is an attempt not just to re-think the business model, but also to claw back the market from Apple/iTunes. It won’t be easy given the utter dominance of the iPod in the music hardware stakes, which is why mobile could play a vital role in music’s future.

The labels can’t rely on niche MP3 player makers like Creative to make Total Music a winner, but mobile handset makers selling one billion units a year? Different story.