Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

With many critics of the music industry (including me) saying that the focus on "free" content being downloaded has consumed the music industry and kept them from putting their focus on innovation and creativity to come with answers on how to meet the delivery demands of consumers. With sales down for the seventh straight year, it is far past time to something besides suing downloaders.

Some still try to defend the practice like John Kennedy, the head of the industry's trade body IFPI, who said "Many people around the world tell me that we've handled our problems in an incorrect manner but no one tells me what we should have done." He added, "Free is just impossible to compete with." He's wrong. We'll talk a little more about that later.

This is somewhat surprising of a comment when people have been saying for years that they need to offer distribution online that caters to the desires of consumers. The fact that they fought from the beginning is their fault and had been a huge source of their problem. Even now they're still trying to control users through DRM which is being rejected by most people. Every move they make is to retain control rather than let go. People are even getting more upset as everything they do isn't done with them in mind.

This isn't another rant though, the point now is that some in the industry are starting to let go and encourage the industry to do the same.

At a recent conference in Cannes, France, industry leaders came together and debated some of the issues again. What was good news to me is that the industry is starting to divide over the issue. Which overall is good. That means that they are starting to see that they must create rather than fight to retain their status quo.

Some at the conference started to offer some ideas on what they could do.

Terry McBride, the chief executive of Canada's Nettwerk Music Group offered the idea of tapping into the peer-to-peer social networking and offer people a percentage of sales if music was bought from their recommendations.

Warner's chief of digital strategy Alex Zubillaga told reporters that "As an industry we really need to innovate, and bring new products and services to the market.

"We at Warner have put out a series of premium products and ... we immediately doubled the amount of digital albums that we were selling by just attaching a video, attaching some special lyrics or a photo gallery.

"We weren't selling twice as many by selling them for less. We were selling twice as many by selling them for significantly more money."

These ideas are the type that will add value to the industry, which is one of the chief strategies that must be adopted by the industry. People want deeper, as Hollywood is embracing quicker than the music industry, like is mentioned here.

It's good to see some in the industry beginning to embrace and understand what's happening from the consumer's interests.

They should be glad to understand that consumers even want more than is being offered, and are willing to pay for the extra that is added on. Just by the simple adding of extra photo galleries, lyrics and video has added great value to what is currently available, with people willing to pay a premium to get it. That is an area, along with the peer-to-peer strategy, that needs to be pursued much more aggressively.

If they keep this up, the industry may even surprise us by doing something smart.