I like Rick Rubin, but he’s breathtakingly wrong about the future of the music industry

From the lead article in the NYT Magazine this week:

Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. “You would subscribe to music,” Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. “You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You’ll say, ‘Today I want to listen to … Simon and Garfunkel,’ and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now.”

Problems:

1. Subscription models have been tried, via Napster and Yahoo, and are niche services, at best. The most successful subscription service for music is satellite radio, which offers exclusive content – Stern, radio shows DJed by musicians, and so forth.
2. “The iPod will be obsolete” is mammoth hubris. The iPod and iTunes store, since their staggered introduction, have been the only constant in a changing music landscape besides illegal downloading.
3. Assuming you’ve pushed this subscription model through, what’s the incentive to promote bands? If one band is more popular than another, what difference does it make if you’re not monetizing their popularity? (The answer, from Steve Barnett’s point of view – the other guy in charge of Columbia – is sinister: “… asking Columbia artists to give the record company up to 50 percent of their touring, merchandising and online revenue.” Wow, really? For what, exactly?)

I don’t mean to totally bag on Rubin; he loves music and has his heart in the right place. But the Big Four record companies really are dinosaurs. My hope for the future of music is a comet.

Malibu real estate is expensive.