Courtney Holt, EVP Digital Music and Media at MTVN: The Traditional CD Business Will Fall 20 Percent



Courtney William Holt, MTVN's executive vice president of digital music and media, said some interesting things about the state of the music industry today. From Paidcontent:

"There emerged something of a consensus during the 'Social Media meets Music' panel at EconSM, that musicians can’t rely on social networks alone for making money: giving the example of the Arctic Monkeys, Courtney Holt, EVP Digital Music and Media at MTV Networks said that though the Arctic Monkeys already had a deal and leveraged their MySpace page, until MTV played their music - record sales were flat. When MTV stopped playing their music, sales dropped. At the same time, he said that MTV no longer remains the only launchpad - the traditional music business has been disrupted and a combination of both Social Media and TV are necessary for bands. A social network is a platform - your IM, Blog, YouTube - can help create a base. Number of friends on MySpace doesn’t guarantee success. This is the year that traditional CD business will fall by 20 percent, and we’ll have to move to a la carte sales of tracks. Rhapsody’s done a good thing tying up with Comcast."

More of this interesting post by Nikhil Pahwa here: (Paidcontent)