The Ground Quits... Oh It Does Not!

The Ground was announced last summer with a buzz in Finnish IT and music media as it was the first Finnish net shop selling DRM free music also by the big records companies. The Ground had its roots in Levyvirasto, which was selling music by small record companies and independent artists as CDs and later also as MP3s. At same time Equal Dreams announced a MP3 shop with some interesting concepts to independent artists and bands. It felt like something was finally happening in the music business!

Few months later, 14th of November, The Ground announced that they are quitting the competition and shutting down their service at the end of the year. This caused a flood of feedback from artists and The Ground reconsidered: A little more than a week later they announced that they will continue their service at least until the next summer, but they will only sell music MP3s - no CDs anymore.

The reasons for these shifts of direction are clear: There are already big CD retailers in the market and they are not easy to challenge. Also the continuously dropping numbers of CD selling made the business concept based on not very firm soil. By dropping the CD selling they streamlined their concept to the point which actually made The Ground known in the first place, but it also cut the most laborous tasks: Receiving CD's, storage upkeep and sending packets all over the world.

The Ground is still unsure about its future. The selection of music by big record companies was a disappointment for many customers as the only big player there was EMI and the problem with independent artists is the cruel fact that over the half of releases never sell a single copy or only a few ones. This is not only The Ground's problem: For example TDC’s Play offering has had 60 million downloads, but three million out of the catalogue of 4.5 million songs have never been played. Not even once. I have also found it to be hard to be part of the so called long tail: I released my album All of a Sudden I Am Full of Scars for free just few days ago, because so little number of people actually bought it (it was sold in The Ground and Equal Dreams).

The Ground is developing now their service in peace without commercial pressure and I hope they find a durable concept for their business model. We don't need more DRM to a world like this.

For more information I recommend to read thoughts at http://www.monoliitti.com/2008/11/17/levyvirasto-kuilun-partaalla/ (in Finnish).