We’ve written a lot about the death of the recorded music business, but in a keynote address to a music industry conference a couple weeks ago Topspin CEO Ian Rogers sketches out a different future. Rogers, the former head of Yahoo Music, correctly points out, as others have before him, that it is not the music industry that is dying. It is the CD business.
And as far as the CD business going the way of the dodo, with sales of physical CDs declining and the growth of digital sales not making up the difference, his response is:
I don’t care.
The lamenting we read in the press is not the story of the new music business. Continuing to talk about the health of the music industry on these terms is as if we’d all been crying about the dying cassette business in 1995. The difference is that when we moved from cassette to CD the winners were the same (big companies who owned access to cash, distribution, and marketing) and the definition of winning was the same (more units sold for these big companies).
As I’ve been saying for years, the physics of the media space have changed and you shouldn’t expect the winners or even the definition of winning to stay constant, so simply looking at how iTunes replaces CDs doesn’t tell the entire story.
I see news about the health of the music industry as defined by the stock price of WMG or quarterly earnings of UMG, Sony, and EMI every day. What I don’t see, apart from a few articles on Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, is an update on how the world is changing from the artist point of view. But I tell you, when I talk to managers and artists they feel it, they feel an ability to take their careers into their own hands, to redefine what success means for them, and that is the emergence of the new music business.
He argues that what will replace the current hits-driven music industry is a broader middle class of artists that can support themselves using the Web to promote their music, shows, and merchandise. Rogers illustrates his argument with two examples of artists who distribute their music through Topspin and are making more money than they would under the traditional system.
The first example is David Byrne and Brian Eno’s new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. By distributing digitally and keeping most of the profits themselves, the gross revenues of the album matched what they could have expected to get as an advance from a music label within the first 50 days. The second example is a lesser-known artist in his twenties, Joe Purdy, who has sold 650,000 tracks on iTunes and was able to buy a house from the proceeds.
Rogers concludes:
Digital sales don’t make up for physical? From the artist perspective they certainly can, and quickly. David and Brian keep the majority of the profits, and (via Topspin at least) are paid within sixty days of the fan purchasing (no wait for recoupment and complex royalty accounting). When your costs are low your royalty rate high and your channel direct, the marginal profitability from the artist perspective can be far different than in the old model, to be sure.
And where the mass-marketed approach was low-margin from the artist perspective, the target-marketed approach can be much higher margin (which is how Joe Purdy buys a house on his iTunes sales). Topspin believes there is an entire middle class of artists for whom the system hasn’t worked in the past who will be empowered by this new model.
Again, there are only two players in the music business that matter at the end of the day: the artists and the fans. The rest of us . . . either add value today with a compelling service or we die. And I’m perfectly happy with that.
Rogers is right. The music industry needs a bigger middle class of artists. It also needs more people like Rogers trying to create that middle class.
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I never really thought about it that way but he does make a great point.
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
Alright smartass what’s your solution? You obviously know o so much about the trends and you know “people in the industry”. congrats buddy. you know someone. all of a sudden that makes you the #1 source for the future of the music industry?
And I think it’s a great point because it’s something that’s been happening for a number of years now. I think this new form of digital music gives artists the ability to promote themselves for their music. Not by the way the promoters market them, or by who they know in the industry, but by how good their actual music is. With a lot more options and a lot less marketing and branding, people will listen to what they think is best, rather then what they know or heard on the radio. This increase in the amount of artists will help the fans (because they’ll have more options) and it will help the artists (because they will actually concentrate on making good music) - which like Ian Rogers says are the most important players in the music business.
Ok Brad. Your shiny CD can be stolen out of your car, through no fault of your own. Your car can be stolen out of your front yard, through no fault of your own.
I treat MP3’s like any other item I keep electronically, I have backups for anything I wouldn’t want to lose.
I love the argument that mp3’s are not a physical object, therefore shouldn’t be sold… You go to a concert, there’s no physical product, therefore they shouldn’t charge you. You go to a movie, there’s no physical product, therefore they shouldn’t charge you.
@Brad
The consumer market has pretty much voted that they DO NOT want a physical product. It’s time you realized that. Just because you don’t know why people would buy mp3s doesn’t seem to stop them from buying them.
You need to get out of the ‘music industry’ mindset. What’s important here? Music. What do we want? Music. Well the music industry has been crumbling for a decade and if you look online, you’ll see more good music in more varieties being produced than ever before. So what’s the problem? Do you want to go back to 80’s and live vicariously through Michael Jackson and Madonna and be comfortable in the knowledge that they are at the top of the charts for months and raking in millions while in the meantime we don’t have much choice for new music and have to pay out the ass for it. Forget about the industry and try to focus on the music instead.
“So personally I do not see the future of the music industry being mp3s. They need a physical product.” - Brad
Yea the music industry may need a physical product but not the fans!!!! No one wants to go back to days of carrying physical items when the can load their ipods with thousands of songs and only have to worry about that ONE item.
You’re thinking is exactly why the music industry is in the shape it’s in, because they didn’t move fast enough to react to the digital space.
While there are still people who buy cds and vinyl.. todays youth.. who will soon be running this planet.. have already spoken in vast droves. They prefer digital formats.
You can move forward or cling to your old formats and become obsolete.
One of my concerns with the digitization of the music industry is that it will become more and more pop culture oriented. For those of us who enjoy classical or jazz, I think the future will be one of less and less new content. Content existing on current media probably will not be converted to digital, on-line content in a substantive way.
I hope I’m wrong.
Also, the demand for high quality sound is diminishing which is bringing down the standards. With increased bandwidth and storage capabilities I hope we can bring back higher quality tunes over time.
I second the viewpoint that I hope that high quality sound solutions will emerge on the digital side. iTunes has partially gone there, but I for one am still a CD purchaser for two reasons — I like albums, and I don’t want to sacrifice sound quality. The first thing I do is rip the CD into a lossless format and a compressed one and then distribute it to my playback devices as dictated by their capabilities. This is obviously an extremely inefficient way to distribute music (shipping, packaging, my time and energy, etc.). If I could get the music in both formats electronically along with high-quality metadata including what one used to get with LPs, I would be consuming a lot more music.
I’d have to disagree with you on this one. Since just about anyone can post music online (the recording process keeps getting cheaper), it would seem to me that this will enable niche markets to flourish even more.
What if most people choose music primarily as a social exercise, to show affiliation or share an experience with those they consider their peers (or those they aspire to be), and not because the music is somehow of high quality? If this is the case, and I suspect it is, then a) cheap distribution won’t be enough for even good musicians to make much money, b) there will remain a big, lucrative role for well-connected companies with large marketing resources (and some creative guerrillas, too), and c) the music world may yet be dominated by swill.
Does moving away from the “current hits-driven music industry to a broader middle class of artists” provides less economic incentive to make music as you may be more likely to make some money but less likely to make a boat load of it?
It is that boatload of money that drives the music industry makes people want to sell and promote music. I would argue this is what makes people want to create music as well, rather than the pure art of and essence of making music. I think the hits driven industry will be here for a while since celebrities help synergize (sp) the entertainment industry and because people will always have big dreams of fame and fortune.
Besides, long tail distribution benefits the one off tiny artist but not as much as it does the aggregator of all of those artists. And these aggregators (iTunes, Amazon) still make a boat load off of the hits…
@Brad: To the contrary, I think Mr. Peters has precisely nailed how the music industry will move forward, and how it will be sustainable. In a nutshell it’s, “The Old guard dies. Artists and Managers take matters into their own hands. New companies emerge that provide *services* needed by those artists to help promote and distribute their music.”
The only reason you perceive this as, “no one seeming particularly interested in figuring out what that future is”, is that it’s not a future that has a place for bloated middle-men (i.e. the studios) to make obscene amounts of money. But it is *the* future of music, and a perfectly satisfactory one for artists and consumers alike. Just ask people like Jonathan Coulton and his fans.
Well, the positive is that Byrne/Eno are giving a FLAC/lossless quality option. That’s a good sign going forward.
the point is that its not always about direct advertising and promotion, endorsements, air-time, spots on prime-time TV ect thats the old school way. Today its more about exposure via Social Media marketing, blog presence, and community on social networks which is a much more cost effective solution in the short term until the artists can afford all of that direct advertising you praised so dearly as the formula for success. Which is not always the case
Studios aren’t going away. There will be a market for mass-produced, mass-marketed music for years to come. I think Ian Rogers is alluding to artists who in the current system end up as the “never-were” artists, but with the right tools could make a decent amount of money (like the guy in the article who bought a house from iTunes sales; hardly a rock star) by marketing their music directly to the small niche of listeners who like their style.
@what - Just because an artist sells millions of tracks/tickets does not make them good (Britney Spears anyone?)
Maybe studios aren’t going away entirely, but the studios (record labels) should be well aware of their future. Think SMALLER, think LESS MONEY!
Right on.
Every point that Ian Rogers makes here is absolutely true and makes for a very positive outlook for both artists and fans.
ARTISTS: There are now tons of new ways to distribute your music and connect with a much more target audience as well as new ways to pull in a steady income, even without making it “big”.
FANS: Better music. The shift to artist independance clearly makes for more interesting production and songs with more substance and originality.
Today, I feel inspired : )
As a “middle class artist” myself, I think he brings up some really good points. I don’t buy CD’s anymore as I hate most of the commercial homogenized crap that is out there. Have you noticed? Most of it sounds the same. The great thing about having a large selection of music to choose from is that you have a greater chance of finding something that you like as opposed to what company _thinks_ that you will like. Or what they think most people will like. Perhaps part of the decline of CD sales is from people like me who don’t fit into the mold of “most people” and finally have an avenue to purchase music that we actually like. I’m always amused by people who think that the only way to succeed is the way that things have been perceived to have been done in the past.
I think the problem a lot of people in this thread who don’t agree are having is that they see things in black and white. As if there was some kind of scale between Good and Bad and everyone falls into a certain place on that scale.
In reality, Artists that sell millions of copies and get record deals are not the best artists as much as they are the artists that will appeal to the largest amount of people.
To illustrate this think of most Ice Cream Resellers who sell a lot of different types of ice cream. Everyone has their own specialized favorite (mine’s rocky road). But if you’re buying for a party and can only get a couple flavors you’ll probably buy Chocolate and Vanilla because, while they aren’t everyone’s favorite, they appeal to everyone.
Mainstream artists are like Chocolate and Vanilla, the so-called “middle class artists” above would be like Rocky Road. So a middle class and a means of getting music to that middle class allows everyone to access music that they very well might enjoy more.
Recordings were first invented to simulate live performances and the first record companies (Edison) were the phonograph manufacturers. It was a way to make sales after the sale of the machinery. Soon, independent record companies began manufacturing these “phonograph disks of recorded music” as well, thus providing a “record” of some musical performance that has occurred in the past, be it in a studio or a “live” performance. If you think about it, it is much like today, a bunch of engineers and scientists are dictating musical taste, applying their skills not to provide the best music or even the best recordings, but to engineer product lines that return the best investment performance for their shareholders.
The only artists that will be able to survive in the new music business will be the ones that can perform live *better* than on a recording. This will force the musicianship and quality of popular music to a higher level. Artists that rely on electronics and studio gimmicks will fall out of favor because their live performance will be almost non-existent. And without support from record companies, manufactured music will be difficult to promote and distribute on a national level. This will have the effect of returning the music business back to the musicians (to a certain extent). After a while, the public tastes will change as they are exposed to better music and experience more live performances.
what a load of crap. Technology makes it so you can produce music in a different way. To some, myself included, that doesn’t mean its inferior. Most bands I listen to couldn’t reproduce their music live, unless they use computers and/or dvd players.
Music was live before because, well, that’s the only way you could listen to music. Now, music can be produced without live musicians. Some people don’t like that, and prefer their music to be live. Nothing wrong with that, but we have a choice.
I meant to add that, to me, I could care less if the artist can perform live. I listen to my music in my car or at work because I enjoy it. Does this provide value? It does to me.
Thanks for the comments. All of them.
IMHO the question is not “how are these artists going to get on traditional radio”, the question is “how do you promote and make a living without traditional radio”. Some artists are doing it now. More artists will do it in the future.
In the past it was an all or nothing game. An artist did a deal, took an advance, and hoped they could make it at radio or MTV. If they did, they could find success, if they didn’t, well, I hope they were happy with the advance. There were other paths, as evidenced by the (often great) catalogs of labels like Dischord, Touch & Go, SST, and SubPop (in my world, and many other indies in other genres), but they were rough roads. It was very difficult to get to a consumer like me 20 years ago, I lived in a small town in Indiana with no record store and no Internet. So we watched Night Flight, read magazines, mail ordered records — a lot of things way off the beaten path for the mainstream consumer. But today even the mainstream consumer is empowered, has unlimited choice, and can have a direct (web and email) relationship with their favorite bands. I ran Beastie Boys’ Web presence for many years and saw first hand how you can take a casual fan and turn them into a “True Fan” (to borrow a term from Seth Godin’s latest book) just by giving them access to information they can’t get from their radio or TV.
I intentionally didn’t talk much about Topspin in the presentation since it was supposed to be a keynote to kick off a conference, not an ad for my company. But to answer your question, my company’s software is going to help a middle class of artists promote their music to their fans (or potential fans).
And frankly I don’t mind if people think the middle class of artists is real or not. If I’m helping artists earn a living I’m happy and not bothered by the haters who think the old way is the only way.
Thanks again for the dialog. I’m ready for a public debate whenever someone wants to line it up!
ian
Let’s do the debate and livestream it. Who wants to take Ian on from the music industry? I’d love to see Ian debate Edgar Bronfman, Jr. because at least he seems to get what’s going on.
I think the entire debate would break down because Ian defines the health of the music industry as the financial success of artists and some arbitrary “happiness” metric of fans while an exec like Edgar Bronfman Jr would define the health of the music industry as the financial success of the labels and artists signed to labels. In other words, they would be debating apples and oranges.
Personally I’d love to see Ian and Guy Hands and perhaps Michael Rapino. One represents the indie web 2.0 model, one advocates the new & improved (remains to be seen) traditional label, and one touts the 360 deal. Would be one hell of an interesting debate. With Bob Lefsetz as moderator, of course !
Erick, that’s an excellent idea and would make for a very lively and insightful debate. And Ian’s point that the question is not “how are these artists going to get on traditional radio” but is “how do you promote and make a living without traditional radio” is dead-on because nobody has really figured it out yet. Yes, were headed in that direction and there are some who have made a decent living I suppose, but across the board, there isn’t a long list of artists who have been broken that way and made it big without radio. However, let’s hope the future of music moves in this direction where radio is just one component and not the only way to break an artist.
Ian, I just have to say that I really like the concept of middle class artists. I think it’s been a true concept more so in the past, but not one I’ve heard mentioned before. I just think it’s a powerful and attractive concept. I think this kind of idea could really swell the ranks of working musicians in the future. Just a very powerful idea that everyone can grasp instantly, but in our lifetimes has really been what people think of with the music business. I think it’s definitely an idea to promote and flesh out further.
I’m with Ian on this, and it’s been a long time coming. And just to make a point, there are plenty of places to get music besides iTunes. I rarely buy anything there and don’t lack for good music.
The music industry died the moment Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton got recording contracts.
Ah, but the entertainment industry was wonderfully revitalized!
I’d like to think it died much earlier than that… Still have nightmares over Don Johnson and Eddie Murphy’s recording contracts…
just thought I’d throw my vote into the “good article” ballot box… although with the glut of crappy (and good) music out there and the increasing amount of “legitimate free music” I do have to wonder how long people will continue to pay $$ for digital downloads.
Electronic Music might probably go cheap and starve the artists who makes songs if people will stop paying $$$$ for digital downloads.
So, you are against electronic music? That’s quite elitist of you. I hope that people who make starve and stop making their songs…
If you’re not hearing about how artists are changing their perspective on the industry, then you’re not listening. And specifically Techcrunch, you’re not posting about the email I sent you last week which detailed an interactive total experience we created for the new Mudvayne album. We created a game where fans use all elements of the new release (video, album, lyrics, packaging, and website) to play an 11 week game designed to create a more valuable experience. (www.mudvayne.com)
That is just the tip of the iceberg. I use technologies like Kyte, Reverbnation, Twitter, Eventful, Mozes, and on… every single day with my artists. For the record, this article is completely right. The CD business is dieing and we all know it.
Are there still dinosaurs in the industry? Hell yeah.
Are some of them working in Biz Dev, clueless? Hell yeah.
But are the labels starting to fill with young, new minds set on helping develop artists in the new “middle”? Hell yeah.
It’s not perfect in here, but it’s no where near what you think. It’s a big boat and it takes a while to turn it.
jason
Ian isn’t “creating the middle class”. He’s doing exactly what he said. He’s adding value to an EXISTING middle class. And by doing that his company will probably thrive. He’s a smart guy that loves music and he’s figured out a way to have a career merging his expertise in technology and his love of music.
but to his examples of the Middle Class:
David Byrne… The Talking Heads were signed to a major label. Make no mistake it was their fantastic songs/live shows that built their career, but they did it with the help of “The Music Industry”.
Joe Purdy… No record label, but signed a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell I believe. He writes great songs that resonate with music supervisors for TV, film and advertising. But his publisher (Part of The Music Industry) with relationships is the one that pitched his songs.
My point is that the middle class he’s speaking of exists because of the “music industry”, not outside of it. A brand new, unknown band will have a very difficult time carving out a living without help from someone with relationships. To get to the middle class, there are very, very few that can do it on their own. Once they get there, Ian’s comany, and others like it can help.
Your revolution is over, Mr. Rogers. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Rogers? The bums will always lose!
American Idol will save this.
The fact is that record companies are not banks, rather filters. Think of the internet textual resources. In order to find something you use Google, any why? because Google allows you to navigate in the ocean of words.
Music doesn’t have a Google (and probably would not have one till tech goes a long way forward). This means that a multitude of ‘middle class’ musicians can exist, but will never get a big enough crowd. Some will, but most of them would occupy an obscure little niche in cyberspace that most of us would never know existed.
When music search quality goes Google-quality (as on texts) then the record companies are truly doomed. Before that happens they will be very much alive, just smaller, and digital (rather than printing CDs) promotion channels.
actually, you are wrong. There are several means to “Google” bands. Stuff like:
Last.fm, Pandora, etc
They all look at what you listen and suggest other artists that match.
As you may have guessed I know Pandora and the like very well. However those are not good enough (yet), and it will be sometime till they, or other like them will be.
Those kind of search-by-example, or search-by-”genome” are providing you ‘more of the same’ music results to bands/artists you already know. It is far from being able to do a query to find new music you didn’t know existed (but would love when you found it).
Let me exaplify it this way: try to think of how one would state such a query, and you’ll see that we cannot even define that question (same problem as in image search which is not based on other images or text).
First of all, using David Byrne as an example for the future of the music industry means nothing. The guy is a legend with a ton of loyal fans who could have sold a bunch of CD’s and sold out concerts without a major label or the internet. The question that remains is the future of the development of unestablished up and coming bands.
The idea of a bigger “middle class” of musicians is great….but…it is unfortunately still a crap shoot. Back in the day, when there was a bigger “middle class” of musicians, people supported live music. People used to go to local music clubs without knowing who was even playing. In most of the U.S., the club business for music promoters is sinking. The well known acts that are already established are doing ok…but up and coming bands without a marketing machine behind them are playing for 10-20 people at the clubs (usually all friends of the bands). Because of that, club promoters are less and less likely to give unestablished bands a shot, and you are running more and more into a pay-to-play situation.
At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to marketing. The good news is, a skilled producer can make a good quality recording from his bedroom. The bad news is, in years to come, with impressive sampling software and pitch correctors, any kid with a $2,000 set up will be able to record songs…even without being able to sing or play an instrument.
What that means is a ton of music being pushed out, a billion places to hear that music (with the expansion of the internet and whatever is next). Plus, older music (ie. classic rock) is still filling up the airwaves and taking away from people giving new music a chance. At the end of the day, people will still want someone to focus the music and steer them to what is good and what is not. Thus, it will become a fight for marketing and PR.
The saying…at least for the past 20 years, has been “There is no justice in music.” Although the future of music and technology opens up the playing field, it still will come with a lot of the same problems. Unless people start supporting live music for up and coming bands, at the end of the day, although there are always exceptions to the rule….generally the musicians that have the best shot of supporting themselves are the ones that have $$ behind them…..ie…labels, which will handle acts in a Marketing machine capacity.
An idea for a musician that wants to be able to support themselves financially through music. Form a really good tribute band that will attract people to attend and get you some start up cash. Then push your original band to the fans of the tribute band. Obviously if the tribute band is in the same genre of music as your original music, there is a greater chance of the fan crossover.
I believe the music industry will continue and prosper…we just need to continue being creative on the business end of things. Business should enhance the music, not destroy it. I think we are headed into a time where that will happen.
I can tell all you doubters that a musical middle class does already exist and is growing. I work with it every day as an agent (Skyline Music) and blog about how it works (Hypebot.com).
Some of this middle class comes from above (major label refugees) and some from below (new artists) but it exists. This middle class always existed in (sometimes regional) touring bands, but now it’s growing because the net and the diversification of media have created opportunities for bands to find, hold on to and monetize fans in ways other than on stage. Their stage is now global and on demand.
Companies like Ian’s Topspin (and others) simply help bands do it all better and more easily. Thank-you Ian (and others) You shall prove these doubters wrong. Our more precisely, you will empower the artists that do.
It won’t work for every artist. Most new small businesses fail too.
It does take a lot of time and energy. Every successful business does.
It won’t make them rich. Most businesses don’t make the owner rich.
But it does beat the alternative - putting your art/life/career/future in someone else’s hands.
I think there is another important facet to this idea of a Musical Middle Class, and that is all the people who work AROUND the art, in addition to the source of the creation.
Botique booking agents, small promoters working specific niche scenes, college radio promotion companies, independent marketing people, INDEPENDENT Ticketing outfits (gotta shout out indietickets.com).
Theres an entire structure that is built organically, and I think there will be more and more opportunites as the Musical middle class develops. Kind of hate that term, but , there it is.
2cents..
Bill C
http://www.indietickets.com
How does a company like Topspin scale fast enough to meet the demands of their VC backers? As the price of recorded music gets closer to zero can Topspin effectively show a return on CRM for the “middle class artist” to justify their own costs? One of the reasons there are more and more “major label refugees” is because they weren’t very good to begin with and probably never will be. Even then Topspin will have to aggregate a considerable amount of artists very quickly unless their raise was so substantial and their burn so low they can hang in there. You also have to buy into the assumption that the “musical middle class” aggregated is a business model with large enough returns until all the superstars are out of their deals and will use your services.
Why is everybody in denial of the elephant in the room is beyond me. What we are really dealing with is the line between music creator and fan is blurring, music is becoming something you ‘do’ rather than just listen to. That’s why Guitar Hero is winning and Usher is losing. The so called fan is too busy entertaining themselves to be too bother with the next guy outside of his one or two absolute favorites so that mean the old school concept of ‘music industry’ will just become more and more niche while the instrument manufacturers and music program developers that cater to the long tail of amaetur musicians/hard core fans will continue to see good music. Everything else is the occassional comet whizzing by as fast as it came
amaetur musicians/hard core fans will continue to see good MONEY lol
This topic never seems to go away… I have written quite a few blog posts on this, which were usually responses to blog posts of Michael Arrington, Chris Anderson, Fred Wilson, etc. Strangely, they are my favorite bloggers and I respect other perspectives of them a lot.
(Especially, I thought initial ‘Free’ article on Wired’s Chris Anderson, whose The Long Tail I liked a lot and translated into the Korean edition, was too much stretch. Recently, his ideas sound much more reasonable (but less controversial, which may not be good for marketing). Maybe I misunderstood his first article.)
Put shortly, I believe that creators should be free to make their music sold for a price or distributed for free. And we should respect it, which becomes an agreement when you get the content, in using the content. In this situation, it is up to people to figure out working business models. And I believe we will.
I don’t think there can be only one universal business model. Some people seem to believe that ‘free’ digital contents is a must and the job of the music industry is to figure out the extra piece to make money. But why remove possibilities of other business models? If it turns out that free + alpha is the best model, good they were insightful. But let’s not restrict the degree of innovation freedom beforehand.
Music industry… still remains an industry : merchandise, consumers, business, power, money are the keywords of the propaganda.
Many other companies like ourselves saw this early on, and setup to provide ‘empowerment’ to artists. The change of the music business has provided opportunities to artists, companies and fans alike. Money will still be made regardless of CD sales and hopefully whoever produces the value (i.e. artists or companies) should get an equitable return.
Within that we certainly don’t want to repeat the mistakes of old, by taking advantage of and thus eroding the trust of your customers/users/stakeholders.
I have always rejected the ’starvist artist’ mentality, so I like the idea of a middle-class of musicians. However, for me that doesn’t include playing for change or playing in bars for free beer. However, if you look at those activities as lead generators towards other income-producing methods now you’re getting closer.
The trend is away from selling physical/digital products and towards selling access. Access to your band, behind the scenes vids, photos, songwriting sessions, demo tracks, discussion forums, etc. However you don’t need to pay anyone to provide this service. You can build your own ‘Backstage VIP Access Club’ and charge people to join on a monthly basis. This can be done with a membership site where you protect access to the members of your band. To add value you can release brand new material to your VIP club, then eventually release it to the general public.
Indie labels are taking over slowly in these times of fallen store bought CD sales. Times are also harder than ever now because of the recent recession that we have entered this year and it has caused a lot of people to watch their spending. Seeing that most haven’t been buying music much shown from the 20 billion illegal downloading and file share stats last year. Makes it harder for those who want to establish themselves in a fallen industry. Selling music online is the better choice because consumers most would rather by music online just as Joe Purdy has shown the music industry that he can sell more than 1/2 million (650,000 isn’t a small number for sales even for a major record label artist) threw his indie label in these times. Some would also admit in stating that it is not that fans don’t want to buy music, but they want to make sure that it’s their favorite artist receive the financial benefits from the bought online purchase.
The record companies, just like GM, are going to need to go through some major organizational change and restructuring. It’s necessary for most types of businesses to do this to stay on top of the world market and advancing technology. Either the record company execs are too stupid to imagine selling a product that isn’t on a tape or cd or their pockets are too tight (change/restructuring costs money). If they don’t change they’ll die, simple as that. I haven’t bought a CD at a store in years and I don’t ever plan to again, it’s a hassle, and I don’t think I’m in the minority there. Either record companies change or they lose all of their customers, simple as that. I personally don’t care if they all go bankrupt, it will be a lesson learned and open up a whole new frontier in the music business.
It all boils down to one thing….Making good music whether it’s Indie or a Major Record Label. Get it out there and people will buy it. And with myspace and music chatrooms it is possible.
No, but Rogers isn’t necessarily talking about creating the next superstar. He is talking about creating a middle class, one that may not have the same opportunities and resources to market themselves, but can own their business and market themselves nontheless. With a low cost, high margin structure, artist’s can get in the game and have an opportunity to earn money while retaining ownership of themselves.
That being said, citing someone like Byrne/Eno doesn’t help make Rogers’ argument. Both of them are highly successful artists with established fan bases. The Joe Purdy case study sounds interesting, but it will have to be duplicated before I believe such model can actually work.
I think you’re right to an extent but you’re missing the long term implications. This new digital industry isn’t fully formed yet and one of the key components missing is connector services (aka those services that connect people to music they’ll like)
Radio stations and MTV were the connectors in previous eras but, as just about any survey of young people shows, they’ve lost that position of influence. The question is: What’s replaced them?
I don’t think there’s an answer to that question yet. But services like Pandora, Myspace, and others are showing us the beginnings of a new generation of connector services. Services that are more aware of their listener’s preferences and because of that can parse a larger number of artists to pick out what a person will and won’t like. That “larger group or artists” is the middle class of musicians that is being talked about above.
Bottom Line: Not everything happens in an instant so it’ll take a while to know how these artists are going to end up connecting with their audience. But just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually.
I’m all about putting the power in the hands of the artists and allowing artists to get a bigger piece of the pie. However, Brad, you bring up an excellent point. Who’s going to pay to promote these “middle-class artists” and get them radio airplay?
Promoting online via iTunes, MySpace and a host of other sites and tools pales in comparison to radio airplay. In order to break an artist, radio is still king. And it’s the labels that invest in radio promotions and have the relationships with the stations. Music programmers at the stations still give more weight to the labels than to indies. In fact, stations are now getting inundated with pitches from indies who are trying to get their record added. It’s gotten as bad as tech PR, a non-stop barrage of pitches — most of it crap on not worthy.
So this goes back to Brad’s question, how are the indie middle-class artists who are not with a label going to pay for both online and offline promotions? Since airplay is still king, then radio promotions has to be a big component to any promotional strategy. And the ongoing calls and relationship building with stations to get airplay isn’t cheap.
good call. this is a stupid idea - middle class of music artists? aka more mediocre music? no thanks. do you know why there is an upper class of music? because those artists sell millions of songs/show tickets BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD. maybe they dont all appeal to you but they appeal to millions of other people. no one wants a “larger middle class” of music - thats basically saying just make it for the sake of making it - why not do that for other art? hey everybody - let’s go make lame paintings and videos, apparently that’s what is needed!
sorry, my response to your comment was only the “good call” part, the rest was responding to the original post/speech/whatever.
What the hell are you talking about, ‘what’? Great music is being made by people who never had a record deal. Check out people like Tim Myer on Myspace. He’s had his music picked up by TV shows and tons of TV commercials. A twenty year old kid making music that’s really polished then distributing online through iTunes, etc. Too many other examples to count. Not mediocre at all. That’s a competitive marketplace dude, not the pablum we have shoved down our throats by a cabal of record companies and radio stations.
We are already suffering from a glut of mediocre music, “what”. The problem is, the industry is foisting it upon us and expecting us to beat down their doors for the next polished turd.
Britney and Christina and all these artists sell a gazillion records their first or second time out, mostly due to massive hype, and then they flame out spectacularly and await their appearance on VH1’s “I Love the 00’s”. Meanwhile, there’s a reason that some of the biggest draws in the industry today are these 50+ blokes like Rolling Stones and Aerosmith all these other reunion bands. It’s because 98% of what we’re fed today is bush-league compared to old-school rock.
The only band I have ever seen live up to their hype in recent years is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. They do great albums, and their concerts are flat-out big, loud rock spectacles. Meanwhile, how many Switchfoots and PODs toil in obscurity for a decade before getting a single dropped on a film soundtrack and suddenly being “discovered” by the rest of the planet? Same with Jonathan Coulton; who ever heard of him before Portal?
Bands make it big because of marketability of their image and music and luck. Sometimes talent factors into the equation, sometimes it doesn’t. But talent certainly isn’t normally the principle reason a band makes it big.
We don’t need any ideas from on high. Neither music production nor distribution has suffered in the past decade. So what’s the problem? Problems like this are solved beautifully by an efficient market, and that’s exactly what’s happened. I think most everyone realizes that the old fashioned record companies just need to go away.
I always thought that entertainers would eventually revert back to their traditional place in society. And when I say that, I’m thinking of the past few thousand years of human history. Historically a small number of entertainers and musicians have not enjoyed so much wealth and power as in the latter half of the 20th century. I think the natural order is being restored and we’ll have a more diverse and healthy ecosystem of music and entertainment as a result. I always thought this meant musicians becoming starving artists, meaning they would need day jobs. However, I really like the idea of a large middle class of musicians and I think he’s probably right.
Now all we’re waiting for is the destruction of major movie studios. This will happen as small time film makers get better and better technology to bring up their production quality. Plenty of great Oscar quality actors out there who will only get the chance to win one once this happens. It’s happening now, but it still needs time to mature a little more.
I’m with Tom on this one.
As there’s still money to be made on the large scale promotion and sales of music via a number of channels (Digital download, CD, broadcast licensing) we’re unlikely to see the extinction of the big music companies any time soon.
However, for those popular artists who want more control (and quite possibly cash) out of the deal, a DYI approach can make some good business sense. And for all those musicians who do what they do for plenty of reasons other than getting rich (hey, what’re the odds anyway?), the music exploration and social networking online offerings seem to point the way towards getting heard, building a following, and possibly making enough to live on.
For anyone who believes that the “well known” or “popular” artists have achieved their status solely because they’re very “good” musically - well, isn’t that really all subjective? More importantly, let’s face the fact that the big guns in the music industry have largely controlled the marketing and distribution channels thus far, limiting our exposure to a wider variety of music from lesser/unknown musicians.
And for every TechCrunch, there are countless bloggers making bubkis. It’s not a romanticized notion of the starving artist. There just isn’t enough room in the world for every artist to be financially successful, but even if they are not financially successful, they get their music and influence out in the market and hopefully they get some satisfaction out of creating it and at least having the chance of getting others to listen to it. Before, if you didn’t have a record deal, it would cost you money to produce every copy of your music on physical media. As for your Nickleback example. There are tons of unknown bands on Myspace who are a hell of a lot better than Nickleback too. At least they have a shot at success now because they have a channel around the gatekeeping record companies. Taking record companies out of the equation levels the playing field and musicians will win or lose by competing directly in the marketplace. Face it, the only legitimate reason for record companies was production and distribution costs. Those costs are now dirt cheap, so they have nothing to offer. The market has spoken and it’s telling them to go away. If they have a future at all, they better get used to being small. Very, very small.
“Face it, the only legitimate reason for record companies was production and distribution costs.”
Not true. Record companies are promotion companies, and the cost of promotion is (still) huge. They’ve got the kind of resources and connections that an indie artist doesn’t have. There’s a good reason that bands are still willing to sign on the dotted line for that kind of opportunity.
About thirty years ago, Gene Simmons from KISS spelled it out: “Record companies are banks. They invest in you and they expect to turn a profit.”
That hasn’t changed. That’s why we’re at least ten years into the “digital music revolution”, and almost everything that’s on the radio and almost everything that’s purchased from iTunes is owned by the same companies who have dominated the marketplace for decades.
There will always be exceptions. Thirty years ago, Romeo Void were the poster child for indie success. Now, apparently, it’s Joe Purdy. But for most musicians, not much has changed…
The cost of promotion is dirt cheap too e.g. Myspace, youtube, etc. Big advertisements and commercials aren’t that necessary anymore; that’s all old model talk.
MySpace and YouTube are new mediums, but for indie musicians, they’re not new concepts. Long before the internet was invented, musicians were figuring out ways to promote their music outside of the mainstream. There were networks of fanzines, underground radio, and clubs that musicians could tap into. Some musicians were able to make a nice living working outside of the mainstream. Some were just barely scraping by. Most were flat broke or deeply in debt.
But the Web 2.0 folks seem to think that they invented indie music. Apparently it never existed before MySpace. They’ve got chutzpah, that’s for sure! Meanwhile, musicians are playing the same game we’ve always played: we’re hustling for a buck and trying not to get ripped off. The big corporations are still dominant, and it doesn’t look like they’re going away anytime soon. A plus ca change…
look around. indie is the new mainstream. taste it.
Marcello, all these online methods of promotion cost absolutely zero. What the hell do you need a record company for?
“Paid” how? I think that you discount the army of folks that are satisfied with being “paid” with a simple thank you and a bit of increased personal satisfaction for turning a friend, colleague or bus-seat-mate on to something new and interesting.
I can’t remember the last time anyone who I think had recommending music as their actual job made an impression on my music purchase.
Brad,
I think you’re right that some type of middleman will always exist to help promote artists. But I think a big shift is that now artists don’t have to go through a middleman or label to achieve success — they’re helpful but optional. An artist with the right combination of musical skill, Internet-saavy, and marketing acumen could market and sell music and make a living without ever having to work with middleman be it a label or even a company like Topspin. Those are the middle class of artists that Ian was referring to — the ones that have talent and some saavy. This scenario would have been impossible in the past. There was no way to become commercially viable without a label, even a small one, because labels controlled distribution through physical media. With digital media, there’s no bottleneck in distribution so artists are free to make choices about the best approach to promote themselves. So sure, labels, marketing people, and promoters will always exist. But in the future of music, the argument for hiring them simply “because you have to” won’t fly anymore.
For artists who wants their music to be heard, you put your song lined up along with hundreds of other songs to be played or be heard by the “Music Industry” as they call it and also to radio stations. It’s like it’s very difficult for you to be heard unless they pick you up, control you and make money out from you.
With digital music production, everybody has a chance. Every artist has a bigger chance. And for listeners, they get to listen to music that suits them, not what these “music producers” tells them listen to. Artists can evolve, produce, their own brand, genre of music that they want to.
Regarding the “Jobs”, they can switch now. It’s a human nature to look for ways to simplify life. If I’m a song writer and I want my lyrics to be sung by artists, I’ll get a freelancer or consultant to promote my product.
Someone said that the Music Industry is supposed to be composed of two types of people only, the artists and the fans. I guess, that explains it all. Necessity for middle men is outdated.
alot of comments here talk about “radio airplay”. does anybody here *really* discover new artists on the radio anymore?
the point about joe purdy is, he bought a house. to break it down, how many of us who are working for .dot com companies can say that
Middle class just means mediocre life.
DO-NOT-WANT.