Posted in Latest News by jon at 9:53 pm
Orpheus with his Lute made Trees,
And the Mountaine tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing.
To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers
Ever spring; as Sunne and Showres,
There had been a lasting Spring.
Every thing that heard him play,
Even the Billowes of the Sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet Musicke is such Art,
Killing care, and griefe of heart,
Fall asleepe, or hearing dye.
John Fletcher, William Shakespeare
Ahhhh the power of music. During these changing times that David, Celia, Scott, Yobie and Jeff have earlier commented on, constructed and deconstructed here, that is the thread that I see stitched through their commentaries, as we are all trying to figure out how to monetize/prostletyze/synthesize the new paradigms (please excuse the buzzword) for recorded music inherent in the evolution or de-evolution of the music industry, wrought in large part (but by no means exclusively) by the digital genie that emerged from the bottle just a few short years ago. Other factors making those darn paradigms shift: general economics, a maturing industry, immaturity in an industry, music “quality” and the effect of societal factors on forging the mores of music at certain periods of time (ex: The Sixties: Vietnam/Womens’ Liberation/Sexual and Drug Mores/Economic Prosperity and post Big War education/Civil Rights Movements, etc., etc., etc.–how could the music not have been great and crazy and captivated a generation to an extreme degree?), corporate ownership and centralization, increasing competitive pressures of related music industries such as touring and merchandising, and ever increasing competion for the fan/consumers’ dollars. Underlying David’s impassioned battle cry of “Idiot’s Unite” is his feeling, expressed and unexpressed, that the belief in the power of Orpheus’ lute may be, at this juncture in time, like Sisyphus pushing that damn rock up the hill, a futile and misguided attempt to fight daily battles in a losing war. So what keeps him, and so many others, going? On an emotional level, power and effect of the music on them, and on a pragmatic and darwinian survival level, the belief that there are still workable economic models, on scales both large and small, for selling recorded music. Or, to quote an ancient Punjabi proverb: “When their stores are full, idiots are considered wise”. Scott’s comment that he doesn’t want to see the “devaluation of the musician’s property-the song” resonated with me, and made me think of a part of the music universe that we don’t want to be a dying breed: the songwriter who is not out actively performing/making their living as a touring artist…just because someone is a great performer/vocalist/guitar player doesn’t mean that they will be or should be, or can be, a great songriter. We can create models where a music artist makes their real money from touring and merch and master/synch licenses and public performance royalties, with the recorded music being distributed only to help create the value in those other revenue streams, but that sucks not only because the artists should get paid, someway somehow for the sale of their masters and the publishing royalties that go along with it, but also because a non-artist songwriter who does not receive the mechanical royalties attendant to the sale of the master has just lost a portion of her/his income. Maybe subscription models with publishing performance revenues if deemed streams will help offset lost mechanicals. We shall see. I throw this songwriter issue out here as just one more example of the thorny issues involved in this variegated music business ecosytem.
(Jonathan personally recommended me to read this discussion, which was a good move. I hope it’s Ok for me to express my views here. Delete it if it’s not. It’s a comment to all the posts rather than to this one only).
Dear Participants,
In this blog you could see (and post) the very good, high-quality examples of what industry people have to say (or ask) on the industry, music, fans paying those 40bln/year - and musicians, the original creators. Now, if you are interested what musicians may want to say, you can check this one. It is both attempt to understand by explaining (the best technique I know) and desperate cry. And it is very sincere (no ad purposes).
I am a musician. I’m newcomer in The Big Music, my idiocy is not as mature, though already idiotic enough. I can probably see some forest behind the trees with a fresh eye. Plus, I witnessed the end of the scale you are afraid of (for reason) – what actually happens when piracy takes over.
We are all going through the hard times (when were they easy?). While for consumer it is an entertainment and a show, mostly free of charge now, for you and me it’s a challenge – so let’s see what kind of it we have this time.
I have a good example on orange record buttons to illustrate. Do you know something about post-USSR music industry/market? Want to know why you don’t? This is a place of huge potential, big population, similar musical preferences, many potentially big bands – and an incredible piracy level (China rests in peace). Now things start to get better, but…
“Paying for a recording is for suckers” (Rain). Even with no hi-speed Internet, 10-hour MP3 collection (e.g. all 10 albums of your favorite band on one CD) for $2 is an affordable one. “Bands will not make money from their record sales and instead will make money from the momentum the sales incur (touing, merch etc.)” (David). True, except they don’t make much from the momentum either. Bottom line in terms of genuine new music – nearly no genuine new music for years now. The worst part is the phenomenon of Russian Commercial Pop (imho, likes of Britney are somewhere in between R.C.P. and hard rock&metal, slightly closer to the second), because that one generates relatively huge income from the pseudo-live shows. Sadly, in the course of last years I’ve noticed in US some unpleasant tendencies towards that kind of “music” – but it’s not nearly as bad yet.
All mourning above is arguable (esp. by locals from the streets), but I operate with some facts. E.g., the financial director of easily the best pop-rock band of that region put it simple to me:
- no money generated from recordings (except for sales in Europe) – albums serve as mere promotion for tours;
- nearly no money generated from tours either;
- the only substantial revenue comes from entertaining at the, let’s say without going into the details, “closed private parties” (I doubt you’d like your son/daughter’s band to do that for a living).
That’s what we had with total anarchy. Total dictatorship of the majors is not much better (domination of commercial pop is a big reason why you have sales drop and TV/radio ratings fall). Calls for a good balance between the two.
For the industry, the crisis seems to be an inspiration to start doing improved A&R. “People with ears are dying-out species”, “When I find the stuff I really like I can’t sign it because of the shareholders’ pressure” – sounds familiar? And ugly. Majors merge to survive – fine, but they were huge inflexible monsters before, they should not become twice as inflexible. (I must say that, unlike many musicians, I’m still a “fan” of majors, but those guys have to take actions fast). The likes of retarded new royalty systems of Copyright Royalty Board (Celia’s post on March 5) only make it worse by strandling more or less professional and creative music sources in favor of the lo-fi amateur piracy.
With the advent of Jeff’s orange button mutated into the informational networks, there’s simple NOTHING to prevent downloading nearly ANY music/video for free whenever one wishes to. That seems to be obvious to everyone. How and why people get wishing to pay is the right question, and some tactics were discussed in this blog (as well as survival tactics in the face of the little wishing). “Can’t change it – use it”. From some point of view, free stuff is a great alternative for the radio (everybody here knows the cost of each song being airplayed), especially as radio/MTV is not a good quality filter nowadays (neither Internet is, yet, unfortunately – hey, anyone wants to be the first to do An Ultimate Fix to that? Reward may be huge). And there are many more positive sides. And negative.
But, rather than discussing tactical how-to-dos, I’d now take a look at some strategic what-tos.
What’s an excuse for majors to put prices high? “We have 80% of flops whom 20% has to feed ” (RIAA website). Lame one, but partly sincere. Looks like about 50-70% of signed artists are frogs both creatively and commercially for majors and somewhat less for indies – I hope my judgment is close, I do not possess insider information. And it’s happening while many great bands are ignored (take any, SOAD for example – how many labels turned them down in the first place? And those bands are still the lucky ones…). Increase a “good portion” from 20 to 40% - and have 3-4 times as much profit (do the math), this would compensate for the crisis with a vengeance. “Because they (fans) feel that they are force fed on the same diet of music all the time” (That was great Rod! And about those same guitar sounds, too)
“At the end of the day, only a few artists rise above the masses, and those artists have one thing in common. Great records. (There are lots of great records that don’t get noticed, but not a lot of mediocre records that do). Get rid of the admin that keeps us focused on the pennies and turn attention to brilliant music that blows you away. It’s the best medicine for the problem. And isn’t that why we all got involved in the first place?” Thank you so much, Celia, this was a masterpiece! The big problem is that good artists, as mentioned many times in this forum, have hard times rising. Help them! “Artists more than often, need to have an outsider helping with the creation and marketing of their art” (Thank you David!). Bluntly: Do you want us to do money, or do music? Do you want us to be musicians (selling music) or merchants (selling merchandise)? You want us to go touring 13 months/year – playing WHAT? Good stuff may take months and creative environment for composing alone…
Is this music crisis (both finantial and qualitative) an inspiration for musicians? Certainly! (for me it’s a big one). Same way as, in the past, “The Sixties: Vietnam/Womens’ Liberation” etc. (thank you Jonathan! You post could all be repeated here again). But, those protest songs were written in the sunny safe California, foggy safe UK or elsewhere except for the rainy jungles under the enemy fire (well, maybe some, right before songwriter was blasted by the Vietkong trap, so we never heard it). Please save us musicians from too much biz battles (if you, dedicated pros, are trying to understand what to do, how do you expect us to?)
Promote on MySpace? It may work, but having 3 to 4mln bands registered on MySpace alone (one band per 30 users), when it would take lifetime to personally communicate - even basically! - with just 5-10k fans in the 24 / 7 mode (do the math) – “no sleep no eat no music”, do you really expect more than 50% of the talented stuff to break through? (and those 50% means 3-4 times less profit, remember?) MySpace and likes are great and irreplaceable collaterals, too often they are often not enough for true initial career boost. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Musicians do music. Showbiz executives execute showbiz. How does that sound? I personally spent not much less time for studying and contemplating the industry (I had to, as I’m from the place where this industry is new-born and differs from US/Europe a lot) then I spent for composing our material – and I just dare not think of how much more I would compose and practice (at least I kept other band members away from that, which was apparently a good move). Do you expect Rolling Stones at their start to build their career and PR? Do you seriously want Jimmy Hendrix to study and do promotion? He couldn’t even READ!! (and I feel that if he could read – just read, not do showbiz – his stuff wouldn’t be as bright). Many bands reach their creative maturity at 18-20y.o. – do you expect them to be serious businessmen at this age? Ok, band is robust and survives for 10-20 years to finally get recognized – don’t you regret all the stuff they haven’t created? I do, a lot. And look at those examples in music, sport etc. when stars fired promoters and did their own biz – was it ever at least as successful? (and those are established ones I’m talking about!). I will proceed doing all it takes, no matter how fair– I’m aware it’s no fairy tale. But who loses in result? That, detective, is the right question.
“So what is to become of the record label?” (David). Childish though it may sound, “label” must now stand for a “quality label”, a name to attract customer’s attention. Let’s take a look at the fans and free downloads. “The consumer decides the value of the product” (Scott). Here is our consumer, deciding this album is worth 10-15 bucks indeed, which makes him/her proud he/she saved such a fortune by downloading it for free… This always was and this always will be. But you are probably right saying that “for every 20 downloaders 1-2 will purchase” (also by Scott). True fans of true (true, damn it!) music can’t let their favorite musicians down that badly. “Maybe some fan education is in order” (Rain). True, and seems like fans steadily start to understand why even the golden record actually bring tens of thouthands $ (at most) to the band as opposed to millions men in the street imagine (Donald Passman, updated edition), and Internet if anything may be a great tutorial for them – don’t forget it’s incredible free library of knowledge, not just of the bootlegs. As for “Byzantine vitamin shop” (Jeff) – I feel those mall stores are doing a lousy work considering changing times. People would better surf the Internet to find new stuff and buy/steal it there.
If there’s anything I remember from my higher eduation in marketing, it’s that we should understand what people need (not just what they do or what they officially want). See the world with their eyes. So much for the biz philosophy. And the reason I’m musician, not marketer, is because I can’t turn it into the practive. But you can. (And remember that the worst way to financially please shareholders is to please shareholders – sorry, I just had to say that:))
Guys, I feel you will survive and move on. You post the great ideas and practical techniques, and you obviously love what you are doing and musicians you are doing that with. Please help musicians to keep loving what they are to do as well. Let’s come together, right now – majors, indies, established bands and new talents, physical CDs and downloads (what’s the difference anyway, except for conservative distribution wings have to starve?) Hard times call for better job, let’s do it, prove ourselves and be proud for reason.
One badass partnership of business and art coming up!
Comment by D — March 17, 2007 @ 6:11 am