July 10th, 2008
I’m getting sick of TechCrunch traveling down the same old road again and again without one new idea.This time around, they once again use the sensational ”the death of the label” headline. It seems that Last.fm’s opening their royalty option to indies and artists is some sort benchmark that “the middlemen” are no more.
“What Last.fm is doing here is creating an alternative to the official royalty-collecting organization for musicians (i.e., SoundExchange). Last year, the royalty rates for music streamed over the Internet were raised, making it more difficult for ad-supported music startups to stay in business. Last.fm got bought by CBS, so it’s not in danger of going under. And for any song owned by a label or artist who participates in SoundExchange, Last.fm continues to pay the going Internet radio royalty rate. But it is beginning to bypass Sound Exchange by giving new, unsigned artists an alternative. “
My smarmy headline aside, I don’t really agree with this and will explain exactly why I feel this way.
To not get caught up in some irritating argument over semantics in the comments, let’s define what a label is for the purposes of this post- the core business. A label is an incubator. It filters and creates content (A&R), makes an investment in creating and promoting that talent (human resources and marketing dollars), and ultimately strives to make a profit. Much like VC’s- labels speculate on the ability of talent to generate revenue that will support both parties. So, Live Nation is as much of a label as Epic, Epitaph, Suburban Home or any other traditional label. Large management firms who invest in recordings and perform marketing functions are similarly acting as “labels”, even if they take that moniker or not.
Let’s also dispense with the illusion that any artist can build a lasting career without some sort of business infrastructure. Very few artists can be Ani Difranco and do an amazing job in both music and entrepreneurship. Radiohead, NIN, and others are cool but don’t count in this argument because they had major marketing dollars and resources for years before they went out on their own. If some unknown built the fanciest website and shot the best video in the world- who the hell is going to see it unless you there’s some meaningful publicity on it? With all the wannabes out there … it’s a fucking WAR for attention out there, and victory (creating artist ubiquity that leads to selling a product) costs buku bucks. Bucks for all the jobs that need to get done, and bucks to grease the wheels of progress.
Let’s start with a product manager does. In the places I’ve worked, product managers are the drivers of the album after the record is done and ready to packaged, marketed, and delivered to physical and digital outlets. On most matters, they are the link between label and artist, and then internally responsible to establish and maintain quality control and time lines on everything from album art to viral videos, publicity campaigns, to the programs at traditional and digital retail. Oh, and all of this within an established budget
How about publicity? Why are some publicists great? Hint: not because of their ability to write hyperbolic press releases. It’s the relationships, retard. Publicists (and radio people, and sales people) pay YEARS of dues and slugging it out to earn the trust as taste makers for the gatekeepers at magazines, blogs, and late night television shows. Steve Martin from Nasty Little Man started his company doing press for Bad Religion and Helmet out of his apartment after getting paid $5 a year working at indie labels. Now he gets the Foo Fighters on Letterman. I guarantee he ain’t making $5 a year anymore. Who pays for that?
Let’s not forget about the super-sexy jobs of administration. Making sure bills are paid, aggregating content, processing meta data, formatting videos for viral distribution. The list of thankless and invisible tasks are endless. Let’s not forget the super super fun job of invoicing and collecting on all of those half-pennies Last.Fm and the other vendors are paying. Is last.fm going to collect royalties from other third parties and dispense them as well? This ill informed argument simply continues to prove that all of these half-baked theories from people who have never lived it like they spit it are just wind.
I’d like to know what 20-something armed only with their used strat, bartending money, and trendy Florence Henderson haircut could possibly do all of that- and then perform and write songs to the best of their ability? Unlikely at best. Their job is to write songs, rock out, fuck their fans, and be that guy or gal that people just can’t take their eyes off. You think they really want to toil their nights away doing all of this maintenance and splitting hairs if Artist Data Systems is the right syndication system for their tour dates? Coffee’s here, wake up.
Here is my plea to all the bloggers out there in tech world: stop the shenanigans, talk to and interview people who are actually in the business and trying to make a difference (we are) and talk about how your beloved start ups could HELP make the middle better, and stop crying wolf about how it’s over. It’s time to put down the rhetoric and start to propose viable solutions to the problems facing people that make content and people that want to exploit it for profit (labels and last.fm alike.)
Ahhh. I feel better now.
Written by Bill Wilson | 8 Comments
July 6th, 2008
Although I’m not keeping my label going with new releases anymore, I still sell back catalog and manage a few MySpace pages. I was checking through my emails, filtering out the spam comments and saw this email from Tom regarding a beta program for artists:
” We are happy to announce that artists can now buy ad space on MySpace. We call the program Find Your Fans. Find Your Fans On MySpace is a quicker, easier and smarter way to promote yourself, your band or your brand on MySpace. Find Your Fans is a user-friendly tool for you to use to advertise your band, brand or yourself on MySpace. You can target specific types of MySpace users you want to reach. Simply create your ad, tell us who should see it, how long you want to run it and how much you’re willing to spend. That’s it!
We’ll display your ad all throughout the MySpace site to the users you’ve chosen, putting your message in front of millions of potential customers and driving traffic to your profile until your campaign’s reached its spending limit or the expiration date set by you, whichever comes first.
When are you charged? Only if someone clicks on your ad — not when your ad is displayed.”
For musicians, this cost-per-click is probably a better investment than Google Adwords, as MySpace is such a specific destination for music discovery. It also has the effect of stealing the thunder from all the spammers. I’m actually surprised they didn’t do it sooner, but I imagine that now that they are in bed with the majors on MySpace music there’s some kind revenue kicker back to the labels.
I also see this as a watershed moment for the perceived value of music to social networks- it’s not just a one way street as some would have you believe. If MySpace is developing an entire revenue source by selling the ads on artist pages, it means they are aware the music drives page views, recorded music and artists fan bases have a value, and the audience they bring contributes to their bottom line.
“For fans of …” has always been a crucial pillar of music marketing, and it really makes sense for artists and social networks to put a tollbooth on it, and re-compensate those artists for those smaller ones drafting behind their brand name. My only beef with this is that if there’s a product sold on an artist page on the basis of that artists popularity, unsigned and indie artists should also participate in revenue generated by their pages as incremental revenues are important to every strata of label/ artist, not just those who occupy the Billboard charts.
Written by Bill Wilson | 1 Comment
March 23rd, 2008
But I thought I’d post this comment here, relating to this post at Techcrunch where Michael Arrington comments:
“Recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist. Websites that bring that music to listeners are doing artists a favor. In fact, they’re doing them a favor that they should (and will) be paid for. Young artists and songwriters in particular benefit from these services - Until a few years ago they had almost no way to break into the mainstream without getting a label to promote them. Now those walls are being torn down, and Bragg has the audacity to complain about it.”
My reply to this is that one word comes to mind when I hear all of the web2.0 types talk about the next generation of music and how artists and labels should not expect to be compensated for recorded music.
Carpetbagger.
Yes. The old fatcats at the top of the music biz totally f’d it up with Napster. That’s ancient news. But they also screwed it up with terrestrial radio and MTV- building huge conglomerates on “promotional” music. To be fair, the biz was making enough money selling discs for it not to matter.
But it does now. We’re wise to Bullsh!t2.0, where some small team of founders and initial investors make millions in funding from selling to Newscorp, Yahoo, Google or CBS. Don’t blame the artists and labels for adapting to the new playing field. Music helps these companies acquire customers who have a lifetime value. So they need to shut up and pay.
These guys are still just as greedy as they claim Doug Morris and Edgar Bronfman are, the just hide behind the popular mantra that music should be free. Free to the consumer? Sure. Free to those who make a windfall? No way.
I suggest anyone in a band or from a label read the post and leave a comment on it.
Written by Bill Wilson | 14 Comments
September 30th, 2007
In June of 2006 I wrote a post on my old blog about Radiohead, and how they could potentially shift music business into 2.0 with digital self distribution of an album. It seems that very thing has come to pass.
With very little fanfare, they have launched a site for their next release, In Rainbows. To be made available only by pre-order (as either a box set/ digital or digital only) through this website at first.
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Written by Bill Wilson | 8 Comments
August 28th, 2007
My former employers over at music social network Haystack have given me the scoop on something pretty cool. In conjunction with Roadrunner Records and web dev company Media River, they have produced a widget that combines a label-approved album stream playlist with video content. Right now the playlist is being “funded” by a label-sponsored iPhone contest, but as this becomes the template for all of the playlists on the site, new advertising revenue will trickle back to the labels.
To see a working sample of the Haystack widget… check out the right hand column.
I firmly believe that widgets (and facebook apps) are a good thing. On the sales tip, what makes widgets really interesting is that there are now commerce-enabled ads that actually allow purchase from within rich media. Instead of dragging the users from what they’re doing on a page, it brings the “point of purchase” directly into the existing user experience. One of the companies that is doing this is Flhame, with their innovative Tailgate product. They call them “transactional banners.” Do yourself a favor and click on the link. A screenshot will not do it justice.
What are the other great widgets for music out there? (Spare me the iTunes, please.)
Written by Bill Wilson | No Comments
August 25th, 2007
A few weeks back, I mentioned an idea I had about all the large ISP’s charging a $5 per household media usage “fee” to all broadband subscribers. In return, the households would get full access to a content repository of mp3’s. According to a recent article at GigaOM, Cable Companies in France are doing exactly that.
“Yesterday, neuf Cegetel, a competitive broadband service provider, said it will offer about 150,000 songs and 3,000 videos from Universal Music Group (owned by Vivendi (V), another French company) for about five euros a month.
Today, not to be outdone, France Telecom’s (FTE) Orange France is looking to offer unlimited music downloads (from a much bigger catalog) for free! And here I was talking about music-becoming-a-commodity. It’s happening faster than I thought.”
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Written by Bill Wilson | 2 Comments
August 9th, 2007
AZ indie music retailer Stinkweeds has started a local music blog called Silverplatter. According to their email:
” Feast your eyes on what this city has been missing since the beginning of time: An honest to goodness music-only website that not only tells you what is going on, but where, when, how much, if tickets are available and where, and almost anything else we could think of.”
Nobody does local music better than the people who are already involved in music at the retail level. It’s great to see that those in the game are finally taking hold of the new technology and building a place for themselves as tastemakers in a new area.
Written by Bill Wilson | 7 Comments
August 8th, 2007
Taking a cue from the KISS army of yore, Bayside has established an “online social club.” According to the band (as reported by AbsolutePunk.net)
“You’ll hear Bayside news before anyone else, get special invites to secret Bayside events, get tickets to shows before anyone else can and at discounted prices… Our fans have always been so amazing to us and so dedicated and here’s our chance to give back.”
I clearly think this is among one of the ways to go for bands as labels continue to shit the bed. $25 or $30 per year gets you new music on a periodic basis, recorded live sets, and a special piece of merch, early or exclusive access to performances. As long as they keep up with the content, it could work out well for them.
Following the same thought process, labels with a strong genre specific fan base (Relapse, Roadrunner, Victory) could couple this idea with a Sub Pop Singles Club type deal, and wrap delivery of music in a whole bunch of other, more tangible added-value experiences.
Written by Bill Wilson | 8 Comments
August 1st, 2007
So yeah. It’s official. All the legal bullshit and alienating of customers has done absolutely nothing to offset file sharing. In fact it’s more prevalent than ever. I will say it again to the labels out there in case nobody heard me the first seven thousand times I said this:
a. CD’s are a license to pirate. Stop making them, except for top 40 soccer-mom and senior-citizen stuff that sells at big box stores. Just because they’re 80% of sales doesn’t mean they’re 80% of the music transactions that go on.
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Written by Bill Wilson | 16 Comments
July 26th, 2007
Because my last post on this topic wasn’t fun enough, I’ve decided to follow up on an interesting development. My colleagues over at A2IM are now getting into the game. Today, President Rich Bengloff made the following statement:
“Every Independent music label has or should have its own business plan, but as our industry continues to shrink in terms of sales, from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $11.5 billion in 2006, and the trend down has continued in 2007, artists and labels need other income sources. (more…)
Written by Bill Wilson | 1 Comment
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