Can we kill the music business too?

http://audiosearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/can-we-kill-music-business-too.html

by jamesgagan • 15 years ago

196 70 15 years ago

audiosearch.blogspot.com

EGreg• 15 years ago

Can we kill the pharmaceutical industry next? Those patents have got to go!

Let's deal with the biggest threats to the Internet and civil liberties first, which are Hollywood and the music labels.

davyjones• 15 years ago

The above comment was a sarcastic one.

mappu• 15 years ago

You're picking at today's targets without looking at the root of the problem. As long as you're thinking big, how about disrupting politics? Build a system which can't be affected by lobbying.

mtts• 15 years ago

We should, really, because big pharma is terrible at creating drugs that actually, you know, cure people. But this is something that can only be done by government or some other not for profit entity as it's the very fact that big pharma consist of companies that need to make a profit that is the problem.

daeken• 15 years ago

While I think the author's heart is in the right place, I think he's fallen into the trap that nearly everyone in the music startup industry has fallen into: the content and distribution are the easy parts, getting people to give a damn is the hard part.

Go to any little venue in NYC and you'll find a dozen talented musicians, many of them with very well produced albums already; the talent is there, the production is cheap as hell these days, it's simple. So you start an online label, you aggregate this content, you make it available in various forms for various prices (including free) and you have... nothing. Content is worthless without eyes and ears.

The hard part in all this is getting it in front of users, and getting them to care about the music. The major labels are fantastic at this: they get radio stations (which they control) to hype them up; they run ads all over the place; they put on massive tours and make the consumers a 'part of the music'. How are you going to compete with this? If you can answer that question, you win; nothing else matters.

jamesgagan2• 15 years ago

Totally agree, the labels put out a slick, well produced product and have a lot of brand loyalty. And they have a huge headstart. But I think startups can build up some of that consumer loyalty by not being evil to their customers, and by providing the value add to music that major labels can't in the form of cool apps. And don't forget, even the now huge Virgin empire started as a little hole in the wall record shop on Notting Hill.

wisty2• 15 years ago

> brand loyalty

Not really. Consumers don't have a clue who the labels are. The labels are great at building brand loyalty for the artists.

There's two horizontals - the promoters (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, etc) which let artists connect with fans, and producer/distributers (Amazon, iTunes, indie labels).

You probably won't build a vertical that does both well, like the big labels.

The distribution and production is a solved problem. You won't distribute better than Amazon, and an indie producer will produce good and cheap records in an unscalable fashion.

The promotion thing (getting kickbacks from ads?) is social media. What do the artists need? What do the users need? And how can you do it better than Twitter?

learc83• 15 years ago

I think that a huge part of all that is simply because most of us are stuck listening to a dozen or so radio stations in our cars.

People listen to the artists they hear 20 times a day during their commute.

It will be interesting to see what happens when something like Spotify or Pandora is widely available in-car.

Qz2• 15 years ago

Anyone with a smartphone can have Pandora in their car, I sure do.

waterlesscloud2• 15 years ago

This is exactly the same primary problem you'd face taking on the movie studios.

In a way, it makes sense to try to beat the music industry first.

icefox2• 15 years ago

How about creating a radio device that works over the cell network?

The cost of data on the cell network would be covered by "radio" advertisements. But the device would of course have extensive caching of audio on the device. Now you have a whole new band of "radio" and can show off those talented musicians.

adambyrtek2• 15 years ago

How does it differ from internet radio and existing music streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, Last.fm etc.)?

paulhauggis2• 15 years ago

Internet radio has really taken over this space. Mostly because you can access it from so many devices.

Remember the XM radio portable devices? They have since stopped making them. It makes sense. I can listen to XM on my phone or laptop and I don't have to worry about signal issues.

snippyhollow• 15 years ago

http://www.jamendo.com/en/ is treating the very problem of remunerating CC artists, and they are doing well for quite some time.

joshuamerrill3• 15 years ago

Hmm. While music labels do still have reach, in fact, there's very little profit anymore in the creation of recorded music. Today, records primarily serve to build hype for concert tours, which, contrary to your suggestion, are not put on by music labels, but by organizations like Live Nation. (Labels own the rights to the specific recordings produced under contract with the artist, not to the songs themselves.)

Since most of the profit in the music industry now comes from touring, the labels are trying to get a piece of the action with so-called "360" deals, which promise them royalties from tours, merchandise, and more. But for the most part, touring and recording are not integrated businesses.

nhebb• 15 years ago

I think there is a software solution to this problem.

#1: A Recommendation Service: You know how Amazon will list "People who bought this, also bought these ..."? The problem with these recommendations is that people may have bought other items, but you don't know whether they actually liked them. I envision a music recommendation service that lets people select mainstream music they like and recommends indie music they might like based on user ratings.

#2 Music Analysis: There are already software tools that can predict hit songs [1], so why not take the idea a step further. Let users select a number of songs they like and build a profile of their tastes. This would predict new music they would like before it built enough critical mass to be in the "recommended by others" section.

#3 Talent Gamification: Think you've got American Idol potential? Submit your audio clip to the service get user ratings (and possibly software analysis). Do head to head match ups, clip of the day, or some other tactic to get people's interest and keep them coming back on a regular basis.

None of this is easy, but I definitely think the potential is there for a disruptive software solution to the major record labels' stranglehold on the music industry.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1136733...

waterlesscloud2• 15 years ago

I've thought last.fm should be an amazing source for recommendations. After all, they have an amazing database of music that I don't just buy, or like, but that I actually listen to. They know how much I listen to something and when and so on. That's got to be a great basis for recommendations. And somehow...it's not. I've often wondered why not.

Qz2• 15 years ago

#2 is what Pandora does. Pandora knows what music I like and will like better than I ever could.

cabalamat• 15 years ago

> A Recommendation Service

For bonus points, this should also work for films, books, etc.

Retric• 15 years ago

If you really want to kill them, just convince Microsoft or Google etc to buy the music industry and change the model. Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the world: $38.6 billion in 1999 in $10.4 billion in 2008 That's the kind of business people want to get out of.

PS: I blame Video games and DVD's for sucking up a lot of the disposable cash flow from people who buy music. Digital content not degrading over time and forcing people to buy yet another copy of the same thing. And piracy destroying the idea that music has value. You used to see CD's with the sound track for a movie selling for just as much as the DVD it's self which is crazy.

FrankBlack• 15 years ago

While I agree with your points in the technical sense, I think there is a more overarching concept that is the "hard part": There are too many people who want to "make it" in the music business ("make it" means different things to different people: by "make it" I mean make a living). I am sure if I changed the term to "performing arts" it would still be valid. While it is hard to get your music into people's face (which then gets into their ears and then into their hearts and then into their wallets) all the music business does is craft celebrities, images and trends in order to make a profit. In general (I know there are exceptions) the labels don't give a rat's ass about art and music; all they want it the money. They survive because of the money. You are very, very correct when you say there are untold numbers of talented musicians (emphasis on both "talented" and "musicians") in the world. But the fact they are talented shouldn't guarantee them the right to make a living from their craft. The market is just too saturated. In the end, it ends up being a business if you need to make money. This is the point at which one either gets a lucky break or sometimes compromises to become more of a celebrity or image rather than just a musician. I wish every artist could make a living from their craft. Sadly, someone has to grow their food, fix their vans and shuffle their paperwork. I think the best strategy for would-be pro musicians at this point is to self-produce, self-market and self-motivate. Sure, there may be a loss of quality by not using pro services or labels, but if they tour heavily and get a relatively small, yet faithful fan base they just might be able to make a living. I know many, many musicians who do this successfully.

ggchappell• 15 years ago

FYI: I quoted this comment in a comment on another HN post.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3495993

ammmir• 15 years ago

production and distribution costs are negligible nowadays. record labels are marketing powerhouses that can push their product (music and the artists) through traditional channels like radio, concert tours, and other partnerships.

independent artists have a harder time since there's no equivalent marketing vehicle for discovery. and many don't have a chance with the major labels since not every artist has the labels' definition of mass-market appeal.

some of the smaller labels (at least in EDM) are more forward-thinking and push out music via podcasts, exclusive tracks on social networks, etc. but it's not solving discovery: finding great music from artists i've never heard about. once you have that, you can start building artist-specific apps and so on.

related: i'm building a minimalistic music player (for Mac initially) that helps you make playlists from SoundCloud tracks and other sources. if you have suggestions about the discovery angle, i'd love to hear them! email in profile.

chaostheory• 15 years ago

There is one specific way to help bring this about by solving 2 semi-specific problems that I know of.

1) I and a bunch of people I know love to post personal videos with music overlaid on top. Anyways I'm not sure when this started, but Facebook now checks the songs that accompany video uploads. (As an interesting aside, these vids weren't public; they were only shared with friends or friends of friends.) When it feels that it finds a match, it either disallows the video upload or it just kills all the sound. If there was a service sold mini-licenses for (indy) songs to normal people for use on Facebook, that would be great.

To get to the point: This would be a great way for people to hear new music, especially if the video had the name of the artist and song.

2) I'm not sure if this exists, but I remember hearing that you need a record label to get your music published iTunes. It would be nice to have a easy and cheap intermediary that acts as a record label to iTunes and feels like an App Store for developers to the actual bands and artists.

jamesgagan2• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure you can use services like TuneCore (http://www.tunecore.com/) to get your music on iTunes etc. without the need of a label.

parbo• 15 years ago

There are plenty of options for 2), one of them is http://www.tunecore.com/

nextparadigms3• 15 years ago

If we do create new disruptive companies in the music industry, can we start by not owning the copyrights of the artists? I'd like to see this as a change in the copyright law, but that's probably impossible to do at this stage, so the next best thing would be a bottom-up movement to give back copyright ownership to the artists.

Corporations owning the copyrights have created this terrible incentive for them to try to extend the copyright perpetually every 20 years. I'd like to see the copyright terms be reduced to the original 14 years, too, but I'm not sure that's possible without changing the copyright laws first.

So let the artists themselves keep the copyright, and your label only gets to "license" those copyrights for the whole period of the contract, so you can promote and sell their music. You should also give them like 70% of the revenues, or more if possible. All these should be competitive advantages over the big labels.

joshuamerrill3• 15 years ago

To be precise, the record labels do not own the copyrights to the songs, but rather to the specific recordings produced under contract with the artist. The rights to the song are held by the music publisher, which is often a different entity.

anamax• 15 years ago

> I'd like to see the copyright terms be reduced to the original 14 years, too, but I'm not sure that's possible without changing the copyright laws first.

The duration of copyright is defined by copyright law, so yes, reducing the length to 14 years will require a change to copyright law.

I think that Lessig had a more politically viable solution - you can have a long time but you have to pay a nominal fee every so often. For example, you can have 100 years, but you have to pay $1 per work at 20, 40, 60, and 80 years (not Lessig's exact proposal). Note that this also addresses the "who owns it" and "what is protected" issues.

We might see it as a revenue proposal though.

joshuamerrill3• 15 years ago

I would make the argument that the music business—and by that, the author means "major label" music business—is already being killed, and one can see its utter demise just by extrapolating the current trend.

I suggest three reasons why this is true:

1. There is little or no profit in the major label business anymore—certainly not for the artist, and rarely for the label. I believe this is because of the fragmentation of entertainment, failure to embrace new technology, and many other trends. Regardless, this has led to consolidation over a 20 year period, where six major labels became just three (today Sony, Warner, and Universal). And revenue has declined from $15 billion annually at its peak in 1999 to about $6.8 billion today.

2. The music industry failed to see the value of the Internet in music distribution. Once piracy became rampant, the music industry essentially signed control of distribution over to its one credible savior, Apple (and now, to an extent, streaming services like Spotify). The net result is that the industry has little control over the price of its product, and little connection to its customer. iTunes dominates.

3. Home recording technology is getting better and cheaper, and distribution is easier than ever (recall that Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube). While this may not have made a meaningful impact yet, it is easy to imagine that it will over the next 10 years. I can already point to several artists, like Brad Sucks (one of my favorites), who are taking advantage of this.

In short, I don't think we need to change the status quo much at all. The major labels are on their way out.

wisty2• 15 years ago

It's funny you bring up Bieber. He and Lady Gaga are both talented - both are OK looking (Lady Gaga goes out of her way to avoid clear shots, she's not that stunning), good singers, good dancers, and reasonably good song writers. They are good, but I wouldn't call them great. You couldn't seriously compare them to Madonna and Michael Jackson.

What they are absolute geniuses at is PR, which should be the label's job. Michael Jackson got a similar amount of media attention to Lady Gaga, but it tended to be negative.

The musicians are already starting to do the label's core business (promotions) for them.

maigret• 15 years ago

I'd say Lady Gaga is clearly at a much higher level than Madonna musically. Hear her sing with Tony Bennett. Madonna is good at marketing, but did she write her own music or plays the piano? Behind all the provocation, Gaga is a talented musician.

jiggy2011• 15 years ago

Music is a big cultural thing that people use as much as a method to identify themselves as a particular tribe (especially young people).

In many ways this is more important to many people than the actual music itself (even if they might deny such a thing), this is why certain musical acts become almost like rallying banners to certain subcultures (Bob Marley , Slipknot , Marilyn Manson and Eminem are examples of this) these acts are almost deified by their respective fanbases. Music celebrity culture is a very important part of every musical genre.

So simply providing a large library of great music is not always enough, many people don't actually want to sift through music catalogs to find something they personally like, they want to listen to what their friends listen to so that they can go to the shows together and bond over the music.

For example , if you talk to a bunch of teenage metalheads and many will insist that is is the one true genre of music and will not admit to listening to anything else even if they might enjoy it , lest it make them appear outcast from their hurd.

This is where the marketing is important , I would imagine that small minority of acts make up a huge percentage of actual music purchased. People want to listen to bands that have the money to put on huge worldwide tours so that they and their friends can attend.

I'm not so sure how an indie music startup could create such strong emotional attachment to the artists, the way major labels can do this is taking the right for the music in exchange for an advance and doing aggressive marketing of a small number of acts.

varsketiz• 15 years ago

"If you use their music, EMI will have the power to approve your app, publish it themselves, and take a huge cut of any profit your app makes. Sound familiar?" Yes. Replace music with platform and EMI with Apple. Problem?

gitarr• 15 years ago

As a musician who is sick of the music industry: Yes, please!

(I'm currently transitioning into programming, as I cannot stand the "biz" part of the "music biz" anymore.)

draggnar• 15 years ago

I see the seeds of change in the Hype Machine and Soundcloud, but it seems right now that they are more for trendy music as opposed to popular music. I believe it is going to be a slow transformation, people listen to the radio and the labels work with cable companies very effectively (late night tv etc.)

amirf• 15 years ago

It reminds me of an old article I read back when oink.cd was shut down, criticizing the music industry: http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of...

I don't like labeling the whole SOPA case as "Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley", but in a way Hollywood is like the major record labels. However, I'm not sure it's a dying industry.

This is exactly where entrepreneurs and innovative startups can come in and help those old industries adapt to a not-so-new reality through advertisements, accessibility, convenience, etc.

jonathanl• 15 years ago

Interesting article, he has a few good points there.

I think Louis CK's workaround is also interesting (https://buy.louisck.net/). Instead of trying to make his performance video unhackable, he set it at a price low enough to not be worth the effort - and his sales soared through the roof.

loso4• 15 years ago

10 years ago I was a small time hip hop DJ who did some clubs and radio. Before I became a programmer, my dream was to become the next Puffy. I studied the industry big time (reading books, talking to people inside, doing interviews) and still do. I also worked security for years for the main purpose of being able to interact with the people behind the scenes (managers, promoters, etc). So even though I am not an expert, I know a decent amount about the music industry.

First of all I see some talk about how you can predict a hit. No, you can't. You have basic formulas that you know can do okay but a hit is usually a surprise. No one could predict Adele would be as big as she is now. Her first album was very good but it did not pick up steam in the US market. Lady Gaga was bounced around as well. She was almost dropped from her record label until Akon picked up the slack and was able to do something with her. Basically what I'm saying is that after something is made you may be able to tell that it is going to be big but you have to craft it first. While crafting it, you are not going by formula but what feels right. You don't know that it is going to be a hit while you are making it.

Second, you have to understand the record label model to be able to disrupt it. The point systems, mechanical royalties, publishing, different rules for selling overseas, etc. This is what the labels are good at. This is the moat to their castle. In the past, (before around 2002 or so) record labels would put out a bunch of artist and see which one stuck. They would lose money on 80 - 90% of their artist because all they needed was one or two to make it big to make their money back. Minor artist would also be able to make the label profits through the use of singles. But the record labels gave up the singles model for the larger profit margins of albums. Now it is different.

Now they have to be real careful who they put out. The profit margins are a lot thinner now than what they used to be. Piracy is one reason but a bigger reason is the more places for people to be able to spend their disposable income. The record labels did not make a pivot to change the way they did business when the economic problems hit. Instead the industry shrunk down and now we have less labels. But they are still doing business in the same fundamentally screwed up way that they did in the past. In their mind, why change something that has worked for over 50 years. Think Kodak and the reason for their recent bankruptcy.

The one thing they did change is how to make artist pay more for the squeeze that the record labels are feeling. New artist these days have to bring to the table a built in fan base. The label then will try to expand that base. For the most part, if you want to be signed to a record label these days then they have to know that you have a track record with fans. Take an artist like Whiz Khalifa. He already had a big buzz when the record labels signed him. He could have made a lot of money staying independent. But most artist want the international fame that accompanies the major record labels. So he signed with them so they could push him internationally. In the past having a buzz would help you get signed but it was not the only factor. Now in most cases, you HAVE to have a big buzz.

The labels are also making the artist pay more in a new type of deal structure. This signing is called a 360 deal. In the past, the deal basically was that an artist would receive a (relatively) low amount of points on a record put out. This is especially true if you were a new artist. But it didn't matter because if the record did well they could tour off of it. The tour and merchandise money was basically the artist only. This is how they would get rich. Now record labels have made sure they get a part of that money as well. A 360 deal makes an artist have to cut the record label in when it comes to merchandising and tour money. AND they still get low points on the album. You either accept this new industry practice or you do not get signed.

The record labels are ripe for disruption. New artist are available all of the time. But you not only have to study what the labels got wrong, you also have to study what they got right. First, musical talent is only part of the equation when it comes to selling music. People have to be personally invested in the artist. They have to like them and think that they know them. Record labels are experts at this. An artist either has to relate to the consumer or the artist has to be someone they idolize. Think of it like the Fanboy trap that we see when it comes to tech. Go to any gossip blog site. People argue about the artist as if they know them. Some people love them for no reason and others hate them for no reason. But the key factor is that they love talking about them. So if you build software to disrupt the industry, this has to be in the equation. Your service has to allow people to have a personal connection with the artist. None of the music services now do this. They let you listen to the artist but the connection is already built in from somewhere else. I would say the best right now at doing this is Youtube. But even Youtube could do a lot better job of it. MySpace was kinda on the right path but bad design decisions killed that.

Second, a new service to disrupt the industry would also have to think about the people who make the artist what they are. The stylist, the make up people, the manager, the promoters, the background singers, and etc. An artist is a package. And you would have to allow for that package to be dealt with in a new disruption model. The record labels feed a lot of people and a lot of those people are vital for a record and an artist to be pushed.

I have a lot more that I have to say about this subject but I have already built up a wall of text so I'll cut it here. I'm a little bit passionate about this topic because I have seen for years how the label system screws both artist, DJ's and fans. They need to be brought down and brought down hard but it will not be easy. The one thing that you will find is that most artist have no business sense. They want to be able to create and that's it. We see this line of thinking with some software programmers as well. But programmers usually keep a steady job. Most artist have a short shelf life. It's not until they are broke that they realize how they have been screwed. Before that happens though, they love the industry.

sjtgraham• 15 years ago

+1 on this. Very well said.

I also used to voraciously consume endless books about the business side of the music industry, specifically the legal and marketing side of things. I imagine there is still a box full of those books in extant at my parents' home. I too had aspirations of becoming a mogul in the mould of Combs, so I wonder how many there are of us whom had these aspirations and are now hackers?

BTW is your name a hat tip to the rapper Fabolous? I ask because you joined HN around the time of Loso's Way.

loso4• 15 years ago

Yeah it is. His song "Breath" came on when I signed up and not being able to think of a username at the time I went with it.

laserDinosaur• 15 years ago

This post was more interesting than the article!

nextparadigms3• 15 years ago

What do you think of Google's Artist Hub? Is that the kind of thing you'd like to see more?

http://music.google.com/artists/

From what you said the labels are already killing themselves by raising their own commissions and by demanding an artist already has a big fanbase. If a lot of artists have to get to that point, some of them might realize they don't even need a big label to make them more popular, and will just look for tools and services for self-publishing like Youtube and the Google Artist Hub.

loso4• 15 years ago

Even though I use Google Music and have developed Android apps, this is the first time I'm hearing about this service from Google. It looks good but I am going to have to explore it some more to get an educated opinion. But so far it looks like a good start.

Whatever service tries to bring in independent artists, it has to be easy to use. A lot of artist loved Myspace because it was easy to upload music & videos. It was also easy to engage your fans. To them it was ugly but it got the job done.

Though it may not seem like it, the music industry is way behind when it comes to tech trends. At least in Urban music. While I'm not as well versed, people in EDM seem to be pretty tech savvy. In the Urban block, Blackberry's were still the most popular phones until about the end of 2010. Many in the industry considered both the IPhone & Android a toy. So any tech aimed at them has to be simple. For every artist who has mastered using Ableton or Cubase there are ten more who think using Fruity Loops is like launching the space shuttle.

mikeleeorg2• 15 years ago

In the past, (before around 2002 or so) record labels would put out a bunch of artist and see which one stuck. They would lose money on 80 - 90% of their artist because all they needed was one or two to make it big to make their money back.

When I read this, I thought of VCs and how they'll back many promising startups in the hopes that some percentage of them will generate significant returns for them.

To distill down what you said, would it be accurate to characterize record labels as sort of a marketing agency for musicians, where marketing means branding, positioning, promoting, distribution, public relations, community building, etc?

And that instead of a musician hiring such a marketing agency, these agencies offer their services for a (massive) cut of the musician's earnings?

I ask because it feels like some music startups are in a good position to do this, such as Topspin and Bandcamp. At least, they have the start of a distribution system and some primary promotional features. The whole brand image thing doesn't quite feel like their forte, but they could certainly try adding that too.

To top it off, these startups could build a marketplace of service professionals that help musicians with stylists, managers, promoters, background singers, etc.

The difference between these startups and record labels is how their technologies to allow them to scale without constantly increasing their cuts from musicians' earnings.

Just thinking off the top of my head.

loso4• 15 years ago

Yeah, they are basically a full service marketing firm but they don't think of themselves that way. I've never worked in a label but I have talked to several people who have and they think of themselves more as a grooming service. In other words they prepare the artist on how to be famous as well as make them famous. Every label thinks they are in the mold of Motown. And if you have ever read up on Motown then you know that they had very tight control of their artist. From image, to song selection and everything else in between.

I think that any model that handles the X Factors easily for artist would be the one to beat the record labels. I have a bunch of different ideas in my head competing with each other on what would be the best way to do this. I'm still lost on what is the correct one. I just know that it can be done.

rickmb2• 15 years ago

I'm sorry, but all I read here is the suggestion to accommodate greed instead of music or art.

Which may be perfectly sound (no pun intended) advice for anyone trying to do a startup related to the music industry, but it has nothing to do with disrupting it.

Disrupting the music industry would be taking all of that unsustainable crap that turns the artist into "a package" out of the equation, not perpetuating it.

LesZedCB• 15 years ago

What might be the best way to disrupt an industry? I believe it is to provide competitors which beat out the other competition because they are so much better. He isn't talking about greed, he's talking about business sense... Or do you want to go attack their websites or something silly like that?

Also why is calling artists a 'package' disrupting? I agree they are people. But when I want to listen to Led Zeppelin, I don't think about how I want to listen to the musical contributions of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones during their career together. No, I experience them as the musical whole. I think that's all he means.

christofd• 15 years ago

great wall of text! you have a weblog or so? interested in the intersection of technology and cultural stuff as well... i'm based in toronto, btw. quite often in nyc. cheers.

ethank• 15 years ago

I used to be a label executive and you pretty much nailed it. And nailed why I left.

I worked with a group of really great people who strove for innovation. However the tendency is still to mine the past for as much as its worth until there is nothing left to mine.

Try this thought experiment: take the earnings from any of the labels and see how much is from catalog vs new signings, and how much was spent to market catalog vs new signings.

Basically wmg would be in a better place to just shut everything down except Rhino and Chappell and ride out their mechanical and publishing contracts to end.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Yea, but I don't think this alone explain what led to SOPA/PIPA/etc. Can you explain what led to them? To be honest the MPAA is also to blame, but...

ayu• 15 years ago

I'd encourage you guys to check out artists who made it big without major labels, like Skrillex. He did everything via the internet, playing shows, and word of mouth.

generic_b• 15 years ago

So, I have this idea I wanna create a prototype for that I think would do just this. It could either work with the music industry and help make their process cheaper, or it could even replace it if it ever became popular enough to be used by main stream artists. This idea is the reason I started teaching myself some web dev stuff about a year ago. About 6 months ago I got a job at a somewhat small but completely awesome start up. My thought is that within about a year I'll understand the full stack enough to make a prototype for me and my friends, but for this idea (which has been tried before, but failed) to work I think it has to be slow growing.

If some of you guys come up with some baller distribution software in the meantime, that would be awesome, but if you want to kill the music industry you've gotta go way deeper than music distribution. This article is interesting, but I think it's only thinking about the problem in a superficial way, folding already existing technologies into the strategy. This is the internet guys. It's brand new. There are so many great possibilities that haven't been realized yet that it's almost insane to do something that someone else has done before. Sound Cloud allows people to share their own music, that's a good start and as far as I can tell they're doing well with it. I kinda feel like people here are arguing for a slightly different version of that. In my mind, that's wasting time. I have my idea, but I'll bet some of you can develop a different or maybe even similar but better one if you push yourselves so I don't wanna taint the idea pool with my specific plan.

If your idea is to take an existing structure and make it more social or something, that's an ok idea but it's not very innovative. You should think about what is not being done with music and artists at all right now. Then go with that. New is good, and exciting and on the internet it's easy to convince people to spend a few minutes checking it out. Then it's just gotta be cool enough to convince them to stay and signup.

Another good strategy is to take something that exists right now in the real world, that people are familiar with, and make an online version. There are so many possibilities to do this right now that it seems silly to me that companies like google try to create their own social network. Although I get the appeal of owning all of that freely given demographic information.

Anyway, just some ramblings. I'm obviously new to this stuff so maybe I'm retarded. But I thought I'd try to stimulate some fresh ideas if I could.

logn• 15 years ago

I think we have killed the music business. The problem is that there is so much music we listen to that they own the copyrights to, and will for 70+ years, that we're sort of locked into them for a certain amount of time.

But the future is micro labels, digital distribution/sales via Apple/Amazon/Google/eMusic, music videos at YouTube, publicity via Pandora/Spotify/LastFM, PR via Facebook/Twitter, shows with indie ticket sellers, t-shirts with Zazzle, etc etc.

bosonx• 15 years ago

Well, I tried something similiar with two friends a year ago. But unlike songspin we asked every single musician whether he/she's ok with having his/her music on fill.fm and we also provide links to the stores where you can buy more of the artists' music and links to the artists' homepages.

aaronmoodie• 15 years ago

I did some work in 2011 with a number of local bands, one of which has quite a big international following. This band recorded and produced their latest album themselves, yet despite this, still went to the major labels to release the album. I asked why they would do this since they own the copyright to their work and have a large enough following to get the coverage? Because the major labels still have the promotional might to reach more people. This was pretty much the only reason.

It was really interesting having an insight to the process as the band went along. I think I was most shocked at just how behind and locked in tradition the major labels really are. This was most evident in the actual release of the album. As I've mentioned, this band had recorded, produced and had artwork done when talks began. Despite this, the labels wanted to wait 4 months, 4 MONTHS, before releasing the album. Obviously, you can imagined what happend. The album ended up on torrent sites 2 months before it was released.

It's exactly this sort of unwillingness to change and adapt that has been undoing the major labels. The whole point of a digital file is that is can be distributed the second is it ready. If a digital version of the album had have been made available immediately, I sure a lot of fans would have bought it straight out. Instead, they get impatient and use a torrent site resulting in a loss of sales.

The main thing I took away form the whole experience is where we need to focus in order to remove these fools from the game. The music industry no longer has room for three players. Where once it was the band, label and fans, now it's just the bands and the fans. Major labels are only still relevant because they can offer something that the current suite of online tools can't, publicity. Work out a way to crowd source that, and bands will have no desire, or need, to approach a major label.

Just as a farmers market fosters and nurtures the relationship between producer and consumer, so to does the music industry need such a 'market' to foster direct relations between band and fan.

Can we kill the music business too?

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