An Artist's View of the Modern Music Biz 210
Posted
by
kdawson
from the viral-no-more dept.
from the viral-no-more dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A member of the band OK Go wrote an interesting open letter giving an artist's perspective on the current state of the music business and how labels finance producing, distributing, and marketing music and music videos. A very insightful perspective of 'both sides': the argument that music and music videos are meant to be heard and, in the case of the latter, seen by a wide audience; and the argument that the money needs to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, the letter doesn't address the perspective outsiders have of outlandish salaries in the music labels, but it is interesting nonetheless." Their new video is not bad either.
Promotion (Score:3, Interesting)
This used to be selling CDs. Seeing as nobody buys CDs any more, this should be music downloads or live tours/merchandise. (I'm sure someone with a bit more time on their hands can dig out a link to that graph showing which people are making money out of music now).
If your record label is spending a fortune on making your video and then not allowing certain countries to see it, then you're not going to be making money from those countries (or not as much as you could). It's not like there is an incremental cost involved in allowing it to go on other blogs/other country's youtube. It's just that the record label is being greedy because they think they can get some money out of them, at the cost of the band's image.
Re:Should Have Grown Organically (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the replies to the article sounds like a record company person, and i think part of it sums it up quit succinctly;
"Need" is obviously contingent on your band wanting to achieve certain things, none of which are *necessary*. To achieve those things, you needed some money you didn't have, and decided to sacrifice some freedom with your music, in exchange for the advance money.
"the money needs to come from somwhere" (Score:3, Interesting)
The notion that if you give data away you can't make money on it is a fallacy that has been disproven time and again. Libraries have been around for centuries; you can walk in, check out an armful of books for free, and read them, and go back for more. Even a small city's library has more books than one could read, and they're constantly updated with more.
The music industry was sure that radio would kill record sales. Instead, it sold more records. The movie industry was sure that TV would kill the movie industry, but instead it got more people interested in movies. They thought tthe VCR would kill the industry, look what happened. The music industry thought cassettes would kill it, but like the VCR and movies it sold more product.
The established industry is going about digital data backwards. They should use MP3s like thay use radio -- a free lure to get people to shell out cash for physical items.
If giving it away meant that you couldn't sell it, Cory Doctorow would not have been on the New York Times best seller list. Besides libraries, you can get digital copies of his books for free on his website. The forward to Little Brother explains this far better than this slashdot comment; I urge everyone to read that book, or at least the forward.
Sure, what the hell (Score:4, Interesting)
In the spirit of making it without a major label and needing a little exposure for my own work, here are four free tracks off the ambient album I'm working on: http://www.livingwithanerd.com/music [livingwithanerd.com]. These are 100% DRM and cost free. Enjoy!
Re:Should Have Grown Organically (Score:3, Interesting)
When my beloved Decemberists moved from Kill Rock Stars to Capitol Records, I wondered what the reason was.
Whatever their reasons, the result was hugely more ambitious records - in terms of production values and sheer number of instruments - and more ambitious live shows. I suspect that with all the extra gear, these were expensive shows to put on. Kill Rock Stars probably couldn't have handled that much cashflow.
But, they left it late. Colin Meloy of the band said:
We felt that in some ways, if we continued putting out records on [Kill Rock Stars], we'd totally be fine. But we also felt like we needed to kind of up the ante a little bit. One should only move to a major label when one can pretty much call the shots.
It seems as if being handled by a major before you've hit success, is bad news all round.
Um, what was that argument again? (Score:2, Interesting)
It was a frigging marching band, for Grid's sake! They could have gone to a sizable local high school, recruited the cooperation of the band director, and done this entirely by themselves -- including distributing it on YouTube -- for only a few bucks. And they wouldn't have to worry about distribution restrictions, because they wouldn't be owned by a label! And the band would be happy to cooperate if given credit, because they would be famous, if only for a little while.
The video is decent, but there is nothing there that requires any fancy label support or financing. I have seen more impressive shows by high school bands, and I mean that quite literally and sincerely.
Sorry, but the actual product does not back their arguments. I call bullshit.
Others are doing it successfully. If OK Go can't... well... I won't lose sleep over it.
Re:Other artist's insight (Score:3, Interesting)
I found this [toomuchjoy.com] an interesting look at how labels treat their bands, and it kind of straddles the 'digital revolution'. It's a blog entry about an unrecouped band trying to get digital sales credited on their statement, to hilarious effect.
Re:Should Have Grown Organically (Score:3, Interesting)
I also don't understand why he thinks that artists 'need' record labels. What they 'need' is to grow organically to the point of extreme popularity and along the way you are the one deciding the terms of contracts and you are 'the boss' whose accountant and manager work for you and pay everyone up the chain.
There's an assumption implicit here that is all too common: That music needs to be a business, or even that record sales, radio play, the stuff record companies are seen to be good for, are a viable source of income for a large portion of musicians these days. Most of the bands and projects I listen to are far too obscure to make any significant cash on sales of recordings. They don't get any radio play worth mentioning. They know selling music is not, and never will be, something they can rely on as a significant source of income. Still, they continue to make great music, maybe making some cash off gigs, probably making most of their money from something quite separate from their band work.
So the people treating music as a business - feel free to do so, but if you fail to attain the level of profitability you deem necessary, I'm not inclined to jump through hoops to make the world more suitable for your needs. Anyone complaining that music is becoming too difficult to draw a profit from, and that artists will suffer from that is forgetting that the majority of artists already don't, and never will, make enough money to live off. The group of artists that sells enough records and gets enough radio play to get significant income from it is very small and I'm quite prepared to live without them.
Music should be free (Score:3, Interesting)
If music is "good" (opinions will vary according to taste) people will listen to it repeatedly, word will spread, and people will become fans of the creators of that music - wanting to own something to demonstrate their fandom: A CD, an MP3, a t-shirt, a ticket to the next gig etc... This is what makes getting fans more important than "selling cds" to most artists. Fans are LOVE followed by INCOME (You're not going to stop a year old girl from buying the next Hanna Montana, for example).
Distributors (most labels), on the other hand, are only interested in those revenue streams they can tie up for shortterm income - which creates one-hit-wonders, mediocre boybands, and starves out 99% of musicians - as well as actually alienating real fans and bands - driving a wedge between them. (for example: many record companies hold the rights to most full times bands music - and can override a bands decision on how they want to get their material out to fans, as exemplified in the article above).
Now: If it's not "good" music to begin with -. people won't listen to it -despite whether it is freely available or not. People *might* check it out out of curiosity - but won't return, and certainly won't put money into it if the y have a choice. If they did already they will feel burned.
Professional distributors promote very much according to a "pay-to-try policy: they limit access to the extra songs on albums, demand roylaties from indy web radio stations..control the airwaves and promote airplay for only the (most commercial track) single across any medium (radio, itunes etc) that will take it. This is why so much "Bad music" gets aired - in case you wonder why the charts are filled with shite (But you already knew that cos its a conspiracy theory and this is Slashdot).
Anyway: The income generated from "good music" by fans is largely independent of this supersale effort by the labels.... so arguably the best model for these bands, as exemplified by bands like Radiohead and 9-inch... is to actually give the shit away for free: They can recoup the "first sale" profit by attracting more fans. Ironically most musicians have dreamed of "The record deal" since they were 5 years old... so usually they are actually the most reluctant to risk this sales model - preferring the safety of servitude to a label over the risk of pushing "valueless music" (if its free it aint worth much, right?).
Also: as this model starts to become more popular.. a lot of smaller bands will get lost in the noise. Maybe less millionaires will get made, but in the long run this is a much better world to play music in. I like it anyway.. but then I found a day job.
Shameless plug: My music (with money goes mouth) is available at Stabbing Pixies [stabbingpixies.com]/ it will never hit the Billboards
Re:A non-story. (Score:2, Interesting)
+1. Artists ALWAYS made money through concerts only. That was so 200 years ago, that was so 30 years ago, and that is so now. Yes, there are few exceptions, like Metallica, Beatles, Madonna, Michael Jackson who made it to platinum albums. But these are few and far between.
Yes, there was a period of time when labels came into existence and enjoyed their position for nearly a century. Well, Label people. You got it good while it lasted, so don't feel bitter now. Your time is over. Go back to doing actual work.
No Paid Downloads? (Score:2, Interesting)
The article bemoans the death of CD sales, and makes some decent points, but it's got a weird blind spot around paid digital downloads. Isn't iTunes the largest music retailer in the US now? Am I the last person who's happy to pay for music in a format, and with a level of convenience, that I like? I haven't bought a new CD in years, but between iTunes and Amazon MP3, I've got vastly more at my fingertips than any CD store ever sold.
Lets check some Created On dates, and see what I've spent money on in the past year...
I'm not even a big music buff. What about paid digital downloads?
Jonathan Byrd... (Score:3, Interesting)
Independent singer/songwriter Jonathan Byrd [jonathanbyrd.com] released his own financial statement for 2008 [jonathanbyrd.com]. (You'll have to scroll down to his 3/28/2009 update for it).
I was amused by his summary:
Re:Wow, Why Didn't I Think of That?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the thing: Youtube and other social networks are now _way_ more important now for promotion than classic radio, especially for a band that is primarily listened to by young people. And they're free!
You don't need any of that in the beginning. Look at Artic Monkeys. They made a few gigs and gave away a some demo CDs (those CD duplication companies burn you 1000 CDs with covers for £500), the fans started file-sharing and upload to MySpace.
Re:Not really a solution- live is a ripoff too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Your statement, while a valid opinion, doesn't reflect the fact that the market dictates that $100 a ticket is acceptable for some bands. Just because you don't want to pay it doesn't mean other people won't.
Plus you're talking about the huge huge groups. Even moderately famous groups don't rent stadiums, they still play in clubs and theater venues.
So... I'm not quite sure what you're arguing.
Re:Wow, Why Didn't I Think of That?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Labels write checks. That's what no one else does. They are very much like loan sharks, the interest rate on the checks they write are terrifying, but if you are a small band, or a young band, many times you can afford tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do all those things you mentioned above.
There's one other difference. They forgive the loans if the band can't pay them back. This may seem like very thin gruel if you're working on what seems like indentured servitude for years to make your act big, but 90% of all bands break up (or are released from their contract) before the terms of those contracts expire.
A better model to view this under might be that of venture capital funds. In exchange for money and "management expertise" (in addition to a fair amount of buzz in the money community), you sell off large chunks of your ownership and IP. You may slave for years for little more than a mediocre paycheck. In the end, a lot (if not most) of what you make goes back to the VC firm. If you're lucky, you hit it big, too.
Granted, most VC firms don't sue their customers... that often. And, that being said, there's a lot to dislike about the VC money marketplace, too. But if you can see (labels funding bands) (VCs funding startups), the kids in the band don't have that bad of a deal - like they say, they get paid for making cool stuff (that actually sounds like all the other cool stuff out there, but... see! It is like the VC industry!).