Hunter in the Dragon

The Masses Remake Music Industry

For 17 years, Jeff Price owned an independent label called spinART Records. He managed to do great things, but that was before the so-called digital revolution. In 2004, Price realized the label was no longer sustainable.

“The advent and general adoption of the Internet, digital media and hardware took control of the global music industry away from the record labels and media outlets and handed it to the masses,” he writes. (Source)

Rather than cursing the masses and resisting changes brought on by the Internet, Price decided to adapt. He wanted to stay in the music business but needed to make money. “[W]hat could I do to remain in the music industry under a model that would not rely on selling music (the exploitation model),” he asked himself. “And thus the idea for a new model was born, turn distribution into a service for a simple up front, one time flat fee.”

Digital Label

Price created a service called TuneCore, which allows artists to upload songs and create albums. TuneCore places these albums in online music stores, and artists keep all the profits and all their rights. And they can cancel their accounts at any time. The catch? Well, if you want to call it that, TuneCore charges $19.98 a year per album for storage and maintenance. Not a bad deal.

What’s the opposite of digital label? Analog label? That doesn’t sound right. But you get the idea. Under the new model, Price makes money storing music instead of selling it. He makes no judgment about whether a band stinks or is good enough to sign. He just stores and maintains the uploads. Artists with enough talent and perseverance can control their own careers, and make music and money in the process.

Descontrol

Price alludes to the long tail theory posited by Wired editor Chris Anderson. In the old days, the only feasible way to sell products to the masses was to get products placed on store shelves (or through mail order), which were often limited to only those items that sold well. The Internet has created virtual shelf space, and anybody can set up online stores to sell products and services. Long tail virtual shelf space is financially do-able even if you move only a few units a year. The Internet also has brought down the cost of marketing and promoting those products and services.

Artists are no longer slaves to major record labels, radio, and media outlets like MTV. They can market and promote themselves with their own web sites and blogs, through music blogs and music news sites, various online music services like Last.FM and iLike, and through social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube.

Price concludes with this (emphasis added):

Allowing all music creators “in” is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts — control has been taken away from the “four major labels” and the traditional media outlets. We, the “masses,” now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want. It is then the public, not a corporation that gets to decide what is bad and good. The revolution (pun intended) has truly begun.

As always, I encourage you read the articles I link to. Price’s essay on how he moved from independent label owner making money to independent label owner making too little money to digital distributor making money and helping artists make money is priceless.

Digital Diversion

Yesterday I interviewed an artist signed to an independent label. I’m writing an article about how the person’s faith in Christ affects the music, similar to this piece on Hanson. I like being a tease, so I won’t tell you who it is. I’ll link to the article when it goes live.

Speaking of Hanson, check out one of my favorite songs:

Related posts: Curse gaming, Jonasbrothers, Suspenders

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.