Music 2.0? Musicians are the new bloggers

14 May 2009

Before we get started, I want to clearly define something. The Music Industry, as protected by the RIAA, is largely considered as the business of music: Record Labels, Concert Promoters, Merchandising, Distribution and the like. Ironically there is a huge piece missing from the traditional definition, the artist.

Key #1: If you are an artist, never give up ownership of your music, ever.

If you read Mix Magazine’s interview with Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine, you will read about a technologist’ un-watered down opinion of an industry that’s dying. Surely you are not surprised by this, but let’s state it again for clarity. The greed and fear that surrounds the music industry is toppling from within, but it goes far beyond business men clinging to antiquated business models. It is centered around one of the most obvious oversights in the history of business. An industry that has forgotten it’s product.

In order to maximize profits, the music business is offering more of less music. By this I mean, they are more than happy to release greatest hits collections, remixes and rehashes of everything you have ever heard, than promote a newer, unproven artist. Today, the music business is still the primary source of new music. Channels like radio, iTunes/Zune and television still promote known artists because they know it sells.

Suffer the long tail

Chris Anderson’s book focuses on the long tail, a concept that says that basically says, with an unlimited ability to provide products to customers, you will reach more customers than providing a more limited set of more popular products.

Key #2: Take your music to your audience, record labels don’t tell people what to listen to anymore, make sure that you are where they go.

The internet is that unlimited shelf. These days anyone has the ability to get their music on iTunes, Zune, Amazon, Facebook, Myspace and the like. The places where people congregate are finally accessible. Get your music into the path of the long tail, and if it’s good, it will reach the head.

The rap industry has embraced this philosophy and it has made countless millions under the radar of Sony, RCA and the like. With home studio equipment being affordable and capable of the quality many major studios produce, it was just a matter of replacing the distribution model.

Is history repeating itself?

I have seen something very similar to this before. I have been writing since I was in my teens. Submitting editorials to newspapers, I even published my own weekly paper for about a year. I love to write, but I have never been in a position to truly write professionally. In those days, that meant having your articles picked up by some sort of a major circulation, having a book published, etc. Today that means pop up a blog, say something interesting, promote yourself a bit, and watch the readers come. These days they come to the tune of about 30,000 a month. That’s 10 times the circulation that my weekly newspaper reached. It’s even more so than that because I know they came, publishing a newspaper like I did was “put it out and hope they read.”

Fast-forward to today, and you will see newspapers and magazines falling left and right. Some bloggers have become quite powerful, and an entire industry struggles stay in the game because while they were sleeping, a pretty incredible replacement for their medium showed up in the night.

It’s already happening

Take a stroll to Trent Reznor’s NIN.com. Trent in particular, has quite a good grip on how things are going. Being a particular premium product, and that’s what artists are in the music industry, he managed to just stroll out the door of the bigs and walk his own way.

Key #3: Be your own marketing pioneer, manage your own community, use your music as a reward to loyal listeners.

How it will look in the future

If random guys like Shoe Money can make tons of money on the hype of blogging via ads, I am betting that many other musicians can too. The ways a musician can make money are still there.

Some people will still want physical CDs, instead of making thousands, use a service that makes one on demand, of course it will cost you $3-4 per CD plus shipping, but I guarantee you the $6-7 left over is loads higher than what a label would ever give you.
Don’t give up merchandising, and do it yourself. Make your band/artist website the exclusive place to get T-Shirts, Hoodies, Hats, etc.
Play out and play a lot. Concert money is yours, you will still have to deal with promoters and such, but get with it, you are your own business manager now.
Stream some of your performances on your website to entice people to visit your site and hopefully visit you in concert.
Build your own site, use sites like MySpace and FaceBook to point people to your real site. Monetize it with ads, endorsements and sponsorships.

Being someone who considers themselves both a musician and a technologist, I find the entire development both fascinating and hilarious. Music will continue to survive, and when the traditional industry sees the bottom clearly, it will begin to thrive again. Keep jamming out and support your favorite artists until the ship rights itself.

2 Responses to Music 2.0? Musicians are the new bloggers

JC Reus

May 15th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

Any thought to the argument that with the internet becoming such an “unlimited shelf”, that music will become far more disposable – what with myspace.com, pandora.com, grooveshark.com etc.. offering it up for free. What is an artist to do when music becomes a novelty rather than a product?

Jason Burns

May 15th, 2009 at 8:27 pm

I think you might have missed my point entirely JC. The point to my hypothesis is that the digital files that carry the music will cease to be the product, and as it was back when the music industry was born, the artist was the product. Think back to the 50s, Elvis’s records weren’t the product, so many people didn’t have record players. The product was Elvis. Records were made for the single purpose of playing the music on the radio which earned the artist royalties and the radio station ad revenue, he made money with movies, television appearances and the like. It wasn’t until later in his career that he made mountains of cash from music sales itself. These days, the artist isn’t the product anymore. Concerts are so expensive that people rarely go, artists tour only the big cities and the days of everyone wearing concert T’s is over. The record labels are commonly pulling tour support for all but the largest artists, and the smaller or up and coming artists have to hope for a hit record or they fail. The tide is changing tho, artists are beginning to realize they are the product and marketing themselves accordingly. Keep an eye on Radiohead, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails and the like. They are the new pioneers and sooner or later a model is going to surface that works.