The Music Biz - Raze it and start over again!
Interesting interview with Bethany Klein of the University of Leeds on the future of the music business.
Klein: (Another sigh.) It’s a really difficult question because I guess I just don’t really care. I mean you’re right to say they employ thousands of people, but I think the music industry as it’s structured might be better off to raze it and start all over again and think about completely different systems of production and distribution, in which those thousands of people can still participate but in a slightly different way. It’s hard for me to think about how to fix an industry that, long before piracy, long before the digital revolution, was already failing in a lot of ways, in terms of cultural explorations.
M-M: How, exactly, were labels falling short?
Klein: Major labels function with the assumption that 90 percent of artists they sign are going to fail — that should have been a red flag for everybody. I mean that’s a bizarre business model in any arena. But particularly in the cultural arena, the idea that the system through which culture is transmitted is dictated entirely by profit should concern us, because that’s going to narrow the types of culture that are transmitted. And then, on top of that, the alternative venues of distribution are stuck in the shadows of these major labels. So it’s not like there’s a viable alternative, necessarily, for artists who don’t fit into this very narrow range that can become the 10 percent that are profitable and popular.
More or less what I’ve been saying for years - just about all the music I love falls in the 90% that the major record companies class as “failure”. The majors have been run by accountants for years; their idea of a ’success’ has devolved into talent show contestants singing covers. The sooner they’re consigned to the dustbin of history the better.
What I don’t think we’ll see is a ‘one-size fits all’ business model for all kinds of music. We’ll see more artists outside of the sausage-factory market following the pre-order model pioneered by Marillion. We’ll certainly see some bands deciding to give their recordings away for free, making their money on touring. And some business models will fail.
As for the record company’s role as ‘gatekeepers’:
MySpace is basically music being distributed filter-free; well, what that means is that you get a million bands that are kind of awful and a few gems in there. But it’s a lot of work for consumers, and I’m not sure it’s more productive, or even more liberating, than other models like independent labels that clearly have a type of music they’re going to promote or a fanzine culture that also starts to filter things for you. Do people write fanzines anymore? I don’t know; I guess they blog. Maybe that’s the problem with the many-to-many communication style of the Internet — it becomes more difficult to find gatekeepers or filters you find trustworthy.
I think the many-to-many communication style is certainly no worse than the top-down model of the old music biz. Yes, it many be a lot of work to find bloggers who’s views you find trustworthy, but is really no better than the agenda-driven herd-instinct groupthink of the mainstream music press?
November 27th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
The filtering will happen. Years ago, Karen and I predicted that the biggest asset on the Internet would eventually be filtering the wheat from the chaff.
It’s slow to happen, but it’s happening in many areas. I think the Internet’s biggest problem right now is a reluctance to filter… gotta friend everybody that even remotely knows who you are, gotta follow everyone on Twitter that follows you. In blog aggregation, nobody gets left out… the net is about inclusion right now.
Eventually, folks will figure out that there is little value in blind inclusion and much value in selectivity. The filtering will happen.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
The last thing I want to see is some sort of one-size-fits all filtering which will just end up with the same lowest common denominator as before. If that’s all that happens, Al Gore will have wasted his time inventing teh internets.
Interesting to see how things like last.fm work out - some sort of intelligent filtering that starts out on the basis that everyone’s tastes are not the same.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I reckon any form of filtering of music on the net will be flawed, and biased by favouritism, bribes/incentives- resulting in the same old problems as of the old music industry.
I’d like to see a myspace random radio player that randomly selects unsigned artists’ tracks regardless of chart position or who’s hyping them- if you don’t like it, you can just hit next to move on to another.
that way you could discover artists you like quickly and easily using your ears alone.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Most people don’t have the time or inclination to see out music by themselves - perhaps landfill indie or “ASDA-pop” is all they deserve.
Still, I’m not convinced that some kind of internet-based “wisdom of crowds” approach will work better than the current method music being filtered by self-appointed trendy cliques and corporate shills.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I just read on the ROTD forum about Pinnacle distribution going bust-
which they’re saying is the death knell for the UK music industry-
with so many labels depending on Pinnacle and the collateral damage this will cause. could be game over for the old business model here.
I guess there is net music filtering of sorts with stations on Soundclick, as used to be on mp3.com back in the day-
anyone can set up station pages selecting songs they like, and users will hear
each song stream in turn.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Do Pinnacle distribute for the majors or just the indies? If smaller labels can’t get their records into bricks-and-mortar shops then I think it’s game over for the high street record shop; they won’t have any greater variety of stuff on sale as Tescos. The whole retail business is going to shift online, if it hasn’t already.
I’m convinced (going on statements from people like Matt Cohen of The Reasoning) that independent labels are part of the old business model; recording is now cheap enough for bands to do albums on their own without needing advances from labels; the useful things that record companies did (such as promotion) can be done by individual businesses bought in.