“In Transformative Vs Incremental Change Steve Lawson produces a good summation of the crisis facing the recording industry, and why this isn’t a crisis for the artist, but an opportunity (one that publishing corporations do not want artists to take),” writes Crosbie Fitch in Digital Productions, going on »»»
When you take an industry that has 4 big costs — recording, manufacture, distribution, promotion — and remove 3 of them, that changes everything.
Costs have been removed from the picture, but this only represents a loss in revenue to the publishing corporations — not to artists. Artists can now take advantage of this all being done for free — instead of signing to a label in order pay them their rates that were inflated in the first place.
Both ends were overcharged. The fan was overcharged for a copy, and the artist was overcharged for for the label to produce, promote, distribute, and retail their art.
Now that the extortionate costs have been removed, what will happen when both ends meet directly?
Advertising is completely broken. Recording tech is better and cheaper than it has ever been, fans are more and more willing to talk about and share your music, and far more happy to buy physical product from you than from a third party. Website merch is easy to do, either in short run, big order or even one-offs.
The record industry before the internet was built on the assumption that to have a chance of making it ‘big’, you needed to have deep pockets to risk the kind of gambling collateral needed to have a shot at being in the 0.1% who ended up rich.
The labels funded their gambling by owning the services they were charging you for, by keeping you in debt so they didn’t have to pay you, by keeping product prices artificially high, and by perpetuating myths about what it was that we all wanted and needed, as both artists and consumers.
Everything has changed. If you look at the current possibilities as an incremental change to the industry – that is, if you see the infrastructure as still being the same, and see MP3s as ‘invisible CDs’, you are truly truly screwed. It’s awful. That’s why the industry says ‘the sky is falling’. They aren’t willing to let go of that old infrastructure.
If you see the real changes, throw all the cards in the air, and realise that instead of hundreds of artists making millions of pounds, we can how have millions of artists making hundreds of pounds (and a straight, shallow line on the curve up from there), we’re all in good shape.”
Crosbie says he’s researching and developing revenue mechanisms and business models for producers of digital art and in the process, ‘has discovered copyright is not only an ineffective anachronism, but is unethical and unconstitutional‘.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Book authors are starting to get the concept ..
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/11/today-only-you-can-get-shatnerquake-forfree.html
Note from author Jeff Burke ..
Thank you for devoting some of your precious internet tubing to the downloading of my first book, Shatnerquake.
You may be wondering why I am offering my book for free. It is because I am an avid downloader as well. I believe that information, art, and entertainment wants to be free.
The internet has allowed us all so many opportunities to share with each other. To resist this is to resist the future. Others may attempt to block this forward progression with lawsuits and file protection. I, instead, want to do what I can to contribute to this wonderful digital community.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
There’s one thing I don’t think I agree with: that promotion is dead. It seems extremely probable that effective promotion in the future will be very different than promotion in the pre-internet age, but I don’t think that’s going to make publicity agents obsolete; it will merely change what they do on the job. They’re paid to be master manipulators of public interest with the available tools, and they’re simply going to have to master a new set of tools for the internet age – social and specialty news sites, relations with content distribution sites (e.g. Hulu and The Pirate Bay), etc.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
@Quantam
I agree. Promotion will NEVER die, only what is being promoted changes though the years.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Quantam, post-paradigm inversion, what was previously known as promotion becomes known as discovery. Instead of record labels pushing their music into the remote corners of the world so it meets the widest possible audience, the widespread audience instead sucks the music they like to them from the farthest reaches of the Internet so their desires find the greatest number of artists possible. Instead of artists having promotion agencies, audiences have discovery agencies (bloggers, etc.).
Pandora is an example of a discovery agent.
Artists liberate the public to share their music, and so make themselves as easy to discover as possible. The audiences then have the task of finding the music they like, and the respective artists they would commission to produce more.
Audience=potential fans, auditioning and seeking music.
Fan=someone who’s discovered some music they like, and the artist thereof.
Audiences pay artists with their attention.
Fans pay artists with their money.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
@ Crosbie
Audience=potential fans, auditioning and seeking music.
Fan=someone who’s discovered some music they like, and the artist thereof.
Audiences pay artists with their attention.
Fans pay artists with their money.
Exactly.
Cheers!
November 18th, 2009 at 9:53 am
To add to what Crosbie said, that promotion is more than just individual members of the audience seeking out new music. By liberating music, you enable all kinds of meta relationships to thrive, which can help pull a given artist out of “the pile.”
Pandora is a great example. Instead of effectively shutting it down by demanding massive royalties, whether or not they make “profit” from having ads on the site, liberating music would allow them to operate however they want. This ultimately is good for the artist because Pandora’s algorithm is designed around helping people discover new music based on what they already like. It narrows the search, increasing the likelihood that an artist will convert an audience member into a fan.
Blogs and other music sites are powerful as well – the recommendation of somebody who has credibility in a community is extremely powerful. He or she serves as an intermediary between searching audiences and new music. Previously this was something you would pay significant money for (and it existed as a one-way conduit) – now it’s an equitable relationship.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
SteelWolf, you’ve made a good comment in every respect except one. One very vital respect. This isn’t, as you suggest, about ‘liberating music’.
Music can be locked in a dungeon without food or water for a hundred years. That’s fine. Really. Don’t worry, the music can take it.
What is far more important is to liberate PEOPLE, to restore to people their natural right to share and build upon music, their right that was suspended in the 18th century.
It’s the people who need their cultural liberty, not the culture itself. It’s people who decide whether to keep their compositions private or to make them public. But, when they do make them public, they should not have a privilege attached that enables immortal publishing corporations to manacle the hands of the people, to persecute or imprison them, or to exclude them from the Internet.
People need their liberty TODAY. Not in 150 years. Not in 35 years. Not even in 14 years.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I think you’re absolutely correct. I think we’re speaking about the same things from two directions. I was thinking about eliminating artificial restrictions from (public) music, which restores people’s natural rights. You speak of the natural rights first, the logical conclusion of which is to eliminate artificial privileges.
I think your method is more powerful – sometimes I just tend to skip ahead to the effect and neglect the reasons why they should be.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:27 pm
the one other important cost which youve completely overlooked is how do these ‘artists’ actually live – ie pay rent/feed themselves/travel to meetings/clothe themselves if there isnt enough money coming in to do that?
I agree in the past all deals have been complete ripoffs to the artist but its naive to imagine that now we dont have to pay for manufacturing somehow music should be cheap as chips.
Its all very well to say:
“that instead of hundreds of artists making millions of pounds, we can now have millions of artists making hundreds of pounds (and a straight, shallow line on the curve up from there), we’re all in good shape.”
But we’re not in a good shape though are we. The UK Music industry IS in freefall.
I along with many other artist friends and small label friends are struggling to do anything at all in this current climate. I spoke with a singer-songwriter friend this morning who is currently out selling Gas(!) in order to make ends meet and feed her 2 year old baby. She used to be out touring with major acts as a backing singer as a way of making her main living. She was telling me how terrible she feels having to spend all her time doing jobs she doesnt want to do just to make ends meet which then leave her too tired when she gets home to be in any kind of creative mood.
For an artist is like a living death to not be able to do the things which youre drawn to do.
Being an artist isnt just what we do its WHO we are.
Having an army of teens knocking out tracks willy nilly and earning £100 a year does not an artist make.
Its fine for the bedroom boys (and girls) but the genuine artists are dying a death out here at the moment