I see the traditional record company being replaced by two sets of firms: 1) Online commission-based digital distribution firms and 2) Firms that handle tours, preferably also commission-based.
1) hasn't been done well yet. I know Amazon lets bands list and sell MP3s, and amiestreet.com offers music from indie artists with a funky pricing model. However, there's not really a "go-to" place right now with a large amount of traffic from people looking for independent music. Amazon is dominated by the majors, and no other site is very popular.
There are a number of popular places for a band to distribute their music for free, such as Myspace, but these places don't provide their bands with a revenue source. I can understand how bands would like to get paid if people love their music.
Some bands have resorted to selling their music themselves straight from their website (NIN, Radiohead, Girl Talk, etc.). However, it ought to be possible to automate this process to allow bands without technical skill to list and sell their own music (maybe make an embeddable music store?). Also, a central site off the band page could allow less popular bands to get some exposure.
Does 2) exist? I don't know. I have heard of some firms that manage tours for famous independent bands, the kind that have been around forever and have fulfilled their initial sodomizing major label deals. I don't know if any exists for mid-level bands.
One thing is for sure - the record companies are dinosaurs. They are glorified middle-men who connect bands with CD printing and distribution firms. Digital distribution means that they no longer serve a function, outside of marketing. That's the one downfall of online distribution - there are millions of bands on the internet and it is hard for fans to find new stuff they like.
There's been a number of startups that have tried to help people find new music, from the big guys like Pandora (dominated by majors), to new little guys like thefeelgood.com. I don't think anybody's gotten it right yet, and none of them mix the marketing with the monetizing well.
Honestly, if Myspace let bands sell MP3s on their profile page, it would probably be good enough and 10x better than anything currently out there.
So, what do you say Hacker News? Is anybody out there working on burying the record companies? What are your ideas, and how are you doing?
Anybody live in San Diego and want to do it with me?
Even if the major labels were only useful outside of marketing, that would make them a pretty big deal. The consumption of pop music hinges completely on how well your image and sound is sold to the general public. It's hard not to like "Umbrella" when it plays 10 times a day on top 40 radio. When Madonna's album is at eye level right when you walk into BestBuy, you can bet it's going to sell a lot more copies than similar (better?) ones that are just sitting alphabetized under "Pop / Rock."
If your aim as a musician is to earn enough money to make your full-time effort worthwhile, distributing music through MySpace alone might get you enough cash to survive. If you're shooting for worldwide fame or the type of money that lets you live like a rock star, you pretty much can't do without the connections and money the majors provide.
edit:
The point of all this being, no matter how cheap it gets to produce and distribute music, you'll never beat the majors (in pop music) if there's not a cultural shift away from consuming the music served out to the public by expensive marketing campaigns.
The article would suggest that most of the bands that "make it big" don't make a lot of money, unless they're like Madonna and have stayed popular past the initial sodomizing. So, making a living off of Myspace would be better for many bands than selling 500,000 albums one year.
Part of my argument, which I didn't explicitly state, is that most artists would rather their work be widely appreciated than it make a lot of money (any money?).
Regarding #1, there's definitely no complete winner out there yet so being on all of them is the best a band can do. Services like cdbaby.com propagate your tracks to dozens of such services (44 in all currently including iTunes, amiestreet.com, etc.) and also take care of other things for you like selling physical discs online and taking credit cards from sales at concerts, so that's probably the best thing going for a band right now. And once a clear winner in the online music sales appears, cdbaby.com will I'm sure also deal with them too on your behalf.
And as a comparison of profits from something like iTunes, I've heard major label artists make less than $1 on their digital album sales, and pennies on the song, whereas through the cdbaby.com submission to iTunes I get paid about $0.64 per song (up to $0.89 for a sale on iTunes UK after currency conversion!) or $6+/album.
For #2, I guess that's where booking and promo agencies come in, but they only tend to work with artists once they've built a following and can get people out to the gigs they set up.
In either case though, the only benefit added by major labels is advertising dollars (which also amounts to mainstream radio airplay, very hard to get without a major). This is basically VC for the music industry if you look at it that way. So maybe just getting some angel investors interested in your band might be a better approach too...
This is something I've thought a lot about since I've been in a pretty serious indie band.
A few bands have contracted me to develop download forms like the Girl Talk/Radiohead forms, and it would cost them $400 for a custom script. I thought that it would be cool to make a startup similar to Wufoo that would let indie bands customize their own forms for $20/mo and host everything for them. Then the bands could embed the form on their MySpace page and website. They could also allow blogs like Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Gorilla vs. Bear to embed it in their reviews/coverage.
You could get creative with revenue sharing and advertising, but that's the general idea.
However, there's not really a "go-to" place right now with a large amount of traffic from people looking for independent music.
I've been "going to" emusic for years for all of my music. And it's the third (was second before Amazon moved into the market) largest vendor of online music (in volume, I think).
That doesn't deflate your argument, at all, I just wanted to mention it...as I absolutely adore emusic. They also seem to have good relationships with very small labels and wholly independent artists (i.e. artists not even signed to an "indy" label--they just make it themselves and sell it through emusic and other online stores).
Comments
I see the traditional record company being replaced by two sets of firms: 1) Online commission-based digital distribution firms and 2) Firms that handle tours, preferably also commission-based.
1) hasn't been done well yet. I know Amazon lets bands list and sell MP3s, and amiestreet.com offers music from indie artists with a funky pricing model. However, there's not really a "go-to" place right now with a large amount of traffic from people looking for independent music. Amazon is dominated by the majors, and no other site is very popular.
There are a number of popular places for a band to distribute their music for free, such as Myspace, but these places don't provide their bands with a revenue source. I can understand how bands would like to get paid if people love their music.
Some bands have resorted to selling their music themselves straight from their website (NIN, Radiohead, Girl Talk, etc.). However, it ought to be possible to automate this process to allow bands without technical skill to list and sell their own music (maybe make an embeddable music store?). Also, a central site off the band page could allow less popular bands to get some exposure.
Does 2) exist? I don't know. I have heard of some firms that manage tours for famous independent bands, the kind that have been around forever and have fulfilled their initial sodomizing major label deals. I don't know if any exists for mid-level bands.
One thing is for sure - the record companies are dinosaurs. They are glorified middle-men who connect bands with CD printing and distribution firms. Digital distribution means that they no longer serve a function, outside of marketing. That's the one downfall of online distribution - there are millions of bands on the internet and it is hard for fans to find new stuff they like.
There's been a number of startups that have tried to help people find new music, from the big guys like Pandora (dominated by majors), to new little guys like thefeelgood.com. I don't think anybody's gotten it right yet, and none of them mix the marketing with the monetizing well.
Honestly, if Myspace let bands sell MP3s on their profile page, it would probably be good enough and 10x better than anything currently out there.
So, what do you say Hacker News? Is anybody out there working on burying the record companies? What are your ideas, and how are you doing?
Anybody live in San Diego and want to do it with me?
Even if the major labels were only useful outside of marketing, that would make them a pretty big deal. The consumption of pop music hinges completely on how well your image and sound is sold to the general public. It's hard not to like "Umbrella" when it plays 10 times a day on top 40 radio. When Madonna's album is at eye level right when you walk into BestBuy, you can bet it's going to sell a lot more copies than similar (better?) ones that are just sitting alphabetized under "Pop / Rock."
If your aim as a musician is to earn enough money to make your full-time effort worthwhile, distributing music through MySpace alone might get you enough cash to survive. If you're shooting for worldwide fame or the type of money that lets you live like a rock star, you pretty much can't do without the connections and money the majors provide.
edit: The point of all this being, no matter how cheap it gets to produce and distribute music, you'll never beat the majors (in pop music) if there's not a cultural shift away from consuming the music served out to the public by expensive marketing campaigns.
The article would suggest that most of the bands that "make it big" don't make a lot of money, unless they're like Madonna and have stayed popular past the initial sodomizing. So, making a living off of Myspace would be better for many bands than selling 500,000 albums one year.
Part of my argument, which I didn't explicitly state, is that most artists would rather their work be widely appreciated than it make a lot of money (any money?).
"... most artists would rather their work be widely appreciated than it make a lot of money (any money?)."
On what do you base this claim?
Regarding #1, there's definitely no complete winner out there yet so being on all of them is the best a band can do. Services like cdbaby.com propagate your tracks to dozens of such services (44 in all currently including iTunes, amiestreet.com, etc.) and also take care of other things for you like selling physical discs online and taking credit cards from sales at concerts, so that's probably the best thing going for a band right now. And once a clear winner in the online music sales appears, cdbaby.com will I'm sure also deal with them too on your behalf.
And as a comparison of profits from something like iTunes, I've heard major label artists make less than $1 on their digital album sales, and pennies on the song, whereas through the cdbaby.com submission to iTunes I get paid about $0.64 per song (up to $0.89 for a sale on iTunes UK after currency conversion!) or $6+/album.
For #2, I guess that's where booking and promo agencies come in, but they only tend to work with artists once they've built a following and can get people out to the gigs they set up.
In either case though, the only benefit added by major labels is advertising dollars (which also amounts to mainstream radio airplay, very hard to get without a major). This is basically VC for the music industry if you look at it that way. So maybe just getting some angel investors interested in your band might be a better approach too...
This is something I've thought a lot about since I've been in a pretty serious indie band.
A few bands have contracted me to develop download forms like the Girl Talk/Radiohead forms, and it would cost them $400 for a custom script. I thought that it would be cool to make a startup similar to Wufoo that would let indie bands customize their own forms for $20/mo and host everything for them. Then the bands could embed the form on their MySpace page and website. They could also allow blogs like Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Gorilla vs. Bear to embed it in their reviews/coverage.
You could get creative with revenue sharing and advertising, but that's the general idea.
There's a startup Nimbit ( http://www.nimbit.com ) that's doing something similar.
However, there's not really a "go-to" place right now with a large amount of traffic from people looking for independent music.
I've been "going to" emusic for years for all of my music. And it's the third (was second before Amazon moved into the market) largest vendor of online music (in volume, I think).
That doesn't deflate your argument, at all, I just wanted to mention it...as I absolutely adore emusic. They also seem to have good relationships with very small labels and wholly independent artists (i.e. artists not even signed to an "indy" label--they just make it themselves and sell it through emusic and other online stores).
"Honestly, if Myspace let bands sell MP3s on their profile page, it would probably be good enough and 10x better than anything currently out there."
You mean, snocap? It's a myspace widget for selling tracks. A lot of bands use it.