The Music Balloon Blog

Having just read a brilliant article on the new ‘landscape’ emerging in the music industry, it got us thinking about our last blog… ‘what do record companies actually do?’

Our theory – with the collapse in cost and access to production and promotion facilities, record companies are basically Venture Capital firms with a bit of marketing prowess.

Where does that leave us (Music Balloon)? To nurture the Artist <–> Fan relationship and give fans a way of exploring and following music they love. True fans that is. Those that prefer not to accept the content thrown at them by radio stations; people who love music. Sit back at home and actually listen to an album. All the way through. And then want to stay connected to that artist and that type of music. And then find new stuff all over again.

That’s what technology can give us these days. Not just leaving us to walk into a warehouse full of music, whether it’s online or on the high street, and start searching at ‘A’.

Through 5 million artists.

Your music collection starts to gravitate around artists beginning with ‘A’. And Aerosmith gets boring after a while. As a fan and as an artists, technology can give a sort of relevance to music. A bit like it was when you picked up an LP or a CD. But that LP finds you.

Shit, it’s exciting.

Do record companies need to be involved? Who cares? I guess so if they’re gonna support and invest in artists’ careers. We’d prefer it if, instead, artists had good managers and didn’t give away 85%+ royalties.

What we can do at Music Balloon is actually empower artists in ways that iTunes, Spotify and the like, don’t. In the way that Amie Street, Topspin and MySpace do.

And we can stop using words like ‘monetising’, ‘content’ and ‘platforms’. We can start with a utopia of love, passion and music. It feels like the 60’s all over again.

Musicians, fans and friends,

The idea of Music Balloon was born one evening in April 2009 when Steve and I were throwing around business ideas in the pub after work. We were excited about music and the changes happening in the industry. We could see that more people than ever were enjoying music but the industry itself was loosing touch with the musicians and their fans.  We had an idea for a business that would do two things: put the fun back into discovering new music and look at the industry from the artists’ and fans’ perspective. We did our market research and off the back of that we both quit our jobs in Summer 2009 to go commando – we were actually going to start Music Balloon.

It’s been a crazy few months and from where we stand now, we are set for a beta launch in January 2010. We wanted to start a blog to keep people updated about what’s going on pre-launch in the Music Balloon world, share our controversial opinions about the music industry and hopefully spark some debate to get people engaged. We’d love you to interact with us by either leaving comments, linking to us from your blogs, contacting us in person or just following us on our journey. Starting from the beginning of November, if you’re an artist you will be able to leave your details on our website and become part of the Music Balloon from the very beginning. It’s a rapidly changing time for digital music at the moment, get involved!

Music Balloon loves unsigned and Indie artists. It’s an online platform for digital music. Some stuff that we offer – the killer 3 or 4 ideas that we came up with that night in the pub – can’t be discussed in detail here because they are our ammo against the big boys. We’ll tell you all about them as we get closer to launch. But the principles and opinions that steer the Music Balloon can be discussed here. There are some industry experts out there who get these principles and opinions and we respect them – for example David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard who wrote The Furture of Music in 2005, Radiohead, Mojo Nixon and co. who continually push the boundaries of how they get their music to their fans and the Featured Artists Coalition – but so many in the industry don’t. Is it right for the music industry at large to make Internet Service Providers’ responsible for illegal file sharing or should the over-protectionist record companies be more innovative with their royalties? Should music be free or should it just not be so damn expensive? The likes of Spotify (Europe), MOG (US) and Google Music (mainly China, for now) have catalysed the record companies into doing something new. That’s great but the digital music evolution has only just begun.

Please join us, follow our journey and leave comments and questions when you feel like it.

Alex and Steve

www.musicballoon.com