Birdfeed is becoming Music’s new staple diet
The real-time internet (e.g. twitter feeds, you tube etc.) might be giving the music industry the life-line it needs to survive. But it’s going to be a rocky ride for most.
Music is alive and well, the industry that supports it is not. The way artists are now expected to distribute their music, or more accuratly their musical experiences, has changed and the rule books are still being written. Behind the ususal ranting, Bob Lefsetz makes this point very well, “if older folk still buy music and younger people steal it, why did John Mayer sell almost twice as many albums the first week out as Bon Jovi?” I like both artists. However, I subscribe to John Mayer’s twitter feed, I listen to him on Spotify and I will probably buy his album in the next week. On the other hand, Bon Jovi are living in the 90’s and just want to sell their music wrapped around some artificial showbiz story that’s been pre-fabricated by music execs. And it’s so obvious.
John Mayer comes across as human, Bon Jovi come across as corporate. Selling music on the real-time web is all about revealing your human side and not an editors cut. If I were a talented artist (if only) I would embrace this whole-heartadly. You aren’t going to make it in the music industry without intrusion into your personal life but suddenly your handed a lot more control; your die hard fans, your life-blood, still want to know every intimate detail about you but you can now share these details your own way. For years the Media have been able to manipulate ‘your story’ in any way they feel sells more records or sells more news stories. Now, artists have a chance to tell their story, their way. Artists who are twillionaires, have over 1m twitter followers, now have the kind of reach to their followers that outstrips most magazine or newspaper circulations. Suddenly, PR agencies, record labels and magazine editors aren’t as useful to thses artists any more. And the good news is that even those not fortunate enough to be ’twillionaires’ can prosper.
This myth that people won’t pay for music is pure nonsense. The business model is simply changing. It’s no good simply taking a CD and putting it on the internet. We live in a new age of uber-connectability and instant access. Fans aren’t as fussed about owning vast record collections, they want access and will pay for this access either directly, or indirectly through ticket sales and merch. At the moment, digital music is simply ‘too expensive to be free, too free to be expensive‘ but things are changing. It’s just not acceptable to think people will pay the same sort of price for an mp3 as they would for a CD. It’s pretty simple; back in the 90’s when I actually bought CDs I would choose to spend money on the CDs of artists who I wanted to know more about, if not I would be content listening to them on the radio. Translate that into the type of connection that can be made through the real-time web and the music industry is back in the game.
We are sitting on the edge of a new and exciting era in the music industry. The power is swinging back in favour of the artist over the record label and those artists who start using the tools of the real-time web will have more people at their gigs, more people wearing their t-shirts, more people buying their tracks and more people following their personal music experiences.
Alex and Steve