Two Thursdays ago I had the privilege of delivering the keynote at the GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit 2008 (introduced by the mayor of Seattle, no less!). Below is more or less what I said, or what I intended to say, since I wrote most of this before the presentation. Thank you to Ben London and Michael Stephens for hosting me, and everyone who came to see my presentation.
[While I have your attention, I want to remind you to come visit us in SF on Tuesday night, November 18th.]
Hello everyone.
Thanks sincerely for asking me to come speak to you today. It’s an honor to have been asked to kick off this conference. I’ll only take a few minutes of your time, leave some time to ask questions, then you have an incredible two days of discussion on the future of the music business. It’s been quite a week and clearly Change is in the air, and not just in the music industry.
My name is Ian Rogers. I started collecting records when I was five years old. When I was in high school, my dream was to study recording engineering at Full Sail for 13 months and produce records for a living. Then my high school girlfriend got pregnant and I thought a four-year degree might help keep me out of the trailer park, which is how I ended up studying computer science at Indiana University. In 1989 I sold my TV partially because I was broke and partially because I was just more interested in music. I haven’t watched much TV since. I don’t really watch movies. I read Mojo cover-to-cover each month, prefer to have music playing at all times, and still wish I had more time for more music.
I dropped out of grad school in 1995 to go on tour with Beastie Boys, was the Webmaster at Nullsoft running Winamp.com and SHOUTcast.com, sold a company called Mediacode to Yahoo! Music in 2003, headed Yahoo! Music in 2007, and in April left to join a startup called Topspin, founded by Digidesign‘s founder Peter Gotcher and Musicmatch alum Shamal Ranasinghe. Topspin’s charter is to be for digital marketing what ProTools was for digital production, a democratizing software toolset.
I realized a long time ago that I’m stuck with music. It’s not like I’m going to change jobs tomorrow and take on video like iTunes did or suddenly get into the video games business. To be honest I wouldn’t be any good at it. Yahoo! tried to put me in charge of Yahoo! Video and I was professional about it, but anyone who knows me would tell you I just didn’t have the same passion for it. Music is my life and digital music is the only game I know professionally.
So it’s truly an honor to be asked by The Recording Academy to speak to you all today. Two years ago when I joined The Academy I was humbled. I’ve worked on the periphery of the music industry for fifteen years, building little music Web pages before there were even Web browsers for Windows or Mac, before Adam Curry’s MTV.com even, when there were just a couple of us who thought the WWW was a better Gopher. So to have finally merged lanes with the recording industry career-wise was a meaningful moment for me, regardless of the backdrop.
The backdrop, of course, is one we know well, a story we’ve heard ad nauseum at this point. Physical sales are decreasing (~20% Y/Y). The “two hit songs for $17 at Best Buy” business is over. Digital sales are increasing (~40% Y/Y) but it’s not making up the difference. Not only is digital not making up for physical sales, as the tracks are unbundled and the model is a singles-driven iTunes business, the actual value of a unit of music continues to plummet.
That said it’s with great respect and with the belief that I’m as big a lover of music as anyone in this room I admit to you:
I don’t care.
The lamenting we read in the press is not the story of the new music business. Continuing to talk about the health of the music industry on these terms is as if we’d all been crying about the dying cassette business in 1995. The difference is that when we moved from cassette to CD the winners were the same (big companies who owned access to cash, distribution, and marketing) and the definition of winning was the same (more units sold for these big companies).
As I’ve been saying for years, the physics of the media space have changed and you shouldn’t expect the winners or even the definition of winning to stay constant, so simply looking at how iTunes replaces CDs doesn’t tell the entire story.
As Chuck D said at MIDEM last year, “There is nothing wrong with the music business, there is a problem with the CD business.”
Music consumption isn’t declining: iPod sales up 59% Y/Y (source: Apple), P2P filesharing volume up 35% Y/Y(source: NPD), audio streaming up 25% Y/Y (source: Accustream). And despite the endless discussions about the “pirates,” there isn’t an unwillingness to pay for music, either: 1.6B decisions to buy music in 2007, up from 1.3B in 2006 (source: Neilsen Soundscan), 40% Y/Y increase in worldwide digital music sales (source: IFPI), 8% Y/Y increase in North American concert revenue — an all-time high (source: Forbes.com), 40% paid an average of $5 in Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want model, Nine Inch Nails self-release generates $1.6M in first week sales, includes sell out of $300 box set in first 48 hours (source: NIN.com).
As you spend the next two days discussing the future of the music business, I’d like to challenge you to consider a different perspective, IMHO the only perspectives that matter, that of the artist and the fan. I see news about the health of the music industry as defined by the stock price of WMG or quarterly earnings of UMG, Sony, and EMI every day. What I don’t see, apart from a few articles on Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, is an update on how the world is changing from the artist point of view. But I tell you, when I talk to managers and artists they feel it, they feel an ability to take their careers into their own hands, to redefine what success means for them, and that is the emergence of the new music business.
I say this with all respect to our friends in the existing music business. We all know smart people who are busting their asses trying to solve the Innovator’s Dilemma those companies are facing. I’m sure Lyor would love for us to stop focusing on WMG’s stock price and start talking about the artists again.
Today I’d like to tell you a couple stories you haven’t heard yet about how the Internet can help connect artists and fans in a meaningful value exchange, point to a tipping point in the relationship between artists and their partners, and ask you to stop dwelling on past news and start re-framing the conversation around the question of marginal profitability for artists and value to fans. In doing so, I believe we’ll find the path forward.
In August Topspin had the honor of helping to release an album by David Byrne and Brian Eno. We started by just gathering email addresses of fans, then offered a free track in exchange for an email address, then offered the album free for streaming from any page on the Web along with three options to purchase: digital download, digital download + CD, and digital download + boxed set.
At the beginning of the run we asked manager David Whitehead how he would be judging success. David told us the number he expected to be offered as an advance on the album from a record label. Gross revenues on the project reached that number on the fiftieth (50th) day via Topspin alone, and the album went to iTunes, Amazon, etc on day sixty and is headed to physical release approximately ninety days in (next week). Because there were $9, $13, and $70 price points, the average purchase amount per fan was many times greater than the ever-declining industry average. Digital sales don’t make up for physical? From the artist perspective they certainly can, and quickly. David and Brian keep the majority of the profits, and (via Topspin at least) are paid within sixty days of the fan purchasing (no wait for recoupment and complex royalty accounting). When your costs are low your royalty rate high and your channel direct, the marginal profitability from the artist perspective can be far different than in the old model, to be sure.
Now I know exactly what you’re thinking, because Ted Mico said it for you when we were on stage together at the Digital Media Forum West last month: “This is great for established artists who have the benefit of previous years of marketing spend from the majors, but what’s the model for emerging artists?” While there’s no question the scale of success available might be different for artists with established fan bases, there is plenty of evidence that the new model can work for brand new artists, too.
How many of you have heard of an artist called Joe Purdy? Joe is in his late 20s and has already recorded and released 10 albums, selling more than 650,000 singles on iTunes thus far. He made more last year than I make as the CEO of Topspin (as it should be) and he bought himself a house. He’s selling more music to fewer fans and earning a living from his art. He might not be on the cover of Rolling Stone or a household name, but personally I consider him a successful artist, I know his manager does as well, and I hope Joe thinks of himself that way, too.
We’ve talked about Jubilee before, since they were the very first band to release their music via Topspin and are close personal friends to many of us. I’m not going to lie to you, Jubilee are not exactly flush with cash. But they have been very outspoken about how Topspin has helped them remain independent and keep the lights on while they finish their (amazing) forthcoming album. When they only had four completed songs they started selling a year’s worth of music for $20 and incredibly enough 60+% of all purchasers spent $20! From a band that only had four songs!
There’s a lot more that could be said about how artists find success in this new world and we’ll cover this topic in more detail in the months that come on this blog (including a post I’ve been meaning to write on how Seth Godin’s “Tribes” plays in — both Joe and Jubilee are integral parts of the Hotel Cafe and Buddyhead Tribes, respectively), but fundamentally I believe the model is shifting from mass-marketed (via radio and TV) and one-size-fits-all (one $15 CD suits fans of all levels of commitment) to a target-marketed approach where fans can self-select where they fit on the scale (when Trent offered Ghosts at five price points he was really asking, “How big a fan are you?”). And where the mass-marketed approach was low-margin from the artist perspective, the target-marketed approach can be much higher margin (which is how Joe Purdy buys a house on his iTunes sales). Topspin believes there is an entire middle class of artists for whom the system hasn’t worked in the past who will be empowered by this new model. We think there are a lot of Joe Purdys and Jubilees out there, and no, we don’t think they’ll ever end up playing the Staples Center, and we don’t care. We are more interested with seeing marginal profitability for more artists and satisfaction for more music fans increase.
As such, it’s hard to deny there’s a power shift going on from label to artist, and therefore the artist’s closest business partner, the artist manager. This isn’t to say labels aren’t valuable. A lot of people like to line this debate up as label vs. independent, but that’s not how I see things. What I see happening is artists having a choice, and labels needing to prove their value. It’s no longer the de facto dream of every musician to “get signed”. Instead of doing a 360 deal with a label artists are able to do a 360 deal with themselves and choose their business partners based on who is going to add the most value. If you’re an unknown pop-punk band from Orange County would you benefit from the marketing and branding help Epitaph Records could provide? Hell yeah. If you’re Joe Purdy would you benefit from what a major label adds? Perhaps, but what would you give up in the process? Artists now have some leverage in their ability to earn a living without making the leap.
Again, there are only two players in the music business that matter at the end of the day: the artists and the fans. The rest of us either add value or get in the way. Don’t get me wrong, over the years labels have added a tremendous amount of value through financing, A&R, marketing, promotion, etc. I’m just saying that every player needs to either understand how it truly adds value or it needs to get out of the way, Topspin included. Our business does not operate on lock-in, ownership of copywritten work, or long-term contracts. We either add value today with a compelling service or we die. And I’m perfectly happy with that.
The Featured Artist Coalition, which appeared on the scene last month, is a good example of this power shift in action. Artists as varied as Radiohead and Iron Maiden have signed up to a few basic principles. They aren’t outlandish, they’re really simply anti-exploitative: artists should own their copyrights and participate in how they’re exploited and accounting should be transparent. Twenty-five or even ten years ago artists signing on to a manifesto such as this would have been laughable. I’m sure some of you are snickering today. But the fact that this is happening at all, backed by major managers, is a sign of palpable change.
Personally, I would welcome Featured Artist Coalition to come to Topspin and take a look at our artist agreements. I’d love for them to take a look at how we pay and account. In return I would like their good housekeeping seal of approval right here on my Web site: here is a company that operates in accordance with our charter. How would your company stand up to such a test? If you think they would fail, how do you feel about that? I know how I felt when Yahoo! (where I worked) turned in a Chinese dissident and Jason Calacanis called us out on it at BarCamp. I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks very much for your time and attention today. I hope this has been at least mildly thought-provoking. As you hear the various panels and discussions over the next couple of days, I sincerely hope you’ll think about the music industry not as what it was, but what it will be. I hope you’ll focus on the two parts of the value chain that matter most, the artist and the fan, and that you’ll judge the success of the music “business” on the metric of marginal profitability of artists and the ability of artists to earn a living, not the ability for the rest of us to build businesses around music. It’s up to us to provide value to the music business, not up to the business to provide value to us.
Thanks sincerely,
ian c rogers
Topspin
Hi Ian,
This presentation absolutely rocked. Spot on.
…Steve>>>
As an artist who not only spent every last dime I had but also accrued an enormous credit card debt putting an album out and touring on it a few years ago, and who in so doing lost all faith in the promise of being able to continue to make music in way that wasn’t ridiculously unbalanced financially, I am happy to say that this speech is hugely encouraging! I’ve been working on new material but with a level of reserve that reflects my disdain for the previous music business model and how generally screwed us little guys were, and just as a result of this one address, I can say I am inspired to actually finish some of these tracks, knowing there’s a way to get them out to my fans that won’t kill me. Thank you!
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Ian,
Thanks for the shout-out and for recommending The Innovators Solution. I thoroughly enjoyed it’s predecessor The Innovators Dilemma http://tinyurl.com/5akar3
- Brett Gurewitz
Bravo! I love your vision. I think this kind of positive motivation helps artist and indie labels alike. Passing it on to friends now!
Very well presented. When will musicians take the example of Joe Purdy and stop getting sucked into the traditional business method that clearly has never given them the top platform anyway?
Thanks for posting this.
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So suing your fans is a bad idea?
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I can’t imaging this will make any more of an impact than any other brilliantly presented argument, to those in the industry who are clinging so desperately to the old model. But it is a fantastically well made point. Lets just hope…
Ian,
You’re speaking the TRUTH, and I love it! I’ve been maintaining for a while now that there’s never been a better time to be in the MUSIC BUSINESS. More consumption than ever before = More fans (active OR passive) than ever before = Greater Opportunities!!
The toughest part for artists these days is sifting through all the noise. As a manager of an awesome edgy rock band, The Minor Kings, out of Nashville, TN, I tell them to get creative outside of just the art. We have to develop a creative strategy for getting the word out without a label involved. Considering there are so many great resources at our disposable, we can have fun with the process along the way. The internet provides so much value for artists, but they must locate those tools and use them to their advantage.
I echo Mark sentiments above, and I want to thank you so much for being such a positive influence on the music community. I’m stuck on the opposite side of the country, and unfortunately had to miss the conference. I would have loved to hear you speak, and introduce myself at some point. Hopefully, that day is not too far off. Until then, I send me best wishes from Athens, GA!
-Adam Wexler
Great presentation! I’m going to share it with my technology strategy students when we discuss music publishing.
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Brilliant stuff as always man, thanks for posting it!
S
a friend of mine sent me the link to this blog, just a few hours ago, and i started reading it without knowing what was it about at all.
and i must say i became more and more interested in it as i kept going, even not being an artist or a part of the music business. but i am definitely part of the music world. in better words, i am a FAN.
so, from where i stand, i congratulate you guys for putting out there your valuable vision. everything evolves and so must each of us, on our way of thinking and doing things. i totally support music and the artists/bands i love, no matter how they hand their music as i enjoy it as a very important part in my life.
so i think your point of view is honest, smart and encouraging for many. and also, very open-minded. i like that.
just wanted to say this and wish everyone working on and for this wonderful and necessary art every luck.
sabrina, buenos aires, argentina
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great speech ian, it’s what every emerging has wanted to hear for a long time…it seems more and more people in positions of power are starting to agree with you. well done!
adam coe, toronto, ontario
Brilliant manipulation of statistics. Karl Rove’s got work
for you if Topspin doesn’t work out. A 36% yearly increase in
peer to peer file sharing is absolutely frightening.
53 million iPods sold in 2007, and 1.6 billion downloads.
That’s 30 paid downloads per iPod, at best. Hmm, most iPods have
thousands of songs on them. That’s a lot of free music. It sure ain’t coming from CD sales.
Unless you’re already huge from the era of people paying for
music, an American Idol or Youtube phenomenon, or a statistical
anomaly, you’re going to have to keep your day job.
In the good old days the labels ripped off the artist. Now it’s the fans. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
But all the optimism for the fresh faced new artist is quite misleading, as are your success story examples. Let’s interview winners of the lottery on their strategy for picking numbers, and which 7-11 to buy your ticket from.
Really great!
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well said, ian. love that your reach is now slightly larger than a few geeks in LA
I have 1000s of CDs, and nearly all of those songs are on all of my iPod (Im on my 4th, plus the one in the missus car.)
iPods have a short shelf life — 2 3 years is good life span. Take that 53 million number and cut it in half.
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Excellent article and spot on. Its high time the music labels realise that there is always a trade off between volumes and margins in any industry. The day margin preference takes over volumes, you must know that it is time to say goodbye. I wait for the day when we will be able to hear our favourite artists in India without resorting to piracy because well, someone forgot that there are fans in other countries too.
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Love your philosophy and purpose. Thanks jbum for helping make it happen.
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Selling music in a very crowded market filled with seemingly similar products is not easy. Topspin provides effective sales support. Consumers are often confused and mislead by current music offers and artist promotions. I fully support and will personally benefit from artists working independently. However mass market sales tools are not enough and when increasing numbers of artists start to email consumers it will become even more difficult to be successful or “heard”. How can a artist benefit from marketing tools including consumer research, brand positioning and marketing partnerships without compromising there music or spending tremendous sums of money? Even huge consumer goods, auto and travel industry players often get marketing very wrong despite outstanding sales channels and funding. Artists will need to find experienced marketing partners that view music as a superior media platform to TV and print advertising. Topspin offers valuable sales support but if you are not a brand like Byrne & Eno you need to develop an initial brand strategy. Unfortunately most of the best brand thinkers are not in the music industry.
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Great speech. Very inspiring. I’ve pass this around to more than a few friends.
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Oh the irony. I got fired as a band manager for extolling exactly these points to a fledgling band. Further irony : because I’m middle-aged and have been out of the business for years, they presume I’m also clueless about the present & future, and hopelessly out of touch. Artists – if you don’t “get it” – ask. Anyone who’s got your back witll explain it all. Transparency rules.
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Ian/Topspin;
what a great read…totally inspiring….though it is all stuff i totally know; i really dig the way it was presented…
like my friend hikari said
it’s one thing to try to fudamentally understand the problem
and
it’s another thing coming up with (both cost and impact) effective solutions!
thanks again.
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Nice piece.
Publishing music is a single love of the crafts people and driven my those who appreciate their applied love and gifts, should they exist. Let’s not forget what is really being asserted in your presentation; that music encapsulated two distinct areas of which the common musician could engage: live and recorded. Now there are emulsion layers that allow a shift from the industry being elitist (labels). Show me an artist who needed $4MM to produce an album in the last 30 years, unless you were using Mutt ?
I welcome the change; however, I agree with the point referring to controlling the change or growth in a system so obviously/relatively uncontrollable. What did Dundee say? “two ticks on the back of a dog”?
I look forward to re-engaging in professional music in my 40s, and doubt nor desire that $professional$ publishing will/should be a part of it.
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We heard great things about your presentation and had to read it for ourselves. A job well done by Ian and the Topspin Team. Accountability and value add to non-top tier artists is a point of view that is 100% right on. It is good to see artists are able to take command of their content and that Topspin is facilitating that process. Non-exclusivity and not attempting to “take ownership” of the work of the artists is the wave of the future. Exclusivity and controlling copyrights are the past. We look forward to more success stories out of Topspin.
–The AudioMicro Team
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Dear Ian,
Let me just start out by saying what a pleasure it is to read your talk – it is without doubt one of the most articulate and forward-thinking views the music business has heard for a while. It’s quite obvious that you are a huge fan, and therefore think like a fan, and the industry could definitely do with more people like you.
I don’t really know where to start with dissecting your talk, but I agree with you that drastic changes need to be made in the business, but I don’t agree with all of what you are saying. You can pull of figures and stats all day long, but the truth is that these direct to fan projects only work for established artists. Your examples of Eno/Byrne, Nine Inch Nails and even Radiohead were all developed and backed by major labels, as you acknowledged yourself, and now that they are out of contract and able to go it alone they have the reputation that their major label careers permitted them to sell to their fans.
While your examples of ‘unsigned’ artists that are making success for themselves is encouraging, they are in the extreme minority of unsigned artists who can and will do that, as well you know. I could record a track and get it on iTunes tomorrow, but without any exposure it’s just one of seven million other tracks on iTunes. Similar to the 1000 true fans idea, having relatively low levels of success will not create a middle class of artists – more of a low level working class that either just scrape by or, as with real life, have to get a second job just to survive. It’s interesting how you chose to concentrate most on the recorded music sales side of the business, when there are far greater revenue streams available to an artist if they forfeit recorded music sales and concentrate on other areas of the business.
It’s been said that major labels took control of music because they had a monopoly on distribution, back when music was all LPs and 7” singles, but that’s only partly true. The other reason they took control was because they were the ones investing in the artist, putting down money for recording, promoting them using their vast network of contacts, marketing them, guiding them. As a result of this the artist got more exposure than they would have otherwise. The fact that they were getting little or no money beyond their initial advance from recorded music sales was fine; the industry just grew to enable them to maximize other revenue streams. The exposure given to them by all of the major label marketing and promotion enabled them to tour bigger venues, sell more merchandise, drive more money from publishing, get more fans. The distribution element is now an even playing field, but why, now, would an artist choose to forfeit all of the trappings of a health marketing and promotion budget to take a cut of a low margin item from the music that they are selling direct to a much smaller fanbase, if they had the choice? They don’t need the label to get their music out there, but the do need something to differentiate them from the masses of other unsigned bands out there.
I work for a major label and a manager of a relatively big artist recently said to me “the reason we sign with (major labels) is that they give us the creative freedom to do what we do best.” In the context of the discussion what he meant was we’ll take your money up front in exchange for global distribution, administration, marketing and promotion, and a great chunk of cash up front – thanks you very much. Selling direct to your fans is one thing – which they also do – but you still need to have presence in other territories to be a really successful artist, both for touring and recorded music sales.
Now, contrary to the above, I don’t believe that major labels are the future, but nor do I believe that most artists are able to do it themselves and make a success out of it, especially if they are new artists. Basically what you need is a coalition of everyone working together for the good of the artist’s long term career; a transparent joint venture investment in the artist from a company that can offer expertise in all facets of an artist’s development, from live to merchandise to publishing to recorded music. After costs, everything is 50/50, allowing both parties to get the best of both worlds, though nobody is best placed to facilitate this at present. This idea of a major label screwing artists for royalties to cover up for all the ones that don’t succeed is not sustainable or fair for the artist, nor is trying to get their claws into other revenue streams that they are not providing anything towards.
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so much good stuff in here Ian. thanks for posting it
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Awesome, Ian. Thanks for your insight.
I wonder how high the click through rate is from this post to the ‘Jobs at Topspin’ tab.
Excellent presentation! We partner with artists and provide them a vehicle for physical and digital distribution. Were a combination of CD Baby and i-tunes, with the exception that our members get all 100% of the price they set, and can change that price at any time. We are member supported. Sort of like Sam’s Club for indies. Our members love it, we also pay our members $5 for each artist they refer to our site, residual. Some of our members are making money from us simply by helping us serve more members.
We’re one big happy family!
Keith Mohr
President
Indieheaven
http://www.indieheaven.com
Hey Jen Robinson, fancy meeting you in here…
“I wonder how high the click through rate is from this post to the ‘Jobs at Topspin’ tab.”
Well, 17% of visitors to the post ended up on the jobs tab at some point. 3.5% clicked through directly from the post. Less than 20% of jobs viewers ended up exiting the site from there.
We do data.
I think this is the future of music business.I appreciate this post and not just happy i came across this post.its inspiring and gives an insight on the new emerging industrY1.thanks ian!
Thanks for the data, Adam! Ask and ye shall receive.
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Ian;
I always enjoy your talks and posts about what’s happening in music, but I must say, this presentation came across as really light. All of this thinking has been in play for several years now, and as such your conclusions are blindingly obvious. I was hoping for more.
For example: saying “let’s focus on the relationship between artists and fans” isn’t enough. That issue has been bandied about for years. Developing artists understand that they need to do this, but they don’t know where to start. What did Joe Purdy actually do to connect with his fans? For that matter, what will Topspin do to connect with consumers?
These examples need to be drilled into so we understand what’s really going on, what’s working and what isn’t. The fact that you site artists that break the paradigm is a good thing; but it’s a drag that you provide little or no information about the cause, NOT just the effect, is a drag.
You’re in a unique position to observe this stuff from the inside, without being viewed as old school by artists or a thief by labels. I’d love to see less talk about the labels, and dying business models, and more about the tangible, effective methods that are truly transforming the business. This presentation was a little too “Chinese food” for me.
Great speech, Ian.
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I got this blog from a friend at one of the biggest booking agencies in the world, at which I used to work at. I’ve worn the hat of musician, engineer, producer, promoter, publicist, agent, and recently manager. I’m not posting to talk about myself, but I say all these things because my journey into the biz started as a FAN. I’m still a huge fan today, of artist that I’m directly involved with and those that I have no ties to and that is what keeps my optimism and hope for the industry up.
I think there’s alot of great points Ian said in the speech, but what it comes down to is the artist as an underdog…because lets face it…99% of working artist today are just that. 99% will never be shot into the stratosphere of superstardom like Michael Jackson or Elvis. If they’re lucky, they’ll be able to buy a house and make 6 figures like Joe Purdy, but Joe’s also been working his ass off for 10 years, and for that I commend him.
The one thing I’ve seen in the past 5 years with the explosion of myspace pages, garage band, and digital cameras is this attitude of “I’ve got music up, decent pics…etc, why aren’t I HUGE?” It’s this attitude that kills me as a manager. We’re now in an age, and Ian subtly said it in the speech, where real success will come from those that keep there head down, stay focused on their art, and work hard. And then they do the exact same thing the next day, except one thing changes…they work HARDER. I truly believe that if you have something truly original to offer, then there’s no way that you won’t gain respect and a fan base.
The other things is that some people posted comments saying, “yeah Ian, but how do we…the artist ‘underdog’ set ourselves apart from everyone else?” BY DOING SOMETHING ORIGINAL. The two artist I work for (Space Capone & Mikky Ekko) are doing just that, and even though they are just getting started, I truly believe its their originality, work ethic, and creative thinking that will set them apart.
Quit comparing yourself to others and get to work. We’re in the best possible spot to be as ‘underdogs’. Thanks Ian.
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Dear Ian,
It’s not very often that I get to feel completely validated as an entrepreneur. Seems unless you’ve created the next Google that people question the value of what you are up to. Over the past 5 years, there have been countless times I’ve said these things (nearly verbatim) as I explained to industry people and investors what the landscape will be in the new music business and therefore why the market needs companies such as Topspin and the one I’ve been building. Often I was met with complacent skepticism and even worse, indifference.
Then something dawned on me. Those that don’t see the reality around them quickly become irrelevant.
So I and a few others kept doing what we were doing, and not giving a shit who in the industry paid attention or not, as long as the artists dug what was going on and fans continued benefiting. Today, we have a business that thrives because thousands of artists make a better living and there is a real middle class that is evolving.
I am happy to live (or die) by the measure of value I can provide to that artist/fan equation. It is the one market dynamic that will never change.
Thank you for being a such a clear voice in the conversation. As I encounter others who don’t get what we do and why, I’ll simply point them to your keynote speech, and tell them that it’s irrelevant whether or not they understand.
Patrick Faucher
CEO & Chief Artist Advocate
Nimbit, Inc.
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This article / presentation is absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t agree more with what Ian says, but that’s not the reason i enjoyed it. He provides strong evidence for his thinking, and taught me a few things too.
“What I don’t see, apart from a few articles on Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, is an update on how the world is changing from the artist point of view. But I tell you, when I talk to managers and artists they feel it, they feel an ability to take their careers into their own hands, to redefine what success means for them, and that is the emergence of the new music business.”
…sums up exactly what I’m trying to do; here (http://leejarvis.blogspot.com/2008/10/getting-break.html), here (http://leejarvis.blogspot.com/2008/11/7-reasons-to-go-indie.html) and here (http://leejarvis.blogspot.com/) in general.
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There seems to be a major factor you missed, and that is the real reason sales are down. Besides that the current business model for the industry is downright horrid, the biggest thing IMO is badly made ‘music’. The number of songs out there that follow a specific ‘smash hit’ formula is amazing! I mean, in chord notation from a theory standpoint, nothing creative is coming out of the common ‘I IV V vi ii7 V7 1′ chord progressions you can hear in almost any song. Sure, the biggest artists of all times followed that foundation, but they truly made MUSIC out of it.
The truth is, people want people who make music, not an industry making music. You seem to forget what music is all about. It is essentially another form of artistic communication, and right now, the music industry doesn’t communicate anything but the one thing they understand…
And that is money.
This really opened my eyes to what I want to do. It’s funny how I had an idea similar to this before reading about it. Now I really know where I need to go with my artists…
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LONG LIVE THE INNOVATORS WHO HELP TO ADD AWARENESS, LOYALTY AND LONGEVITY INTO THE CAREERS OF ARTISTS MAKING ORIGINAL, GOOD MUSIC WORLDWIDE.
SALUTE TOPSPIN!! LOOK FORWARDS IN HAVING THE OPPORTUNITY TO TRYING IT OUT.
Afonso Marcondes
MA Music Business
Head of Label
(©urve)music™
Really interesting piece, and I’d definitely agree with the conclusion that the future for experienced and talented people in the music business, is to understand the new model is around providing services to artists – although plenty of the ones I’ve known already thought that.
Equally, I enjoyed the emphasis that there is a model based around selling recorded music, rather than merely using it as an advert for branded merchandise, sponsorship, etc.
The big gap, of course, is the finance side. It’s early days yet to say whether what’s working for your example bands (i.e. Jubilee) can be turned into a wider business model that supports thousands of acts.
Incidentally, I think you’re spot on in assessing that the manager’s role is becoming more important – this is also the biggest opportunity for the traditional biz, as the managers cut is the closest to the 360 degree deal they’ve been talking about – I can foresee a general management advance replacing the lost recording and publishing advance – and artist management replacing the old A&R function. People will need to tread carefully in this area.
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