Ten Years After Napster, Musicians Are Still Getting Screwed
Ten years ago yesterday, Napster revolutionized commercial music by - we're all grownups; let's call a spade a spade - democratizing piracy.
Without doubt, consumers in 1999 needed better access to music. They needed the opportunity to preview full tracks, to pick and choose songs from an album, and to have instant gratification through online downloads. And ten years later, consumers still have all those lovely perks. Napster ate it (thanks, Metallica!), but Kazaa sprang from its ashes. Then there was Limewire and its cadre. Due props to Apple for monetizing the system as it stood when the iTunes store came on the scene, but users are now ridiculously entitled about what kinds of readily available (a.k.a. easily stolen) files they are willing to pay for and their justifications for stealing media. Yet musicians, as much as they've tried to adapt, are still getting screwed by the Internet and their fans.
Napster CEO Says Consumers Needed Free Music, Control
On the Napster blog CEO, Chris Gorog, wrote yesterday, "The original Napster hadn't thought through how to protect artists' rights... Napster was about putting the control into consumers' hands so they could find virtually any song they could think of."
That kind of thinking makes me twitch. I love users. I am a user. And yes, I've illegally downloaded my fair share of tunes over the years (sorry, Journey, but the road trip karaoke sessions would've been meaningless without "Don't Stop Believing").
However, consumers neither need nor deserve control over content they did not create.
Illegal downloads have been said by many to stimulate sales; the Radiohead album Kid A is often cited as a case in point. But when users are downloading media as a substitute for actually purchasing it, the paradigm hurts musicians far more than it helps. I would venture to speculate that in P2P ecosystems, users get the glory and commercial musicians get the hard knocks. Users have dozens of ways - P2P, YouTube, a bajillion file-sharing sites - to share music that profit the musicians themselves little or not at all.
But where are the online toolkits for the thousands of working musicians - often independent of record labels' heavy duty promotional machines - who live and die by their ability to promote and sell their songs?
Napster introduced a single-edged paradigm: free content for users at musicians' and labels' expense.
What has the Internet done for musicians and labels lately?
Napster Worked Actively Against Musicians, and No One Worked (Well) With Them
Napster spent the first part of this decade showing complete disregard for the promotional and sales needs and wants of musicians. Can you imagine what the musical online landscape would look like if they had seen the copyright wars as an opportunity rather than a legal problem? What would have happened if they had invested that time and money in creating a workable solution for getting users to pay for content? If they'd worked with bands to create and market non-audio, extracurricular content for fans? If they'd been creative instead of passive-aggressively litigious?
Here's what happened to musicians working online since 1999: MySpace.
MySpace, a tragic tale of clunky interfaces, slow fan-finding, spammy marketing tools, confusing events organization, bad media players, and no revenue.
While consumers were rejoicing in the newfound glut of free tracks, working musicians (as distinguished from lolling-about-in-the-Playboy-Mansion-grotto musicians), especially the independent ones, had to struggle with the most time-consuming, noisy promotional channel possible. And when a challenger sprung up (Facebook, duh) to take that channel's place, the musicians were homeless because the challenger included no music-related tools.
What's the Future Look Like from the Napster P.O.V.?
Currently, our musician friends are struggling to craft cohesive online marketing and sales strategies from a patchwork of odds and ends.
And Napster?
Gorog examines the current landscape of a la carte online music stores (such as iTunes) and streaming media sites (such as Pandora), concluding, "No service has cracked the nut and figured out how to create a profitable business model." What's his company's solution? "With Napster's new offering introduced on May 18, we believe we bring the best of both worlds together. Five bucks each month gets you 5 MP3s" plus streaming audio.
Let us introduce a long, thoughtful pause in honor of Napster's $5-for-5 subscription plan, which is as unoriginal as it is a bad deal. It's a mashup of two models that Gorgog just stated didn't work, and when compared to Emusic's and other sites' subscription plans (about $12 a month gets you about 30 MP3s) and Last.fm/Imeem/Pandora's free streaming offerings, it seems very financially stupid - especially considering that Napster introduced the now commonly held expectation that all this media should be free. Gorog states he sees a future of subscription plans for unlimited, on-demand music. But again, this is a probably not a paradigm that will profit bands.
It used to be that record labels were in charge of screwing musicians over (click the link for a classic article by producer Steve Albini). Now, that task has passed to the fans themselves, with special thanks to the developers who focus on illegal file-sharing over usable platforms for musicians and consumers alike.
In the coming days, we'd like to address the concerns of and online tools for working/commercial musicians. We're aware of a few good ones, but we encourage you brilliant RWW commenter-types to leave your thoughts - and pointers to musician-friendly startups - below. We've got a cabal of techie-musician-hybrid dudes just waiting to beta test them.
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Much of the demise of the music industry was not, in fact, caused by an explosion of music piracy. Rather, there were several very large forces:
The end of the CD era which saw many consumers repurchasing their older collections which caused a boom time for recorded music.
The decline of the single, which saw many labels pushing musicians to pad EPs into LPs, thus lowering the percieved quality of modern music. Effectively selling a single or collection of singles for far beyond traditional market value.
The shrinking of the major publishers to 4 megacorporations who's stated interests were not in growing musical careers but rather in short-term gains through disposable artists.
The rapid growth of Clear Channel - which standardized music nationally along the FM dial, which accounted for in excess of 90% of all music discovery.
The stock market crash of 2001, and 9-11, which had a huge financial negative impact on the lives of many Americans.
And finally the onset of a media-driven culture which saw Americans having to choose between several different media silos - film, books, magazines, music, video games, gadgets - on a budget which remained relatively unchanged.
The combination of these created a musical bubble, which burst as bubbles are wont to do. Radio played fewer artists. The major label system became more risk adverse and started chasing trends. These pushed the music industry into a tailspin.
Many music buyers simply stopped buying, moving their entertainment dollars elsewhere. For most musicians, this hurt their appearance of sales and risked their relationships with their labels, but did little to hurt all but the top 3% of recording artists.
This is largely due to the little money which musicians make on recorded music through the traditional publishing structure. The average numbers I saw when working as a music journalist were $0.25 per album and $0.03 per track. If you want to get mad at anyone, get mad at the labels whom long ago made artists a trivial part in the musical process, turning art into product.
We're still on the cusp of a true digital revolution, moving away from musicians as indentured servants. Thanks to the drop in price with the digital renaissance and services like TuneCore, artists are now able to record music, distributing it for pennies and earning high double digit percent for their work. The distribution system is getting vertical, and artists - not labels and distribution systems - are the ones whom are benefiting.
As for pirates? A study by Forrester Research shows that pirates typically buy 10 times as much music as those who don't pirate. Seems to me, your blame should fall not on those who download, but on those who have been estranged or grown apathetic towards music in general.
@Bradley Without doubt; I don't blame the woes of the music industry on piracy alone. However, piracy doesn't help much. That's why it's called piracy and why it's illegal.
The main point of the article is that for all the user-focused tools online, there really, REALLY ought to be a few comprehensive networking/marketing/promotional/sales tools for musicians, as well.
@Jolie One can easily make the argument that piracy helps, not hurts, a band for those very same reasons. The quote so commonly attributed to Cory Doctorow and Tim O'Rielly (Tim said it first) is that "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
The traditional media markets are so siloed and vertical that an independent artist has little to no luck of breaking in. However, thanks to the internet, the digital revolution at large, and yes, piracy, musicians now have the options of eschewing those channels and putting their music directly into the hands (or ears) of their true listeners.
If a band chooses to sell works in this manner, they can do so at a greater profit. Otherwise, these new distribution methods can lead to other merchandising effects like t-shirts, rights in other areas, and of course the concert.
True, with out large dollar advances the traditional image of the rock star is destroyed, but what's wrong with a middle class musician?
Music got digitized - get over it - sure its been an uncomfortable decade as the previous distribution model gets torn down but I do truly believe that there has never been a better time to be a musician than now. Digital tools such as tunecore, cdbaby, mysongstore, etc allow independents to move their product at a fraction of the cost of previous decades.
Subscription may well be the future but I think it'll take another decade before it becomes truly viable - in the meantime the lessons of permission marketing that have been learned in other digital arenas need to be applied. The tools for a successful music business are already there: website, streaming audio, email list, dig distribution - what else do you need?
I understand your frustration but I think you're missing something in your anger at the free model and needing new platforms. The old model is dead. Gone. Few artists truly made a living selling product to begin with considering the hefty recoupments and expenses charged back by the labels. So I'm not sure "stealing" has really impacted artists who were busy building fanbases to begin with.
The new model is to use free as a means to build a real fanbase. It is the loss leader to help get fans to shows, to buy merch, and to spread the word. If you can get some licensing money along the way that's great too. I blogged about some of the ways that content can monetize in a give it to me for free age.
Many artists have used social media and the internet in general to build new paradigms that have allowed them to not only cut out the middle man but become more in touch with fans than ever before. Check out Corey Smith for a great example of the new model. Bob Lefsetz -- who writes quite often about the changing face of the music industry did a nice piece which sums up Corey's new model. Here's the link: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2008/12/14/corey-smith/
@Brad The workaday musician isn't benefiting from piracy at all. He would/could benefit from online tools, it's true... Again, that's the whole point I was trying to make here. =)
You said that the digital revolution was helping indie artists.
Well, the point of this post is that the Internet is helping bands, and it isn't at the same time. Although YouTube/MySpace/etc. allow bands free media uploads and give them a small platform and other sites allow for storefronts or ticket sales, *there is no comprehensive, full-featured toolkit for musicians to market themselves and their music online*. Not that I know of, anyhow. I'm waiting for another commenter to prove me wrong.
As for art as product, you really ought to read the Steve Albini article I linked to at the end. Fascinating insider POV.
I've written this in the past, but I think Napster did more than just teach us all how to pirate music. I truly look at it as the first Web 2.0 application. It was social, embraced by the masses, implored portable technologies and may have driven household-after-household in the Cable Modem era of the early 21st century.
Yes, people had been passing music on back mIRC channels for years, but Napster destroyed that. I will avoid linking to my own blog where I wrote this, but the quote I put together on this last year was:
"When Peer-2-Peer sharing went to the masses, it changed the internet. Napster did that. It broke down the geek barrier of entry. The normal internet consumer realized they could become each others content providers. That was the tipping point."
Jolie, it takes all kinds and I should read that insider POV article you linked to before saying I disagree completely, but this phrase in your comment above is pretty hard to swallow: "piracy doesn't help much. That's why it's called piracy and why it's illegal." I'd argue that the definition of "piracy" and laws around it have been hotly contested for centuries and both have often been set up to favor established financial interests - to the detriment of everyone else. Equating illegality with badness is rarely a helpful thing to do, imho, or else much needed change in this world wouldn't have happened.
I am quite familiar with Steve Albini's article. It's practically required reading for music jounros. And in complete agreement with you that there's no tried-and-true turnkey solution for your modern band.
But I don't know if there could be. What would you include in there? Who would the service target - others in the industry or consumers? Would the service cover publishing, production, touring, merchandising? Isn't Twitter a solid example that doing one little thing really well can be more beneficial than doing a lot of things poorly?
Musicians today have a lot of tools at their disposal. They have Music Arsenal http://musicarsenal.com/ (full disclosure, I'm friends with the site's creator) to mange the business side, MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/YouTube etc for handling the consumer side, and mobile phones for doing the bit in the middle.
The really difficult bit for the modern musician is the same one that the rest of us are facing in the digital age - how does one measure ROI? Is it YouTube views? Is Unique Visitors? MySpace Friends? It used to be products shipped, but that was taken away.
I don't feel sympathy for artists not having a gigantic music machine to falsely prompt up their status as rock stars or artists.
Quality needs to be re-established as a reason to get people out, and then sadly (yes I know this is painful) musicians might actually have to perform their music. This has always been by far the best way to get their music out AND earn dollars.
"That's why it's called piracy and why it's illegal"
That's not true. Downloading music tracks, or MP3s, is NOT illegal. It's the act of uploading that is illegal. There has not been one single enforcement action by the RIAA or their cadre that focused on a downloader. That's because downloading is not copyright infringement.
Anyway, this article is a bit ridiculous to blame the fans. Maybe its true that musicians will be wrung out of the game, but that's the sign of the times. It's now a digital environment were the musician not only needs to be a good musician, but a savvy business person as well. If you can't adapt to the demise of brick and mortar, time to find a new job.
People vote with their wallets, so if musicians are having trouble making money off of their music from fans, it must mean that the songs are all novel (note, that doesn't mean that can't still be good).
But really, its not about the music and it never has been. For someone to like your career enough to buy things produced by you, you need to inspire more than a good song.
Musicians seem to have forgotten that.
People talk as if the old, commercial model for musicians has existed for eternity. The fact is, for most of history, people who played music did so for fun, not for money. A scant handful of them found patrons and could live at least part of their lives from making music, but this was strictly for the elite.
The commercial model is a strange aberration of the 20thc that evidently didn't have legs. It allowed many more musicians (by not means all, or even a majority) to make a living, at least for a few years. That model appears to be crumbling, as it depended entirely on fragile and narrowly-controlled media (sheet music, vinyl, tape). Once the media transformed, the model started to blow apart.
Yes, this may mean the end of what was once familiar. All flesh is grass.
Good lord, folks, even GM whines less than does the record industry.
The question should not be "Is sharing intellectual creation good/bad for artists ?" but "How do we get artists to make money from their art ?"
At some point in history intellectual rights were a viable solution. This fact does not imply they are the only way at any time.
Music hasn't found its business model. Guess what ? Journalism hasn't either ! RWW is working at it, while traditional newspaper are getting hurt, and aggregators are not sued for piracy...
Here's the deal. The business of music has always been hi-risk, hi-reward. Napster et al is/was nothing new. Top 40 Payola, the Mo-Town concept of a "staple" of stars, or even the Grand Ole Opry ripped talented newbies blind. It goes back even farther to the library of congress recording the blues greats for like a dollar, a drink, or a meal.
The secret is to do it for love, do it well, hang on to the rights of everything you do, and market, market, market. The best model? Hip Hop. Build a following on the street (give mixes and releases away to peeps--one at a time, not corporations). Then you get some heat, you start your own damn company.
If you're good enough, lucky, and on the zeitgeist, you make a fortune. If you're not that good/lucky/on, well at least you get to have something in your life you love more than the oxygen you breathe.
Hank out.
I have had the pleasure over the past couple of months of working with a few different music startups. Each one has a different take on how to "solve" the problem of free music / making a living as a musician.
Naptser created an ecosystem where controlling WHAT you tried before you (maybe) bought became the norm. And what did it beget? A scared music industry that moved to both control and destroy the changes in the emerging ecosystem.
But, it wasnt just the music industry. It was the musicians too. They jumped on the internet bandwagon as quickly as they bemoaned the fact that music was now free, and it was hard to make a living.
The outcome? Touring became huge. Merchandising became huge. Artists and to a lesser degree management companies began to understand that music distribution could be a decent revenue stream, but a great promotional vehicle for greater revenue opportunities.
But, as these things do, it destroyed the middle class of music. Now the "one-hit wonder" isnt an exception, its a staple. Bands like the Rolling Stones make millions and millions touring. So many bands are "reuniting" because of the potential revenue of a tour.
So the question becomes, is there a path to go from a studio musician to a viable working musician? To go from a nobody that no one has ever heard of, to a somebody that everyone wants to be?
When you talk about online tools for musicians, the most valuable tool is the one of distribution/discovery and promotion. Tools like TopSpin Media and The Next Big Sound (http://thenextbigsound.com) are good examples of this.
Great bands are going to learn how to use Hype Machine (http://hypem.com) and TheSixtyOne (http://thesixtyone.com and WeAreHunted (http://www.wearehunted.com) to their advantage.
Looking forward to seeing where this series goes!
You're glossing over a few key differentiators in the current Napster offer vs. eMusic and Last.fm/Pandora (disclosure: I work for Napster, but I have used and enjoyed all of the services I mention on my own dime). Napster vs. eMusic: Napster has around 3 million more tracks than eMusic. The vast majority of that discrepancy is major label content. It was just announced yesterday that eMusic will be adding Sony back catalogue (again, just Sony and not even their newest, most popular content), and they're only able to do that by doubling their subscription prices. I realize that the major labels don't have content that appeals to everyone, but they do appeal to the majority- there's a reason it's called pop music. Napster vs. Last.fm/Pandora: While Last.fm and Pandora are both great services, neither of them provide on-demand streaming, even if you pay. In other words, if you want to listen to a specific song on Pandora, you can't do it, even for $3 a month, same goes for Last.fm. As for imeem, yes, they do provide on-demand...
Good discussion with some trenchant points raised.
One thing no one seems to be addressing is the value of intellectual property. Creativity has value. Monetary value. Whether it's set by a conglomerate or by the masses, music, sculpture, paintings, plays, movies, TV shows- these things have value because people dedicate their lives to CREATING. Contempt for artists is long standing and corrosive. NO ONE is pretending that the A&Ms, Columbias and EMIs of the world were slavishly dedicated to elevating the level of cultural discourse in our society. They were trying to make a buck and a few people, not usually the artists themselves, got rich doing it.
The genesis of Napster was the desire by some young people at the beginning of a revolutionary time in terms of technology to "get over." In other words, it was the same genesis of every revolution in human history: young, smart, motivated "outsiders" rose up against the entrenched monied elites. The trouble, as Jolie eloquently states, is that in trying to topple the tower, they screwed the guys who built that tower with their creativity.
Look, every single person, me included, has "stolen" music or someone else's intellectual property and has then made dozens of rationalizations as to why it was OK. (Or maybe they never gave it another thought. Who knows?) The point is, Napster ushered in a shift in values and ethics (that's right, there is a HUGE ethical component to this) that most people born after 1980 give scant thought to. "If it's online, it's mine for the taking." I don't really think we're going back to the old way, but I find the defense of Napster a little misguided. It enabled and condoned theft. Period. And parsing whether uploading or downloading is the illegal part forgets that whether you held the gun or drove the getaway car, you're still legally on the hook for robbing the bank. There still is such a thing as right and wrong in society, isn't there?
Jolie- @BradleyRobb makes a great point. What WOULD a turnkey solution look like? Just like I tell my clients that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to social media marketing, the same holds true for music. Are you a hip hop artist? Classical violinist? Avril Lavigne clone? Three valid forms of music, but hardly interchangeable and probably not appealing to the same demographic.
It has NEVER been easy to succeed as an artist. Just ask van Gogh. But I would suggest that today, with a bit of technological savvy and research, at least music artists have a shot to control their own destinies. And isn't that preferable? Labels don't give a s**t about artists. Fans do. Record. Play out. Promote. Repeat.
For better or worse, we live in the age of the generalist, not the specialist. You need to know a little about a lot. It's getting harder and harder to succeed knowing a lot about a little.
Hello Jolie (great name),
I'm not sure what you mean by tools.
As for web sites that are great for posting music, I'd suggest Bandcamp and Soundcloud. For creating a blog, nothing beats squarespace, not even Wordpress. For selling physical stuff, nimbit and audiolife both look good.
For listeners, lala.com seems pretty cool.
Jeff
www.cerebellumblues.com (my blog, which is built on squarespace)
It was precisely to simplify and "level the playing field" that we started TuneCore. If artists hold on to all their rights, they're in a stronger position never to be screwed again. If they get all the money the stores pay, then at least they don't have to worry about a middleman.
That's the idea, and it's working great so far. Thanks for the mention. Good discussion!
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
@ Jolie: I can see some of the validity in your points, however, I have to agree with Brad and some of the other commenters in that the market is changing and the new paradigms are benefitting a new demographic of artists and users in different ways. The established demographic isn't going to like the loss of control over the market, but that's the cycle.
And to comment on "That's why it's called piracy and why it's illegal.", freedom of speech was once illegal (and in many places still is), and it's my firm belief that it isn't wrong. To correlate morality with legality or vice-versa seems absurd until we happen upon a perfect government.
Sorry, you're wrong. Your arguments are hopelessly naive and outdated. Unhappy with the current state of affairs? Blame the industry for trying its best to maintain a stranglehold on it, a strangehold they built up like mobsters in the 40s and 50s, a stranglehold technology now makes easily circumventable. Consumers/users don't screw artists - the record companies do. The record companies hoodwink artists by taking 98% of the sales cut, and hoodwink consumers by forcing us to buy an outrageously overpriced product before we can actually see what it is. It's plain sickening to see how the pro-industry lobby holds artists hostage, forcing them to be the face of a porcine system those same artists hate. How do I know? Because I'm a musician myself, and I fear getting screwed by a label a lot more than by some kid downloading my stuff. To top it all off we have a political establishment that doesn't see music as art, but as a source of revenue which must be protected for taxation. It's not about about music, it's not about artists, it's about money, and you can't seem to figure that out.
I think this trend was inevitable - as the internet makes more things available for free or ridiculously cheap (legally or otherwise), users just aren't willing to pay for music, news, and other content.
Sites like iTunes, napster, and other music stores are still trying to hold up an old paradigm instead of figuring out a new one. If nobody wants to pay to buy a song, but everybody still wants to hear good music, how can musicians earn a living and find new ways to connect with fans? What do fans want from musicians - in terms of products, content, and relationships / experiences, and what are they willing to pay for? Lots of possibilities, but no fast and easy answers.
Sometimes I think that music does not carry the "weight" that it used to for the majority of today's listeners. It's been commoditized to the point where it's become a decoration, much like wallpaper. I've been to enough gigs (my own and others) to notice that a lot of people are talking most of the time, stopping only to applaud (if that). I remember when music, no matter the caliber of musician nor import, caused everyone to sit up and pay attention. There was an energy to it. I think people just don't value it the same way these days. If you want, blame it on MP3's (free music); the death of radio (you can argue that the death of that commons killed the idea of a shared experience); and games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band that have "Democratized" the making of music. Also I think our corporate masters have contributed to it's overuse in what is mainly a mercantile context.
The biggest problem with today's music is...just that...Music! Being a musician, producer, songwriter myself, we have all these great tools to promote, connect and create mucic, but what about tools to help develop an artist . Most record companies spent considerable time and resources developing a new artist. They always had a network of trained music producers, musicians, engineers, voice coaches, whatever the artist needed to grow. Now I do much of that on my own. It is a lot of work for a struggling indie artist. Not only do you have to create music, you have to brand yourself, network and sell a product. Until we create a support system for indie artist, many will become overwhelmed with the task of making a living at it. My hope is to change the way thing our done within the network. Gighive.com is at least a start in the right direction...I feel we need a different kind of network to support artists in much the same the majors supported theirs.
If nothing else, I think Napster revolutionized music distribution. Bands from Metalica, to No Doubt, to Ciara have now gotten very consumer savvy and found creative distribution routes. Was Napster 100% ethical? Probably not. Was Napster a needed industry shake-up? Yes.
'illegal' downloads are not illegal in Spain.
here we have 'private copy right' fortunately what makes P2P not ilegal :)
The only way for musicians to stop the online piracy of music is the following:
1) Never digitize a master recording that can be saved onto a hard drive. Once it's digital, anyone can easily copy it to a flash drive, release it on P2P, and game over.
2) Rely on 8-tracks and reel-to-reel. It's time to go back to those clunky, bulky analog formats. Everything going digital just makes it easier to move, copy and commit piracy.
When you leave it analog, and only analog, I don't think anyone in this lazy world we live in, is going to take the time to convert it from analog to digital themselves (unless they have NO LIFE).
So, to the future musicians who don't want their music pirated online...grab a reel of audio tape next time.
Far from original case in point: the Grateful Dead moved from near-obscurity to a cult following in part by allowing "piracy."
I think you hit the nail on the head with this comment, Jolie:
"It used to be that record labels were in charge of screwing musicians over (click the link for a classic article by producer Steve Albini). Now, that task has passed to the fans themselves."
Musicians have been saying that for years, but this is the first time that I've seen it stated in a techie blog. What the Web 2.0 community doesn't seem to understand is that the collapse of the music market doesn't just affect the major labels; it affects all musicians. It affects the talented, untalented, indies, bedroom studios, teenage hip-hop, middle-age rock'n'roll and geriatric opera singers. People are spending less money on music, which means musicians are now deprived of a vital source of income and there's no new sources of income to take it's place.
Except, perhaps, for marketing tie-ins, which are very few and very far-between. And when they do come along, they often result in a backlash from consumers who feel that the artist is somehow "tarnishing" their work with corporate cooties.
So the music fans have said to the musicians: we don't want to give you money. We don't want anyone else to give you money. Can we please have some more music?
Well, of course you can have more music! But it might not be the music you want. Because we're at least ten years into this "digital music revolution" and the winner is... American Idol! Or to be more specific, the corporations behind American Idol. There may very well be some talented folks on American Idol -- I don't watch, so I really wouldn't know -- but it's success doesn't support the much-touted Web 2.0 theory that "big business" will retreat from the music world and "talent alone" will rise to the top.
I think that there will always be scrappy rock'n'roll musicians who just like making a ferocious noise and don't care about getting paid. Bless 'em, I used to be one of 'em! Those who do want to get paid are in for a rough ride, just like always. The major labels will reorganize, but they're not going away.
As the Who sang so many years ago: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!"
Interesting post. I agree that musicians have gotten the short end of the revenue stick in part because of the early file downloading services, but I think that it's more because their music companies did such a horrible job understanding how to market music on the Web - something that still escapes them largely. At the same time Last.fm offers aspiring musicians some hope that they can combine ease of access with direct revenue streams - kind of like radio royalties for the masses. The main problem with the music industry is not really enforcing IP rights but coming up with a business model that leverages Web technology most effectively. The Web enables both radio-like and recording-like engagement with music, a combination that is generally under-exploited. File sharing services were very popular because the music companies didn't understand that anyone could be a radio station on the Web - and didn't bother to think creatively about how to do this until it was almost too late. They had become locked in to the CD model...
@Mark, Last.fm does provide free-on-demand streaming (in certain countries).
The toolkit is out there, it's just not all in one place (and maybe never will be, though TopSpin appear to be promising something along these lines). Here's my take:
http://songaday.co.uk/2009/02/musicians-easy-guide-to-the-internet/
I agree that the democratization of music via the web has actually made it harder to get *noticed* and *paid* than in, say, 1979 when the channels were clear and obvious and open only to a much smaller proportion of musicians. But is it not much easier now t at least get *heard*? More people have probably illegally downloaded/streamed/shared my tracks than probably bought the first Velvet Underground album - and I'm an absolute nobody! This is encouraging, surely? (and not, obviously, just for me!)
Disclosure 1 - my firm consults and does music marketing for, among many other client types, major recording artists, media companies, and live concert producers, and occasionally a label.
Disclosure 2 - I am also the partner in a record label that launched bands by embracing social media, file sharing, the internet and the like, and some of the bands have happily made a living off of it, even as most people have never heard of them.
I think there are some great comments here. I'd like to add three other areas for consideration that I haven't seen mentioned:
1) When we talk about the internet making things free, and the law and the internet not being aligned, and everything going to zero, it's very important we remember that this is only the case with CONSUMER purchase habits. The legal framework and market for B2B licensing is still completely entact. Producers still pay music licensing. Bands still make a ton off of ads, licensing within TV shows and movies, video games, etc. There is a TON of money to be made here still. When we talk about pricing going to zero, it's important to remember it hasn't for businesses. Businesses have money and, thus, are suable, and, thus, follow the law even if the internet made it physically easy not to.
2) You talk a lot about a lack of tools, and I think this is interesting. I don't want to get to metaphysical, but what is a tool? It's an implement that helps you do a job. We all have a lot of faith in the web, and I think there's an implicit belief amongst the more techno-utopian of us that there can exist a so-called "tool" that magically... does.. what? Gets your band known, licensed, booked, and with a fan base? Let's look at this with a similar type of entity that have "cracked" online marketing, at least more than bands: brands. The most savvy marketing brands out there (Apple, Zappos) don't rely on some magic tool to do their marketing. They rely on large numbers of very smart people doing very difficult things to accomplish their goals. They have "tools" in the sense that they have email and excel and internet connections and iphones and photoshop and ruby on rails, but they don't have tools in the sense that they rely on a magic box that makes their brand well-loved and famous. And indeed, the "tools" that exist out there for this - things like Appsavvy or Get Satisfaction or Salesforce - are still only part of the solution. Smart people still need to do a lot of hard work to get things done.
THIS is where music has broken down. The money is on the licensing, live and mech sides, but the marketing muscle and money came from the record labels, who traditionally didn't get the licensing, live and merch money. (This is a bit more complex when it comes to publishing, but the premise still stands).
There is, however, no reason to think that artists couldn't work like brands - invest substantial sums of money on smart people who view their entire ecosystem and make incremental progress on maximizing revenue through increased awareness. IE: Brand advertising, PR, etc. And there's no theoretical reason why a partner investor couldn't see the potential value in an artist, and strike a deal with the artist to take a cut of ALL the revenue, and spend money maximizing awareness to increase total revenue. This is what LiveNation is doing, of course, but I find it interesting no one's doing it for the smaller bands. Why aren't there more artist funds, like there is in the fine art world? Why aren't there band VCs? Why on earth do we expect ten nerds in silicon valley to solve all the problems?
if Brad and Micah are right, that the real money is in touring and tshirts, then here's an idea - stop recording full tracks and albums.
Save the expense and just release musical `'trailers`', short promotional bits of songs to get people to buy tickets and shirts.
The bands save money, no one "violates their copyright", and the T shirt business has explosive growth.
wow, I showed up late to this conversation. Jolie, it looks like you may have stepped out on the wrong foot on this one. But I'm really interested about more posts coming out on how artists are using new tech to grow their fanbase/make moneys.
The truth is, there are success stories on either side; some people boom and grow through pirated channels, while others are deeply hurt. I happen to lean very strongly towards the side that champions the free distribution. I know of a friend of a friend of a friend that's in a private torrent community and I wouldn't have heard and promoted half the artists I love now without that person getting free access to that music.
Ireland's fight against pirates is so ironic to me, since I can count on two hands the Irish artists this friend of a friend of a friend has shown to me... and who i've subsequently fallen in love with.
Maybe it's just that musicians aren't selling music anymore, they're selling merch and live shows, and other creative things. And hasn't it mostly always been this way? Reading the Steve Albini article you linked to was case in point.
Whatever the verdicts may be, pirating -- unauthorized rapid promotion and distribution of worthy material -- certainly offers the unheard creative and interesting musicians a huge opportunity out of obscurity.
Hey there Jolie,
I think you’re reacting more to your concerns about the original Napster than what I actually said.
100% of our focus, i.e. the focus of the legal Napster, has been to deliver on the “promise” of the good things about the original Napster; ie. consumers having the ability to access all music – while at the same time – and this is the important part – INSURING THAT ARTISTS GET PAID. Since this has been the guiding principal of our team here at the legal Napster for many years - we hope this is well understood.
It is natural for folks to confuse the old Napster with the new. All we’re saying is that the original Napster was awesome for giving consumers the opportunity to access all music – and that its been our job ever since then to work – very hard indeed – to insure artists are paid properly.
Last year we did $130m in revenue and the large majority of that went to paying artists.
Going forward – we think there are a lot more opportunities to help artists monetize their work through self-publishing, self-promotion, etc. – all of which we hope to contribute to going forward.
Thanks.
-Chris Gorog
musician are basically just stupid;
1. they give it away for free.
2. they don't know how to work the web to get sells.
3. they'r slow and too wrapped up in themselves
what they should do.... is join
umakeitcool.com
you get a profile, a store, and tools to hook into twitter, facebook, email...
oh yeah, you can sell every track you want, even the samples you make.
its stupid to give it away. it's time, and time is money.
it's stupid to make your own "Band" website... that's time and money away from your music.
anyway, we're doing it at umakeitcool ; we only want new music, no label crap.
and only good musicians, no, myspace for 'tard and wanna bees.
if you go through a label, even an independent label; you're a tard. like, famous is so 20th century. it's about you, your music, and the world through the internet.
join and start selling; we're constantly upgrading and making it better so you can sell your music, films, photos, images, etc.
You can't make significant amounts of money off something unless you can control access to it (or someone you can make a decent contract with can). You make money off of basketball by putting it into arenas where people (and broadcasters) can't get at it without paying. You make money off of music only if you effectively keep people from having access to it unless they pay.
It is a bit too soon to say what piracy will do to the music, book, and movie industries. Right now, those who don't pay are freeloading off those of us who do. If the ratio of freeloaders to payers becomes too unfavorable, the recording labels, book publishers, and movie makes will go out of business. (Things perhaps needn't go the same way in all of these fields.) The first industry to be damaged by modern technology was the sheet music industry, which was hard hit by the ready availability of modern photocopy machines.
Music and books could survive the death of the recording companies and publishers. The costs of creating music and books or creating a band or other music group are not prohibitive. Exactly what music and books would be like under these conditions is hard to say, but they would certainly survive, even if most people creating them couldn't make much money doing so. Not so movies as we know them. Your typical UTube video will survive, but the sorts of things you see in the local Cineplex cost millions of dollars to make. If piracy wins out there, we simply won't have anything like to sorts of movies we have become accustomed to.
I think the article raises a valid issue. Napster didn't create a whole new world where DIY musicians are making money. Now there are more musicians putting out more music and hoping to make it on touring and merchandise because the price of recorded music has dropped so much.
Although I have read lots of posts about what a great time it is to be a musician today, I have seen relatively few financial numbers to see who is making money, how they are making money, and who is buying what from them.
Rather than rehashing some numbers in this forum, look at this blog post I wrote. I'd welcome any income and expense figures from bands who are making a living wage these days.
http://brandsplusmusic.blogspot.com/2009/05/can-you-sell-10000-t-shirts-annually.html
Discalaimers: I am in a band, own a recording studio and have made a living from music for more than 25 years. Also, I am steve albini.
Anyone portraying internet file sharing as being harmful to musicians is almost certainly not a working musician. The fight against it has been led by entertainment corporations, not musicians. Musicians are used as PR proxies because they are more sympathetic characters than Disney executives.
Internet file sharing is profoundly beneficial to bands, in that it serves to promote them to a worldwide audience at no cost. This is an enormous benefit. I saw it in action myself last year when my band conducted hugely profitable tours of both South America and Eastern Europe, including places like Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Turkey, where our music has virtually no formal distribution. People came to our shows, knew our music and bought anything we had to sell them. They were familiar with us because the internet allowed them to hear our music for free, and they developed a taste for it.
This mechanism works for any band that allows it, and also for those who try to prevent it, because preventing it is impossible.
Internet file sharing is bad for labels and publishing companies because it compromises their previously exclusive distribution and accounting networks. Boo hoo. Those were temporary constructions whose utility has expired. Nobody cries for the poor telegraph or whale oil companies who were last century's technology "victims."
My sympathies are with the bands, so I am a strong supporter of internet file sharing. It provides free immediate access to a worldwide audience, and an audience once built can participate in a band's career repeatedly and indefinitely. Failing to build that audience by sequestering music into pay-only venues out of fear, greed or indignation is certain death for a career.
The concept of intellectual property needs to be revisited anyway, and this may be the occasion to do it. This time the users and beneficiaries (bands, for example) may get a say in how IP is defined and delimited, and not just a few powerful corporations. What a nice development that would be.
@steve albini OH MY GOD, IT'S STEVE ALBINI!!!
Thanks for letting me freak out; I'm a huge fan.
I did want to tell you, though, that I agree with you. I think Internet file sharing *can be* an amazing tool for musicians; most importantly, I think musicians deserve much better tools. I'd actually love to know more about your thoughts on the subject and will email you soon.
Thanks for stopping by to comment. You're my hero. =)
@steve albini Nothing happens without pressure. I think some further validation from artists is what's necessary. Think Zappa, Snider, and Denver.
Anyone will be hard pressed to find a musician who feels differently. Although, (from touring experience) even though The Internet does allow a greater distribution... it also allows greater saturation (but that's a whole nother issue I guess).
PS - A Sun That Never Sets is awesome.
I agree with the comments above, that p2p shared music is not hurting the artists at all, its hurting only the music labels. There are many sites where many indie artists share their music for free download, and despite the "noise" internet is great for promotion and feedback from fans.
> Anyone portraying internet file sharing as being
> harmful to musicians is almost certainly not a
> working musician. The fight against it has been
> led by entertainment corporations, not musicians.
Wrong, Steve. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
we developed a technology 6 years ago with Ministry of sound (who bottled it when we came to launch it) called musimetrics
we're pretty confident its still a big piece of the jigsaw - more info here http://www.slideshare.net/savioursofpop/musimetric-labels-presentation
we're still looking for labels to partner with us - its not a big job - and once the prototype we have is usable - a $42b futures market is available to musicians...
I found this article very silly. I currently know a decent number of musicians who are doing fine despite the internet. Some report no difference pre and post Napster. The younger ones all grew up downloading music. They don't remember the pre-napster world, they still download music and they're also discovering vinyl.
The decline of the big labels has nothing at all to do with the internet, alot to do with technology though.
"In 2007 more than 750,000 albums were released worldwide (by mostly independent artists via the Internet), compared to 38,000 in 2002."
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/288598
With nearly 20x the number of 'albums' being produced - fans budgets for music haven't gone up 20x. So the big, mega, multi stars who used to sell a million albums started selling half a million, then a quarter million - meanwhile independents who used to sell 500 copies started (because of the ease of production and distribution) selling 1,000 or 2,000.
Fewer mega rock stars / more musicians paying the rent. That's the trade that's been made and it has sucked for the big labels, it's really good for music though.
One thing that frustrates me is the lack of more experimental music that is possible within the new model. Labels are forced to look at bands as jingle writers instead of artists in order to make sure they can get their money back selling a song for use in car commercials. I'm ok with licensing, but from a financial perspective, there is little to no incentive to put out anything that doesn't have relatively obvious licensing potential. That means there is little reason to spend the money on publicity that is still necessary for a band to have some level of success.
The music industry taking risks has helped to define generations. I doubt the same revolutions in music can ever happen again.
Eric, the big labels aren't taking risks but there are small labels springing up everywhere who are taking risks and are doing all the things you suggest. With the big labels it doesn't really matter, in 10 years they won't really exist (maybe a small office that handles licensing of old music but that's it.) If you're listening to mainstream, commercial radio for 'experimental' you won't find it but it's out there.
Fans are not screwing the artist over by sharing their music - they are doing the artist a service. The more hands the music gets into the better. This is the new marketing strategy whether you choose to accept it or not, and it has proven to be very successful. Check out Chester French - they are the perfect example of how the original Napster model of sharing music for free has given them a huge following that they probably wouldn't have had had they not given away so much music and encouraged their fans to do the same.
Once an artist starts to gather a fanbase, then it's up to him/her to decide how to monetize off them. Companies like Audiolife finally allow the artist to do this by giving them an e-commerce solution to sell their music and merch directly to their fans. Trent Reznor agrees - direct-to-fan is the new model. Those who still think fans are screwing the artist over through P2Ps are in the same mindset as the major record labels, and we all know what direction they're heading in.
As a musician, and the founder of a 5 year old "startup" in the musician tools space, I though I would share my perspective.
I don't agree that the fans are "screwing over" musicians. Fans are people who support bands by buying a download, a t-shirt, or going to a concert. Outside this group are people with a casual interest who might first try to find their music via P2P.
Free music, whether on P2P or via giveaways from the artist are an opportunity to convert casual visitors into fans -- the musical equivalent of the freemium model. The key is to make a connection, and build a relationship.
The tools are out there, and they are evolving fast. Companies like Reverbnation, Audiolife, or our own, Bandzoogle, are empowering artists to make these connections.
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