GIVE OUT BUT DON'T GIVE UP
Aug 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Kylee Swenson Remix Editor
If I weren't working in the music industry but was still making music, I'd either be discouraged by the cutthroat competition or naÏvely unaware of the pitfalls ahead. But from this vantage point, I sometimes I feel like I'm on a ladder peeking over a fence into the insanity of the music industry, and my friends are asking, “What do you see?” Um, well, looting…burning buildings….
People have been reporting about the decline of the music industry for a long time. But in a recent report from Rolling Stone, it's looking as dire as ever. The labels are unable to reinvent themselves fast enough to recover from the decline of record sales. Digital sales and ringtones are booming — but not enough to cover the losses in CD sales. Major labels are laying off people left and right, as if by firing squad. The record industry seems to be dying like dinosaurs before an ice age. But will it freeze to death?
In that R.S. report, former president of the RIAA, Hilary Rosen, said that when peer-to-peer file sharing went from prevalent to rampant, “That's when we went from music having real value in people's minds to music having no economic value, just emotional value.” That really hit me. Honestly, it was kind of a relief. People still need music because they still need that emotional release. We just have to figure out how we can make music and get people to buy it again. The word on the street is that touring is where the money is at, and music publishing and licensing is on the up-and-up. But label signings are way down, according to the R.S. report, by a third. And with the panic ensuing at labels, what good are they to artists now, anyway?
Featured in this issue of Remix, TuneCore.com founder Jeff Price makes a passionate case for going your own way without a label. Meanwhile, the French duo Justice creates a deafening buzz (they get thousands of plays on MySpace every day) due to its Internet success, helping to inspire the new phrase “blog house.” Then there's Mark Ronson, who didn't have a record deal when he started recording Version, but by the time he hit the studio again, his reputation as high-profile Manhattan party DJ had morphed to that of serious producer (especially from recording half of beehive-haired singer Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album). With that and general Internet buzz, RCA jumped on the bandwagon.
Finally, there are the Chemical Brothers, who succeeded back with the old model of the record industry and continue to prevail by touring, releasing good music and keeping up with the new game. Their Website (www.chemicalbrothers.com) is so cutting edge that if you go to the “Live” section, you can click on any upcoming gig, and a satellite map immediately pops up with a visual of the location for the gig and a link to buy tickets. The site also provides Flickr and YouTube tags so fans can upload photos and videos of the band's gigs.
It's all about making it as easy as possible for your fans to find you, buy your merchandise and get out to see your shows. The buzzword these days is “community” — the model for online success. Make your fans feel like they're participating in your world, and they'll pony up their money. There are still success stories out there, and you just have to work a little harder to be one of them.
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
