Trends Affecting The Bottom Dollar: A Second Exploration Into The Industry's Blogosphere

This week I chose to explore the blogosphere and chose to engage two accredited blogs; one familiar, one not so familiar. When beginning my search for more blogs that I could engage with, I first visited where I knew I could find solid content from an endorsed author that I could interact with. I followed my Linkroll directly to Nico Ramon’s, Not Evil Music blog where I have posted before. In his entry, “Musicians, Copyright and Creative Commons,” he touched upon how free music and file sharing is affecting the business. I chose to respond with a pro-free music perspective with the suggestive belief to successfully capitalize on several different income streams that are being produced today as you will read. After this, I referred back to my Linkroll once again to Rolling Stone’s Online Blog Section. Here, author Even Serpick examined EMI’s restructuring change in his entry, “EMI Changes The Game.” In summary, EMI plans to cut some $500 million dollars in costs by “offering a failing industry a roadmap for the future.” Most of this is based off of centralization of several departments including marketing, promotion, and distribution. While his article is more or less newsworthy and unbiased, I chose to offer my opinion into EMI’s restructuring strategy heavily arguing that their A&R is failing and their vacancy of streamline producers is hurting their success. While it just may be the mood I’m in, I’m always thinking about the bottom dollar. As you read on, you will discover a theme in my writing of how the industry can foster entrepreneurial ideas to capitalize on an ever-changing industry. I look forward to hearing back from the authors.


First Response to:
Musician's, Copyrights, and Creative Commons
Not Evil Music Blog

Author: Nico Ramon

Hello again,

After reading your post regarding how free music may help or hinder an artist’s career, I have had some thoughts regarding the future business model’s that will be affected by this new age of file sharing and digital music. For instance, Prince’s first album sold out despite its steep price relative to daily wages, and then some 15 years later the same artist who has accrued millions upon millions of record sales and other streams of income since then, is now giving his CD away for free. This change within the industry is ever exciting and I feel our generation is very exclusive relative to other generations that lived through moments in time such as the compact disc revolution.

Anyhow, I feel as if there is action; there is an opposite and equal reaction. The action being a business model turned up side its head in the middle of a digital revolution, but the reaction will even out any detriments and the industry as a whole will shift and move on. From a business perspective, although the accounting and income streams will be vastly different, I feel as if a label's product is failing, something must change. Like the article said, the power is shifting from the producers and into the promoters. After researching 360 deals, I came to a realization that while the label does sign people for their exclusive recording services and puts out a CD as a product to profit from, they should deeply investigate a product switch. Because CD's and songs can be acquired for free, they almost become promotional tools versus a profitable product. Why not go where the wind takes us? Let’s use that music as promotional material, and let’s go make the bucks connecting with fans at live events, charity events, public appearances, endorsements, and so on. While record and digital download sales tabulate somewhere around the 10 billion range, and the live concert industry somewhere around 3.2 billion dollars, there is still money to be made. With a vastly different business model, a couple legislation changes, and time, I feel that those numbers could be reversed and even doubled.

Who knows? Maybe one day a decade later, we will be experiencing an influx of live performances and will feel compelled to buy their record once again. Only time will tell.

Second Response to:
EMI Changes The Game
Rolling Stone News Blog
Author: Evan Serpick

AS ALWAYS, the greedy, evil, corporate music industry is out there to make as much money as they can without spending as much as they need to. Okay, maybe not really, but I can't help but to disagree strongly with EMI's new business approach.

A&R's? Really? A&R's exist to supply the record label with new talent which the record label is then responsible for turning into the next big thing. Even if EMI's A&R department found the next Mariah Carey or Janet Jackson, she would still flop as long as she is signed to EMI, as indicated by their previous failures with these two artists.
When an athlete is traded and starts doing much better at the other team, there was obviously something wrong with the athlete's previous team. Therefore, it doesn't matter how many superstar artists the previous team procures - the team will continue doing a subpar job on the field. This team will not reach its full potential until there is a new coach, a new conditioning staff, etc.

In the same way, EMI's focus on A&R and bringing in new talent will do nothing to help their record sales. Instead of this focus on A&R's, EMI needs to invest in top-notch producers who know exactly what the next hot sound is. Like I said in the previous post, the only reason Janet Jackson's back on the charts is because of 'Feedback', in which she sang on an electronic beat and auto-tuned her voice, which is apparently the trend in hip-hop/R&B these days (hip hip hooray for the tone-deaf singers out there)

Merging the marketing/manufacturing/distributing departments? Simply another tactic to try to save a buck or two. Downsizing to reduce inefficiency is one thing, but merging these departments and forcing a smaller number of people to do more tasks isn't going to do it. If anything, EMI needs to expand their marketing department and make consumers realize that their amazing artists are actually amazing.....not very hard to do.

Although realizing that the status quo isn't cutting it and being willing to do something about it is a good first step, EMI has not recognized the root of their problems.

New Ways Music is Being Heard: Pandora Radio and MySpace Music

According to Forrester Research, Inc, an independent technology and market research company, half of all music sold in the US will be digital in 2011 and sales of digitally downloaded music will surpass physical CD sales in 2012. With a vastly changing industry, consumers are finding new mediums to use to listen to their favorite tunes. A decade ago, we would have all gone to our local Best Buy or Circuit City each Tuesday to pick up the latest and greatest in music via purchasing the physical CD. Today, we are purchasing the same music via our computers, and transferring it to portable hard drives, or MP3 players. While a little more advanced and interactive than your traditional FM radio station, Pandora’s one-of-a-kind internet service and MySpace Transmissions are making displacing waves within the industry.

The Human Genome Project was a scientific breakthrough that worked to identify all of the approximate 20,000-25,000 genes within human DNA. From this, scientists hoped to identify certain genes and their expression qualities. Pandora, shown by a screenshot to the left, essentially accomplished the same thing with music back in 2000. As described on Pandora’s website, “A group of musicians…set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level… by assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song.” These dedicated listeners focused on every part of the song ranging from the melody, to instrumentation, orchestration, along with many others. Pandora emphasizes that its not about what the band looks like or genre they are put in by somebody else’s standards, its about the actual sound of the music you are listening to. With this new technology listeners can create a free account, accessible from any computer, which stores customizable, specific “stations” to each listener’s personal taste. For instance, by creating a Norah Jones Station, listeners are now streamed endless music that has similar “musical genomic makeup” playing artists such as Dave Matthew’s Band, Alanis Morrisette, and smaller, lesser known artist, Corinne Bailey Rae. Not only are listeners introduced to a variety of music, but the artist name, song title, and album name are displayed as well. I have found Pandora to have replaced the FM radio technology within my home that I traditionally used, but I am also able to use Pandora via my Blackberry. It is just as free as FM radio, without any commercials or annoying disc jockeys, and best of all, it has an endless catalogue extending past your repetitive weekly Top 20.

In addition to the revolutionary Music Genome Project, another popular online destination, MySpace.com, has been making waves within the industry regarding the way music is being heard and seen by consumers. Globally popular social networking giant, MySpace.com announced the launch of “MySpace Transmissions, a program [designed to] empower top recording artists with a new platform to create and distribute exclusive video content available for viral distribution and audio tracks available for purchase in the U.S.” Essentially, the millions of MySpace community members are now able to appreciate a band or artist differently by having pay-per-view access to behind the scenes in recording studio sessions or exclusive video Q&A’s with the artist. Already becoming one of the dominant communication mediums of today’s youth, MySpace has now created an intimacy level that was non-existent before.

I am greatly moved when introduced to the chemistry of a band, their life stories, and other intimate facets of artists that may not otherwise be available via compact disc or just listening to their music elsewhere. The band pictured to the right, Sublime, released a video/DVD called, “Stories, Lies, Tales & Exaggerations” which is a documentary comprised of hours of home footage and personal testimonials from each of the band members describing their strife and struggles as well as their career development. This new found personal intimacy created a lifelong Sublime fan out of me and has given me a greater understanding and appreciation for their music. This is what MySpace Transmissions is attempting to capture from their enormous, online community. In fact, recording artist James Blunt, who was one of the first artists to be featured by MySpace Transmissions said, “[It] allows me the great opportunity to connect directly with my fans. Playing my new songs with the guys in the band and having fans able to hear them in a new and unique way is always what I am looking for. I am excited to be the first to launch this with MySpace.” All and all, Transmissions represents a new medium for music to be seen and heard, but above all, it is using “Unique music programming [combined with] new business models that benefit labels, bands, and fans.”

Only a mere seven years ago, the revolutionary iPod was introduced from Apple which changed the way we all will store and listen to our music forever. Within those seven years however, musical mediums such as Pandora and MySpace Transmissions have surfaced and opened up the industry’s ears allowing us to hear and see our favorite artists, past and present a little differently. As an avid musical enthusiast, I am getting chills down my back writing this looking forward to the next seven years to come and the exciting technologies that will emerge.