“Mood music maker scores fifteen billion streams, and prompts yet another ‘fake artists’ debate – ‘Fake artists’ have become a talking point again after a Swedish newspaper highlighted how one musician is scoring billions of streams by recording tracks targeted at Spotify’s mood music playlists under 656 different names.”: https://tinyurl.com/btej6vec

THIS ‘SECRET’ COMPOSER IS BEHIND 650 FAKE ARTISTS ON SPOTIFY. HIS MUSIC HAS BEEN STREAMED 15BN TIMES ON THE PLATFORM (REPORT): https://tinyurl.com/bs682e36

Short skis suck. That was the mantra back in the seventies. The ski business was controlled by a very few companies selling iconic models to many. Like the Rossignol Strato. K2 started to make shorter skis, and then Olin, with its Mark IV. Good skiers were horrified. Because these short skis altered the shape of the moguls (bumps), giving them steep backsides thus making them harder to ski.

Well today, everybody skis on a shorter ski. A much shorter ski. Even the World Cup racers. Today’s skis are shorter and fatter with deep sidecuts making them easier to turn, there used to be few experts on the hill, now there are many.

Furthermore, the general public adopted shorter, fatter skis with deep sidecuts long before the World Cup racers. But then Deborah Compagnoni switched to shaped skis and started to win everything, and the rest of the racers switched overnight.

Today the Rossignol Strato and its ilk are history. There is not one ski that dominates. And racing skis like the Strato aren’t even stocked by most retailers. Furthermore, there are more manufacturers than ever. The revolution was started by Elan, a Yugoslavian company, and Rossignol was late to the party and its image, and market share, have never recovered.

And what does this have to do with the music business?

EVERYTHING!

There are fewer major labels than ever before, only three now. And Lucian Grainge is touted as a genius in every business publication known to man.

But don’t confuse today’s major labels with those of yore. Those of yore were expanding, those remaining today are contracting. Laying off staff, cutting expenses, putting out fewer records, believing they’ve cornered the market.

Only they haven’t.

The major labels are selling Rossignol Stratos, and the indies are eating their lunch AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT!

So, they want everybody with fewer than a thousand streams not to be paid. Now a thousand streams doesn’t pay much, but in the aggregate, all those small acts earn a pretty penny. But not anymore. The majors are using their clout to take that money back for themselves.

So what is the labels’ leverage?

Their catalogs. Streaming services are nothing without them, so they kowtow.

But when it comes to new music, the paradigm has completely shifted.

It used to be about a limited number of acts broken on the radio. Now it’s about hip-hop and pop acts broken on the radio. In a world of many niches, the majors are only playing in a couple of them, ceding the rest of the landscape to innovators.

The majors are not in Jöhan Rohr’s business. They are not selling mood music to be played in the background. They could be, but they choose not to. They choose to be in fewer and fewer verticals when more and more verticals comprise the recorded music landscape, and rather than dive in, they say these composers are rigging the system and taking THEIR MONEY!

Believe me, the big ski brands are still a force. But there are more indies than ever before. As for catalog…

Ski companies have their brand. Many skiers are devoted to one or another company and continue to buy from that company alone. Warner, Sony and Universal? Those brands are irrelevant to the consumer, completely. Used to be the major was an imprimatur of quality, that’s history. However, the acts have brand name quality. And despite their efforts, the majors don’t own all exploitation of the brand, certainly not on their catalogs, which keep them alive.

Now the moguls never did return to their round shape. You see the future never looks exactly like the past, and to expect it to be so is fatuous.

Then again, there is slope grooming at a level there never was before. And high speed lifts… The game has completely changed, and as a result, smaller operators who have not invested in their product, in this case the ski areas themselves, have literally gone out of business. However, a brilliant outsider has now created the Indy Pass, a cheap alternative for fans of these smaller mountains.

You see nature abhors a vacuum. And some outsider always fills it.

Who says music needs to be highly-produced and heavily marketed? I mean there’s a business in that, but in fact it is shrinking. People want something else. And rather than invest and create bunts and singles that in the aggregate add up to a pretty penny, the majors are trying to rig the system in their favor.

I mean what advantages to the majors have?

Used to be marketing, promotion and distribution. Now everybody can get distributed. And you can market yourself, for free online! And most of the old outlets mean very little these days. Late night TV? Moribund when it comes to music promotion. You can appear, but it won’t move the needle. Ditto with the newspaper. Ironically, print only moves that which the majors are not interested in selling! Yes, records by adults singing about their personal lives/trauma, authentically. None of these acts will ever play the Super Bowl, but many will be able to tour until they die. These are not evanescent pop acts that run up the Spotify Top 50 chart and then disappear, having no real fans. These outsider acts are the future of the business. They might not be known by many, but they’re known by enough. And they flourish live.

So the major labels are never going to die, because of their catalogs.

Then again… You never know when some hedge fund might buy one of the majors and shut down new music production. It’s harder than ever to break an act, why not just do your best to maximize the old, already successful acts/records?

Used to be the majors were always creating new divisions, buying labels. Because they thought one company could not market and promote that many artists. Now, not only have they cut down on the labels, they’ve cut down on the artists!

This has already happened in the movie business. Not only has there been consolidation of the studios, they’re all making fewer pictures and post-Covid box office has never returned, not at anywhere near the past level. And fewer and fewer movies are hits. And now the superhero paradigm is fading. Meanwhile, Netflix invested in production, a ton of production, and now owns the eyeballs. The major studios all thought they could compete easily with their own streaming services, but it turns out none of them can, at least so far. So the public doesn’t want to pay to see most movies in the theatre and they want a plethora of product at home, on demand.

And we’ve got directors who abhor this, vehemently! Movies must be seen on a big screen! Music cannot be listened to as MP3s! Short skis suck!

But the public has voted. And the old powers are on the wrong side.

This mood music is akin to Napster. The labels couldn’t see it, not whatsoever. They were so busy meeting Wall Street expectations that they missed what was in plain sight that a Swedish company took advantage of.

Either the major labels need to get in all genres of music or they need to become catalog houses.

All this hogwash about the stars driving the business. I’m not saying there are not stars, but they have less reach than ever before. Many people can’t sing a single song by Taylor Swift, Drake, the Weeknd or Beyonce. But they do listen to music. Many quite a lot of it. But now that the internet has flattened distribution and everything is at your fingertips, they want something else!

How could the majors miss this? How could they think that by massaging and marketing a few records they could own the marketplace? There’s no innovation whatsoever, just a repetition of last century’s creaky formula. Polish a record that fits the Top Forty sound and market the hell out of it and try to turn it into a hit. Every record is a moonshot. What’s happening here on Earth, that most people encounter, is ignored.

But rather than admit this, they blame others. Not only streaming services, but the indie acts who are successful on them!

No vision whatsoever, so they’ve been disrupted. In plain sight.

Kind of like the old companies who refused to invest in shaped skis. It’s always outsiders who take the risk.

But the risk in music has never been smaller.

So what you’ve got here is a guy who is making music the public wants to hear. And sure, it might be on many playlists, but those are playlists people want to listen to. Maybe they never ever even listen to hit playlists or only infrequently. So we should discount this whole sphere? No, we should EMBRACE IT!

The public is, it’s only the major labels who have not. The public wants more and varied music and the majors aren’t providing it, so others are.

To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s anybody capable of thinking at the majors. They’re mostly lifers, and they’ve fired middle management, and they don’t want to invest. They just want the past to continue without change. And that never happens.

Meanwhile, short shaped skis have revolutionized skiing, now the learning curve is much shorter and the experience is much more fun, skiing is not fully enjoyable for only a small cadre of experts.

And music is not only for a small cadre of hit acts.

Deny the future at your peril.