Focus on awareness, not sales.<\/p>\n
Forget the Pirate Bay trial, forget P2P piracy and cease and desist letters.\u00c2\u00a0 They are now the sideshow.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re moving from ownership to streaming.\u00c2\u00a0 Spotify is king here, but it’s not the only one.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s MySpace, there’s iMeem and the pay granddaddies, Rhapsody and Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 Streaming is better than ownership.\u00c2\u00a0 All of the foregoing are licensed by the major labels and numerous other rights holders.\u00c2\u00a0 Can these outlets generate enough capital for the rights holders to garner the revenues of yore?\u00c2\u00a0 Doubtful.\u00c2\u00a0 iMeem is on the ropes right now.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Bottom line, people are becoming accustomed to being able to access everything whenever they want.\u00c2\u00a0 The old model of buying individual items will not evaporate overnight, but it will start to fade, just like the CD, which was the last physical vestige of this paradigm.<\/p>\n
But, philosophy aside, sales just suck.\u00c2\u00a0 In eight weeks, Bruce Springsteen has sold 483,803 albums.\u00c2\u00a0 An absolutely horrible figure.\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce is fine, he’s got a guaranteed contract.\u00c2\u00a0 The man who made this deal, Andy Lack?\u00c2\u00a0 He was neutered and then left the company.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony is holding the bag, it’s Sony’s problem that they’re upside down on Bruce’s new album.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing seems to make a difference, the Super Bowl, all that press, people just don’t want Bruce.<\/p>\n
But he can sell a bunch of tickets.<\/p>\n
U2 is doing better than Bruce.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got a cume of 693,310.\u00c2\u00a0 But this last week, their third on the chart, showed another 42% drop, they sold 76,317 albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Not exactly chicken feed, but there’s no way they get to ten million, there’s no way the label takes everybody out to CUT and orders thousand dollar bottles of wine on this revenue.<\/p>\n
Kelly Clarkson is still number one, but she only sold 90,393 albums, after selling 254,671 last week.\u00c2\u00a0 Her sales are declining.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s sales are declining.\u00c2\u00a0 To look to music sales to make your income is to be absolutely horrified.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re going in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
We can delineate why, but you know, it’s not a secret.\u00c2\u00a0 You can get the stuff free and you’re not beholden to just a few acts.\u00c2\u00a0 No one can dominate.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s every man for himself.\u00c2\u00a0 Green Day is debuting their new video on MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 Do labels still make videos?\u00c2\u00a0 Does MTV still play them?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that like saying they still make Beanie Babies, or Hula-Hoops?\u00c2\u00a0 Videos are a passe fad, late twenty first century relics, now it’s about the music once again.\u00c2\u00a0 And the trappings are not enough to sell the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, Scarlett Johansson’s album wouldn’t have stiffed.\u00c2\u00a0 Running a record label is bad business, which is why companies want 360 deals.\u00c2\u00a0 But the label is no longer the dominant player, the focus is now on the act itself.\u00c2\u00a0 How does the act itself break through?<\/p>\n
I’m not saying the act, the musicians themselves, have to do all the work, but they’re no longer slaves on the plantation, they’ve got to take their destinies into their own hands.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than look for a fat cat to dump a bunch of money on them, they’ve got to start from the ground up, by themselves, no one’s got that kind of money anymore, you’ve got to start with AWARENESS!<\/p>\n
Don’t see it as free music.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s referencing the old game, where music sales were the main source of revenue.\u00c2\u00a0 That hasn’t been true in years.\u00c2\u00a0 Most acts make the lion’s share of their money on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 How are you going to get people to come to see you?<\/p>\n
Sure, radio still has some power, and television too, but they’re waning in influence.\u00c2\u00a0 You reach fewer and fewer people, many of whom don’t care.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you’re trying to get them to buy your record to check you out, you obviously don’t surf the Net, because everything is available free, to hear online!<\/p>\n
Think about this.\u00c2\u00a0 You used to have to purchase the record to know what you were getting.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you can test drive everything first.\u00c2\u00a0 But why bother to buy after test driving?\u00c2\u00a0 If the dealer lets you keep the car every day, why bother to own it?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what streaming is.\u00c2\u00a0 Granted, now you can only stream efficiently on the lot, in front of your computer, but that’s going to change, as 3G wireless penetration expands, as 4G makes its debut.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll be able to stream your music anywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the game will change.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s how are you going to get someone to LISTEN to your music?<\/p>\n
After a label sold a CD, it didn’t care if the buyer played it.\u00c2\u00a0 The label didn’t care if the buyer threw the damn thing away.\u00c2\u00a0 But in the future, it’s going to matter exactly how many times someone plays your tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S how you’re going to get paid!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about a good come-on, it’s about ultimate delivery!<\/p>\n
How can you get someone to spin your tracks so much, so many of them, that they’ll bond with you and not only want to come see you perform, but buy your merch.\u00c2\u00a0 Online streaming payment is now low, if it grows dramatically, it will be slowly.\u00c2\u00a0 Piracy will not be the problem, but overall revenues will.\u00c2\u00a0 So see the game not as getting someone to pony up the bucks for your tracks, but to listen to them!<\/p>\n
In this transition period, let everybody stream all of your music, whether it be from a third party site or your own.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s your only hope of breaking through the clutter.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you can sell your music too.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people still want to own it, others want a souvenir.\u00c2\u00a0 But don’t get hung up on recorded music as revenue stream.\u00c2\u00a0 True revenue comes way down the line, when you’ve established a body of work and a fan base.<\/p>\n
Are you getting this?\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t pay to be a one hit wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 All that money the label spends?\u00c2\u00a0 It reaches so very few people, only a fraction of whom want to own, and a tiny slice of whom want to see the act live, usually once.<\/p>\n
You lamented the decline of artist development at the label?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t worry, artist development has come back!\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t pay to jam.<\/p>\n
Don’t worry about driving your SoundScan numbers, worry about getting people to listen.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about money, but time.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you convince someone to burn three or four minutes of their time checking you out.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why you’ve got to be really good, because with so many options, both musical and other entertainment varieties, people make decisions very quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 Good isn’t good enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Your track has to be GREAT!\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, people will click over to something else, their time is too valuable.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t ask for patience, deliver something so appealing that people will be drawn to it, and will tell everybody they know all about it.<\/p>\n
And people are looking for great things.\u00c2\u00a0 And one person can start a conflagration.\u00c2\u00a0 One unpaid fan will tell everybody how great you are, if you truly are that amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 They won’t want compensation, they won’t sign up for a street team, they’ll do it because their lives have been enriched.<\/p>\n
That’s the game.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you make the life of the listener better.\u00c2\u00a0 Not how can you extract dollars from his wallet.<\/p>\n
The major labels have been preaching their model, speaking of their woes to an ignorant mainstream media for a decade.\u00c2\u00a0 All the while, the game was changing, off the radar.\u00c2\u00a0 The tipping point has been reached.\u00c2\u00a0 The major labels have lost so much of their power, they’re never going to regain it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about a bond directly between the artist and fan.\u00c2\u00a0 The fan pays you, not the label, not the bribe-able gatekeeper.\u00c2\u00a0 Be nice to the fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it easy for him to check you out.\u00c2\u00a0 Deliver something that will get him through the night.\u00c2\u00a0 And the day after.<\/p>\n
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Focus on awareness, not sales. Forget the Pirate Bay trial, forget P2P piracy and cease and desist letters.\u00c2\u00a0 They are now the sideshow.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re moving from ownership to streaming.\u00c2\u00a0 Spotify is king here, but it’s not the only one.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s MySpace, there’s iMeem and the pay granddaddies, Rhapsody and Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 Streaming is better than ownership.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-tk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}