You’ve got to stop making albums.<\/p>\n
In today’s "New York Times", there’s a story about the gaming industry, wherein it is stated that the usual suspects, the PlayStation3, Xbox360 and even the vaunted Wii, are getting blindsided by the iPhone\/iPod Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 Games for this new mobile platform are cheap, if not free, and there’s no expensive console to buy.<\/p>\n
It costs $25 million to create a game for the latest consoles, and even Nintendo says you’ve got to sell one million copies of a Wii title to make a profit.\u00c2\u00a0 How many games have reached this plateau?\u00c2\u00a0 16 out of 486.\u00c2\u00a0 Pretty bad.\u00c2\u00a0 About as bad as the profitability of record albums released by major labels.<\/p>\n
There are two reasons the record album blew up.\u00c2\u00a0 One, the Beatles made it an artistic statement, standing alone from singles, and the record companies realized there was a hell of a lot more profit in selling big discs instead of little ones, full-length opuses instead of single tracks.<\/p>\n
Somehow, in the ensuing four decades, artists have come to see albums as the holy grail, their right, just like a contestant on "American Idol" emulates Mariah Carey, employing melisma like peanut butter, spreading it over the whole song.\u00c2\u00a0 The marketplace, the listener?\u00c2\u00a0 He’s been completely ignored.<\/p>\n
Napster stripped the single from the album, and we’re never going back to 1967 again, never mind the eighties and nineties when CDs were interminable in length and gargantuan in price.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the public has the option to own only the itty bit it wants, people don’t want to spend the time and money on the whole damn thing.<\/p>\n
Not exclusively.\u00c2\u00a0 There are artists who make album-length statements.\u00c2\u00a0 There are some acts whose audience demands more material.\u00c2\u00a0 But does it have to be delivered in the same old way?<\/p>\n
A true fan wants more and more music by his favorite artist.\u00c2\u00a0 But he doesn’t want it dropped like a bomb all on one day, he wants it released spread out over time.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like a relationship is collapsed to a week, with not only kissing and intercourse, but babies and divorce all at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas real life is an endless stream of small moments. Musicians should realize this, understand it’s a changed world.<\/p>\n
The labels hate this, just like the big video game console makers.\u00c2\u00a0 The price point is TOO LOW!\u00c2\u00a0 How are you going to compete against the kid creating a game in his basement?\u00c2\u00a0 Which is exactly what is happening with the iPhone\/iPod Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 The little players, the entrepreneurs, are eating the big players’ lunch.\u00c2\u00a0 The big players didn’t properly gauge the size of the market, not seeing huge price points and margins, they didn’t get in, leaving the sphere to a zillion newbies. Sound like the music business?\u00c2\u00a0 Labels should have been like Apple.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple skims 30% off all app sales.\u00c2\u00a0 It verifies the product for the consumer and guarantees payment to the creator.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the role of the major label in the future, as a gateway of pre-approved product.\u00c2\u00a0 But to believe this will happen is to think that the majors don’t want to continue to try and hit grand slams and are interested in pennies as opposed to dollars.<\/p>\n
The public has spoken.\u00c2\u00a0 An app gets traction on the iPhone\/iPod Touch not by being an endless game you can play for weeks in your bedroom, but something you can call up and enjoy while you’re waiting for a table in a restaurant.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t want to sit on the couch and listen to your opus, we want to hear exactly what we want as we surf the Web, as we work out, as we go on with our daily routine.<\/p>\n
If you want to grow your career, you should focus on single tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And each one should be attractive to the target audience.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to reach a mass of casual listeners, employ hooks, use tricks.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to start with a core, you can take chances.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, if the Doors cut "The End" today, and released only this track, it would spread far and wide online.\u00c2\u00a0 But if today’s Doors released "The End" along with nine other cuts in an hour-long package, not only would the populace at large never find it, many fans would never even bother to listen.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d go to the gig, but go out for a hot dog or a pee break when the band played something deep into the album.<\/p>\n
People have been overwhelmed.\u00c2\u00a0 And the solution of the music industry has been to give them more.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where people have tuned out.<\/p>\n
Sony had such a smash with the PlayStation2, that they built upon its strengths, creating an even more powerful machine with incredible features.\u00c2\u00a0 Turned out to be not only expensive, but difficult to use.\u00c2\u00a0 Users flocked to the cheaper, easily understood Wii.\u00c2\u00a0 You can fire up the Wii and play a game of tennis before going to bed.\u00c2\u00a0 Booting up the PlayStation3 is like starting Windows, and there are endless system updates, only diehards care.<\/p>\n
But these same diehards were early iPhone\/iPod Touch adopters.\u00c2\u00a0 They can’t lug their console to the airport lounge, they’ve gotten hooked by these tiny little apps.\u00c2\u00a0 Of which they’ve acquired scores.<\/p>\n
Just like college students in 1999 and 2000 got onto Napster and took just the tracks they wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how we ended up with the iTunes Store.<\/p>\n
If you’re making an album today, I’m laughing.\u00c2\u00a0 Create one song that grabs my ear, leave me wanting more.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about bite-sized rather than humongous.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not so much about value as it is about special.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about music, not commerce.<\/p>\n
\n