{"id":3659,"date":"2010-12-17T09:21:41","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T17:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3659"},"modified":"2010-12-17T09:21:41","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T17:21:41","slug":"todays-music-business-paradigm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/17\/todays-music-business-paradigm\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Music Business Paradigm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The New Rock-Star Paradigm<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read this.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because it’s a blueprint for your success, but because it illustrates the decline of the major label paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 Today you’ve got to do it for yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re waiting for someone else to help you, you’re waiting to be enslaved, if anybody pays attention at all.<\/p>\n

Attention…\u00c2\u00a0 How do we measure that?<\/p>\n

Major labels use old school metrics.\u00c2\u00a0 Primarily record sales and traditional publicity.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, majors are investing heavily in online video, but if you think one spiking YouTube video establishes success, you just haven’t watched the Evolution Of Dance on YouTube <\/p>\n

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158,981,597 views and counting: Evolution of Dance<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One thing we do know…\u00c2\u00a0 Music lives online.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a digital medium.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that majors still get the most revenue from CD sales illustrates their fear of the future.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve got nothing to lose, you take chances.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re the steward of a dying business, you don’t want to take the blame.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to blame everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 But the blame game is done.<\/p>\n

In order to make money you’ve got to have an online presence.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to build your name to the point that people know who you are and are interested in following your next move.\u00c2\u00a0 Once upon a time a hit made fans interested in what came next.\u00c2\u00a0 Now a track is seen as an isolated event.\u00c2\u00a0 You can quite literally be here today and gone tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 How do you succeed?\u00c2\u00a0 By burrowing deep online.<\/p>\n

1. Match your music to visuals.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 Music should be enough, but if you can get someone to stop what they’re doing and pay attention to your work online, you’ve got a better chance of hooking them.<\/p>\n

2. Constantly create.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 You have to engage your fans on an almost daily basis.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t always have to be new music, although that helps, but interaction and innovation should be your credo. Constantly put something in the trough that hooks fans.<\/p>\n

This is the primary reason the major labels are dying.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re massaging tracks for long term radio success.\u00c2\u00a0 And radio is dying just as quickly as they are.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything has a short shelf life online.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the accumulated mass that establishes you.<\/p>\n

3. Ask your fans to help.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not as simple as building a street team.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you can ask for money, but that’s kind of cheesy.\u00c2\u00a0 Ask them to put up posters.\u00c2\u00a0 Ask them to house you and your road crew. Ask them to sell food at your gig in an alternative location.\u00c2\u00a0 You may view it as shitwork, but that’s not how your fan feels.\u00c2\u00a0 A fan feels involved, like a piece of the puzzle, and his beaming countenance and frothing description of his interaction with you will gain more followers than an e-mail imploring someone who doesn’t care to listen to your MP3.<\/p>\n

4. Music is your calling card.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t think it should be free, you’re destined to the dustbin.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to charge for it in different forms.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you personalize songs for fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Or you create special packaging.\u00c2\u00a0 Or you stream it online and it’s downloadable at the store.\u00c2\u00a0 iTunes is about convenience.\u00c2\u00a0 Many people aren’t savvy enough to know how to download from the Web, or don’t want to take the time.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, you can give it away and still sell it too.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to get someone to listen.<\/p>\n

5. Forget trying to make it by the old rules.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 It will only hold you back.\u00c2\u00a0 Gain enough success so the old school people come to you and offer you a deal on your terms.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, old school people can do less for you than ever before, and want more money for their efforts because they make less income. If you’re not about making the money for yourself, you’re not successful.<\/p>\n

6. Only you will know if you’ve made it.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, "Billboard" and BigChampagne have newfangled online charts, but they can’t calculate the number of fans and the quality of the bond.\u00c2\u00a0 Only you can. Using your own metrics.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you get more e-mail?\u00c2\u00a0 Have more friends?\u00c2\u00a0 Is attendance at the gig increasing?<\/p>\n

We are living in an era of chaos.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s unsettling to oldsters and newbies who want to get a ride on the old train.\u00c2\u00a0 The oldsters are refining their paradigm to the point of ridiculousness. They want cute kids who in many cases haven’t even reached puberty who can appeal to impulse buyers, those their same age.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re twenty five and play anything but beat-infused tunes and you’re wondering why the major isn’t interested in you you’ve got your head up your ass.<\/p>\n

Maybe, at some point in the future, we’ll find a new way to measure music success.\u00c2\u00a0 But sales of recordings is no longer it.<\/p>\n

Old schoolers think albums don’t sell what they used to because of theft.\u00c2\u00a0 The real story is albums don’t sell because not enough people care.\u00c2\u00a0 The audience is scattered.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, it’s easy to reach everybody online.\u00c2\u00a0 You can gain great success.<\/p>\n

I applaud OK Go, but I’m not sure where they go from here.\u00c2\u00a0 Their success demands constant stunts. But they started in the major label game, looking for instant attention.<\/p>\n

Don’t do that.\u00c2\u00a0 Grow slowly.\u00c2\u00a0 Over time.\u00c2\u00a0 So that when someone hears about your act from friends multiple times over years, they finally decide to check you out.\u00c2\u00a0 They figure you’re in it for the long haul.\u00c2\u00a0 They believe you’re for real.\u00c2\u00a0 They want to know what all the fuss is about.<\/p>\n

MTV rocketed acts into outer space and they quickly fell back to earth.\u00c2\u00a0 Corporations are the twenty first century equivalent.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone is looking for the easy way out.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you want to sustain, involve no middlemen, keep yourself pure.\u00c2\u00a0 Just keep building the bond with your fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Spend nights thinking how you can get people more involved, not what third party you can get to pay you.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want to be owned by anyone but your fans.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Rock-Star Paradigm Read this.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because it’s a blueprint for your success, but because it illustrates the decline of the major label paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 Today you’ve got to do it for yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re waiting for someone else to help you, you’re waiting to be enslaved, if anybody pays attention at all. Attention…\u00c2\u00a0 How […]<\/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-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-X1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","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=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3660,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/3660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}