The Future of Music - How Real Artists Will Save Music From The Music Industry

The music industry is fucked and everyone knows it. How can this industry survive with declining album sales, rampant piracy and low user moral (because record labels are suing their customers)? The short answer: it won't and that's great! The record labels are pretty much everything that is wrong with music today.

The future of music after the jump...

When was the last time you bought a CD? I mean a real CD, not an iTunes download, a torrent file or borrowing your buddies' music, but a real $18 CD? It's probably been awhile, and if it hasn't the gap between buying CDs have probably grown. Look at the graph above(Source), recorded music sales are down, down, down! What is causing this and how can be changed?

CD sales are down because people just don't want to buy CDs and they have better alternatives (AmazonMP3, iTunes), where they can get exactly what they want; the good songs or singles. Target and Wal-Mart are devoting less floor space to CDs as a reflection of customers' changing habits. Why waste floor space on CDs? People have been complaining for years that CDs are no good because they are expensive and the customer doesn't get to choose which songs they buy. Most people only want a few songs from each artist, but that isn't supported through CDs; with CDS, it's all or nothing.

The CD model creates great frustration, combine this with new'ish technologies (Rhapsody, iTunes, AmazonMP3) and the user suddenly has a lot more control. If the record labels won't create a model that works for me, no problem, I can take matters into my own hands. As each user does this, they buy single songs, not albums; pirates don't help the record labels either. Through technology, the music world has changed trends, but the record labels resist.

They treat their fans like criminals; even winning their first case recently. How can this help their cause? Even if you convert all the pirates to regular customers (who now only buy singles), the record labels are still screwed. You would never be able to do this anyway because you would generate such a bad image that those pirates wouldn't turn into customers anyway. What needs to change?

Change the Focus: It's all about Concerts, not Albums

The Chemical Brothers live

It's all about concerts, not albums; I can't say that enough. The music industry does a good job of making artists famous, but 5% of all artists ever see a royalty check beyond the advance they get to begin with. Record labels have created non-musical musicians for years, people that can't sing or put on a good concert, but are pushed to us any way. I won't provide a list here, but you know who they are. If you can't give a live performance, your not a musician; it's just part of the deal.

The entire industry needs to move toward concerts and the elimination of records labels (who are just the middle men anyway). Yes, get rid of record labels; all of them! No one needs a label to make them famous anymore. Everyone can put their music online and the strongest will survive.

Take Radiohead's new album In Rainbows for example. The band, now free-agents, allow their fans to set the price for their music. Even if the fans set a low price (say $1 per album) all of that money goes to Radiohead directly, no middle men! Radiohead can easily sell 500,000 copies and that's $500,000 for them. Plus, they generate a huge amount of fan-points, which will show at their concerts. I would easily pay $150 to see Radiohead, at $18 per CD that's 8.3 CDs. Radiohead doesn't even have that many CDs and of course I'd bring a friend so now I'm up to 16.6 CDs. If each fan at your show is worth 8.3 CDs, then that's where you money comes from, not the CD itself! You need to give me the music, so I can determine if I like it. Music is the way bands advertise their concerts and merchandise. Music should cost the user next-to-nothing if not being free all together.

Do you remember when you'd go and see small bands in high school? They'd say things like, "buy a CD, we need the gas money". They were selling their own CDs at their shows and the money actually went to them (and probably for gas). The music industry needs to move toward this model, musical artists make money by performing music!

Closing Thoughts

Bands can do more for themselves now than at any time before. Going forward, bands will create their own music, organize their own concerts and promote their own music and merchandise. The bands that can't draw a crowd will fail, like a company with no customers. But the ones that do make it, will make it on their own. The Grateful Dead made most of their money on the road, why can't bands today?

Quick Links

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In Rainbows