Should you go digital-only, and skip the CD?

Should you go digital-only, and skip the CD?

The real question is: How much of your potential audience are you willing to exclude?

We’re in transitional times. A lot of people have iPods. But most still don’t. A lot of people get all their music online. But most still don’t.

If you decide not to put your music on iTunes or Rhapsody - (say, if you have cover songs and don’t want to bother with the paperwork) - your music will never be heard by the millions that get all their music on iTunes or Rhapsody.

But if you decide not to have your music on CD, your music will never be heard by the millions that still do all their listening on CD. (Even if they listen to streaming clips while sitting at their computer, they do all their real listening in the car, or on the home stereo.)

So the answer for 2008 is : if you’re serious about being a professional musician, you need to do both.

If you’re just playing around, and never expect even 100 people to want your music, then just upload to MySpace like everyone else does, and don’t make a CD.

But in these long-tail days with over a million bands on MySpace, having a professional CD - a beautifully designed and manufactured CD - really sets you apart and shows you’re serious to anyone in the music industry receiving your CD. Investing $1000 into manufacturing CDs shows that you plan to make at least $1000 selling them. Not spending the $1000 is like saying, “I don’t think I’ll ever make $1000 doing this.” Then you wonder why a booking agent or label is not interested?

To close with a telling example:

When visiting Apple iTunes, I had lunch with the guy who’s in charge of independent music editorial - the one who chooses who gets featured placement.

I asked him, “What’s the best way for me to turn you on to something I think you’ll love?”

His answer? “Send me the CD.”

I said, “Uh.. really? What if it’s already on iTunes? Shouldn’t I just send you the link?”

He said, “Yeah. I commute an hour each way to Apple’s office. I do all my real listening in the car, so I need the CD.”

A Buyer's Market: The way we purchase online music

The NDP Group published a study this week that found that only 10% of Amazon MP3 customers had also purchased music on iTunes. The study also found some significant age and gender differences between iTunes and Amazon MP3 customers.  

When I read this, it reminded me of an important point which musicians and labels should always keep in mind: There’s not an online music market; there are many online music markets. And each one is its own little world with its own set of core users.

Most consumers I know, myself included, tend to gravitate towards one or maybe two online music services and use them almost exclusively to acquire music. The Rhapsody folks I know use Rhapsody. The iTunes loyalists use iTunes. The only times they venture out to other services is when they really want something that they can’t find on their preferred site, or in certain instances when they want to buy from an artist directly.

When it comes to marketing your own music, it can be tempting to want to sell your album only on those sites that offer the highest payouts. Or to think you can convince droves of listeners to purchase your music from your own website. But the reality is that it’s very difficult to get customers to go where you want them to go.

It’s critical to make your work available wherever your fans like to purchase music. That includes smaller, niche sites as well as the big retailers. Putting your music in more places is like opening stores in new cities. It can only increase your customer base. And the likelihood that you’ll cut into downloads on one site by making your music available on other sites – even for very cheap or free – is low. If I want to buy your album and I’m an iTunes user, I probably won’t even look at Amazon, Amie Street or other sites where I could find your music for a lower price. I’m just going to buy it from iTunes. It’s convenient and it’s what I know.

Instead of worrying about cannibalizing or losing sales, focus on being present everywhere that your potential fans buy music. You have little to lose and much to gain by doing so.

What’s really keeping you from where you need to be? (It’s not piracy.)

I spoke at a conference last weekend, where a woman in the audience was SO mad about piracy that she was physically shaking, red in the face, tears in her eyes, fuming spitting livid, asking how we can stop this rampant piracy.

I didn’t answer her concern well, but I said “More people are killed by pigs than sharks each year, but because shark attacks are more newsworthy, they seem more prevalent. Piracy gets all the attention, but I don’t think most of you in this room have lost more than $30 to piracy.” (I got a big “Booo” from the audience for this.) “Obscurity is your real enemy. Fight obscurity until you’re a household name, then piracy will be more of a problem than obscurity. Until then, worry about pigs, not sharks.”

The woman got so furious about this that she screamed at me with tears in her eyes, “I HATE YOUR POINT OF VIEW, BUDDY!” (and some other angry things I forget.) From her point of view, piracy was Enemy #1 and anybody ignoring this massive threat was hurting us all.

Driving away from the event, of course I figured out what I wish I would have said in that moment:

The thing separating us from where we are and where we need to be is not piracy.

It’s always something more internal, whether writing, communicating, producing, networking, promoting, or taking a wildly different approach to marketing.

Putting so much attention and energy into fighting piracy (as if, when solved, you’ll suddenly start selling 10 times more) - is misguided effort, distracting you from what you really need to be improving.

That’s the real reason I often tell musicians not to worry about piracy. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. But energy spent worrying about it is energy better spent working on what you know you really need to do.

Update on April 17, 2008 by Andrew Dubber

Follow-up by Dubber 

Wow. I should start going to the conferences you go to, Derek. I've run that same line at a few seminars across the UK in the past couple of weeks (though the pigs and sharks line is one that hadn't occurred to me... nice). And the musicians I've been addressing all seem to just get it straight away.

Piracy, if you're a musician, is probably the best problem you could hope for. That's not to say it's a good thing (when it's actual piracy and not just unauthorised copying) but that if you're in such a great position that piracy is a real concern, then you can be pretty pleased with how far you've come.

The myth of the 'lost sale' is one of the Ideas That Just Need To Die. 

Update on April 17, 2008 by Bruce Warila

This is a graph I created about a year ago.  Every artist should have (and will have) free songs in circulation throughout his/her career.  The numbers may be off, but the concept applies.

Bus company sues maids for carpooling - sound familiar?

This post is a quote directly from the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

In 2005, a French bus company, Transports Schiocchet Excursions (TSE) sued several French cleaning women who had previously used TSE for transport to their jobs in Luxembourg. The women’s crime? Carpooling. TSE asked that the women be fined and that their cars be confiscated, on the grounds that the service the women had arranged to provide for themselves - transportation - should be provided only by commercial services such as TSE. (The case was thrown out in a lower court; it is pending on appeal.)

This strategy - suing former customers for organizing themselves - is precisely the one being pursued by the music and movie industries today. Those industries used to perform a service by distributing music and moving images, but laypeople can now move music and video easily, in myriad ways that are both cheaper and more flexible than those mastered and owned by existing commercial firms, like selling CDs and DVDs in stores. Faced with radical new efficiencies, those very firms are working to make moving movies and music harder, in order to stay in business - precisely the outcome that the bus company was arguing for.

Think Tank Talk Question?

Would you give exclusive rights to a download store in exchange for keeping 100% of your music revenue?

Save The Earth Use BitTorrent

A recent article in Harpers (via Nicholas Carr) describes a data center that Google is building that will use enough energy to power 82,000 homes a year.  Information Week also reports that data centers worldwide will consume the combined output of fourteen nuclear or coal-fired power plants this year.

What if BitTorrent was repositioned as earth saving technology, and every time someone purchased a digital media file they had the opportunity to buy a locally “recycled” file instead of one that was sent from an energy intensive data center located 3,000 miles away?  And, what if recycling everyone’s “spent” media files could save enough energy to power 1,000,000 homes a year?

In the scenario above, recycling is a codeword for file sharing.  Language is powerful.  Sharing is a negative word in the media industry, but recycling gives sharing an entirely new meaning.  It would be hard to justify putting an end to file sharing - if sharing/recycling was found to be a highly efficient method for conserving a significant portion of the energy required to deliver digital media.



The consumption of digital media and cloud computing is exploding.  You have to wonder if the far-flung, hub and spoke model that large data centers are founded upon is hugely inefficient compared to obtaining a song or a movie from your friends in the neighborhood?  My guess and investors are betting that BitTorrent is more efficient.

BitTorrent may not be ideal for streaming; however if waiting ten minutes saves energy, the benefit should outweigh the inconvenience.

When companies, organizations and governments clamp down on file sharing, whose interests are being served?  Are they protecting copyright holders, or are they protecting the billions of dollars that have been poured into the hub and spoke model for owning and delivering media files?  It makes me wonder; there are legal and legitimate ways to use BitTorrent.  

Think about this: BitTorrent is a disruptive technology; it enables just about anyone to be a media company without the burden of running a huge data center.  The next time some entity clamps down on media sharing, politely remind them that they could be contributing to global warming☺

For the record, I am a rights holder.  At this point, I believe file sharing will help the music industry more than it hurts.  I also believe that every artist should be so lucky to have his or her music wildly shared around the globe.  MP3 players are the new radio, BitTorrent is a broadcaster; if an artist is not on the “radio”, he or she will remain unknown.  

What do you think?  Conserve energy and get on the new “radio” - it all sounds like a win-win to me.  (Note: The GreenBrick advertisement above is something I invented for this post.)