Major Labels Still Invest in Music (Kinda)

In the graphic below you’ll see how major labels are currently advancing and promoting acts, primarily pop acts, in order to break them to the general public. It’s an interesting refresher in how much major labels are still able to put towards music, albeit music we may not care for. Their options are minimal and their expectations are high. With this still hefty investment, it makes you wonder how successful they could be pushing smaller, touring groups instead of putting all their eggs into one basket.

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The Difference Between the Music Industry & The Recording Industry

After publishing Why You Should Give Your Music Away for Free here on Music Think Tank, I have been inundated with articles, comments, and other assorted replies decrying that the new digital music business models are killing the music industry. It got me thinking about a crucial distinction that is being overlooked, and the consequences of doing so are preventing many from seeing the opportunities that are abound. It boils down to one main concept.

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How A Major Label Markets A New Artist

Recently, ASCAP’s Daily Brief included an article by David F. Carr entitled, “How Warner Music Turns Social Media Fans Into Customers”. I thought there was one paragraph in there that was extremely insightful that some readers may not have caught. It needed to be expounded upon. If you’ve always wondered how a major label goes about building a fanbase for a new artist - as far as their overarching philosophy on it - there it was!

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Advice for Beginners and A Reminder to Veterans in the Music Industry

It amazes me that after being in the industry long enough to be considered a veteran by many that I have come to respect over the years, that there are some artists and companies industry related out there that think they are going to “GET TO THE TOP” by backstabbing or undercutting other musicians, agents, managers, producers, etc. That being said, they are “Playing Games” in our Industry!

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How to Sell Out Properly

So you’ve got it in your head that you must be signed to be happy. As you know, I am very much against labels as they are 95% of the time a terrible financial decision. However, you don’t care. Cool, let’s work with that.

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What are the odds of succeeding WITH a record deal?

If your aim as an artist is to purely chase a record deal as a means to succeeding in this business, I will tell you right now that you are doomed for failure. You can throw all the trumped up statistics around that you want, but fundamentally your chances of actually landing a record deal are extremely slim. Furthermore, your chances of actually making money directly from that deal are pretty much zero.

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Remake Remodel - The Major Labels Speak

Amongst the busy chatter of digital DIY dudes and galloping gurus it’s easy to forget that there is a major, multi-million dollar music industry that already exists. That’s because we seldom hear from the major players outside the sanitized propaganda sheets of Billboard and Music Week. But this week we can read their views in a Music Tank report by ex-EMI head, Tony Wadsworth.

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More evidence that the major labels have you by the nuts and bolts...

In a nutshell (no pun intended), this research reminds us that even if someone could find (for consumers) all the best (not rubbish) new independent music, those exposing new music to consumers must utilize established major label content to create a satisfactory listening experience (for most people).

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Food For Thought - 2 Warner Music Execs Share $14 Million

Warner Music SEC Filing via HypeBot

Breakthroughs, Bitterness and Biopics

Music biographies mesmerized me when I was a kid. Whether it was Glenn Miller or Elvis Presley, it was always the same fascinating formula: talent and tenacity leading to the precipice of success, with the artist always searching for that one elusive element to define his signature sound, to breakthrough. With Miller it was the addition of trombones. The proceedings always put me on the edge of my seat and the breakthroughs set me reeling. I guess it was in my blood.

It persists. The other night I watched two great documentary-style biopics on TV, one on Johnny Cash, another on Willie Nelson. Willie, as many of his fans may not realize, was actually a Nashville songwriter penning such classics as “Crazy,” which Patsy Cline etched into the music lexicon. Despite his preeminent status as a writer, Willie couldn’t get arrested as an artist in Music City. His quirky phrasing was way too off-beat for the 60s sound, which was infused with sweet strings and pop arrangements.

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12 years with Taxi

Taxi is an independent A&R company, connecting musicians with labels, publishers, and music supervisors. On the 1st and 15th of every month, they provide a list of industry opportunities for members to submit songs to. Screeners forward the most suitable material for each listing to the person who requested it. I’ve been a member since 1997.

Recently, two of my songs were featured on a large cable network, and I signed an exclusive publishing deal. All thanks to Taxi? Nope. The music supervisor found me on thesixtyone and I connected with the publisher through Sonicbids.

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The End of the Music Album as The Organizing Principle

It doesn’t seem that long ago since Radiohead did what was once unimaginable - release an album without being signed to a major record company. On the long march to digital ubiquity as the means of music delivery Radiohead avoided the tar pit that seems to be major label thinking and came out clear winners. Yes, they resorted later to releasing the album as a good old CD into regular retail distribution but they were pioneers and were soon followed with great success by Nine Inch Nails and to lesser success by many others. Both these bands had an understanding of what their fans wanted [price level choice, quality and special packaging] and both bands understood the power of the internet for marketing purposes and direct reach. [NB: Although I believe that the digital music file will rule the day, vinyl still has a role to play and I’ll get to that later.]

The most interesting part of this experiment [which at the time, I would argue it was] was not only that it was wildly successful but it laid the groundwork for what I have coined the end of the organizing principle. In other words I suggest that we are now seeing the end of the album-length work as the permenant work, the everlasting body of work that represents the pinnacle of an artists’ creativity. I am fully expecting to hear the howls of derision over this but bear with me.

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A publishing and distribution deal from the same company - is it smart?

As an independent label, is it better to have a distribution and a publishing deal on the same major label?  Or is it better to have a different publisher to your major partner [label]?

I was asked this question by someone funding a small label.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Does EMI uniquely understand that enabling and enhancing the music experience is where the money is?

Over the last six months, EMI hired Doug Merrill, formerly VP of Engineering at Google.  Rumor has it that EMI is selling off their recorded music business.  And now, EMI has hired Cory Ondrejka one of the founders and the computer science guy behind the popular virtual world called Second Life.

I believe that EMI has uniquely discovered that there is a paradigm shift underway, and they don’t want to be left behind.  The days for selling recorded music are numbered (you heard that before).  The competition for consumer mindshare is going to be between those that can provide the best music experience for the money.

Think outside the box and clear the slate.  Go down to the phone store and use the gorgeous Cover Flow interface built into the iPhone.  Look at Microsoft’s Surface computing platform.  Spend a couple of hours looking into Same Sonic Science (music information retrieval).  Try out Sony’s Play Station 3.  Consider the adoption of broadband in the home and the adoption of 3G wireless technologies.  Play the new versions of Halo.

It doesn’t take a futurist to see where this is all going. Record labels that are not in the user experience / user interface business will be disintermediated (forced to become marginalized middlemen) by those that are.  

Here’s a user interface that can be built today.  Forget looking for songs using genre, forget charts, and forget simple sounds-like lookups.  Discovering songs like this sucks.  Take any ten thousand songs and combine it with any high-resolution landscape image.  Break down the songs into mathematical equivalents, and using Same Sonic Science, divide them into 100 buckets by similarity.  Break down the image and logically map the buckets of songs onto fragments of the image using artificial intelligence.
 

Touch the sunny segment of the image and listen.
You want more sun, move your hand into the sun.
Touch the water in the image and listen.
Touch the dark shades in the image and listen.
Listen to the blue sky.
Cover flow to the next image.  Try an urban landscape.
More your hand over the image.
Zoom in, zoom out.
You want harsh, touch harsh.  You want soft, touch soft.
You want to get complicated, go into a virtual world.
Hang this on the wall in your living room using a 60” touch screen TV.
Or, just use it in your iPhone.
Pay a small subscription fee or deal with the strategically placed ads that appear.

Yeah, some of this is a bit out there.  But the reality is way closer than some people think.  The hardest part to get your arms around is the part that uses the Same Sonic Science.  Same Sonic Science enables ANY song to go into the system, and EVERY song to come out SOMEPLACE within SOMEONE’S “landscape”.  Subjective terms like “great” and “suck” are sensitively mapped into the user interfaces, which learn the tastes and preferences of their users.  There may be only one person that wants to listen to fingernails on the chalkboard, but if it’s music to his ears, then he will find it.

The implications of what I just described for any company in the music business are huge.  What’s smarter, investing in recorded music (if you are not an artist) or investing in the music experience?  It seems like EMI may know the answer.  If you are one of the major labels, don’t you ask yourself…self, how do we leapfrog Apple?