An industry with a great future behind it

I read a great article today about Sister Ray Records in London. It was my favourite record store in the capital. Or at least - I thought it was. In fact, Sister Ray was not my favourite record shop because I liked Sister Ray. It was my favourite record shop because it fitted a romantic, nostalgic notion about London independent record shops.

And that ‘nostalgic’ bit is kind of weird, because I didn’t grow up in London, but in a suburb about 13,000 miles away at the bottom of the planet. And I’m not nostalgic about Jim’s Record Spot in Panmure, even if that was where I bought my first album with my own money (David Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’, since you ask - but it was a toss-up between that and Donna Summer’s ‘The Wanderer’).

London independent record shops mean something. And to me, Sister Ray encapsulated that. Fine. But it’s not a great way to continue to do business. As Brett points out in his article - when you actually look at it on its own merits, and take all that nostalgia stuff away, Sister Ray was dark, overpriced and staffed by people who’d rather you’d just go away. And that might have been fine once. It just isn’t now. There’s no room for any of that. Things have changed.

But that’s symptomatic of a wider problem, rather than a misreading of the times by a single record store.

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The Record Industry Innovation Prize 2009

 

Here’s an idea: rather than cripple online music startups with royalties, or burden them with equity arrangements, why not give them a prize for for doing the one thing the major record industry has failed to achieve for itself: make money out of music online?

In Wired Magazine’s Listening Post, Eliot Van Buskirk asked the question ‘Should Music Startups Give Equity to Copyright Holders?’. The question was prompted by a white paper (PDF) by MCPS/PRS chief economist Will Page and PhD student David Touve, which proposes that instead of charging royalty fees to innovative web based startups, they should offer an equity arrangement.

In other words, give the startups the option of letting the record industry own part of your business instead of charging licensing fees.

It’s an interesting idea designed to get past the dilemma that music startups either ignore copyright (and live in fear of lawsuits) in their early stages, or they are entirely crippled by it.

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It's kind of not ABOUT you

I went to a blogging conference in Chicago the other week. I learned a lot about the business of blogging - how to attract an audience, how to monetise your website (see all the ads all over Music Think Tank? No. Obviously.) and how to rank more highly on the Google searches. All really useful and interesting stuff for someone who does what I do. Oddly, there was almost nothing about how to write - but it wasn’t really that sort of conference.

However, I guess the one ‘takeaway’ point is that when you blog - and if you’re involved in marketing at all (hint: you are), then you should be blogging -  it’s important to remember that your blog’s not about you.

I mean - of course it’s about you - but it’s not about you. 

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Aging with music

First of all, I feel I should apologise. I’ve kind of been like an absent parent with Music Think Tank recently, and it seems to have grown up an awful lot in my absence. Mostly I’ve been speaking about this kind of stuff in real life and doing a lot of writing and the background invisible work - but I’m back now, and like any parent that abandons his child for a period of time, I’m going to assuage my guilt by showering gifts - or at least blog posts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about music consumption recently, and the ways in which the music industries understand music consumption. It occurs to me that a lot of thought goes into the teen audience, and what will attract their attention.

Historically, this is good thinking. Teenagers and the popular music industry go hand in hand. Rock and Roll was at the birth of the teen phenomenon when the first wave of babyboomers wanted to distinguish themselves as something other than just slightly smaller and more youthful versions of their parents. Performers from Jerry Lee Lewis to Marilyn Manson have understood that the best way to appeal to the teen crowd is to at least alienate - if not terrify and mortally offend - their parents.

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Ask the readers: What's important?

One of my main ideas behind setting up Music Think Tank - apart from simply to provide a community blog for some of my favourite writers and thinkers in the area of online music business - was to create a space where these people could come together and discuss - perhaps even attempt to solve - some of the biggest issues in digital and online music composition, production, promotion, distribution and consumption.

We’d like to have a go at some of the little ones along the way too. 

In order for us to do that, we need to know what the burning questions are in your mind. We’re building something in the back laboratory right now that will allow you to post your specific questions, so that we can put our minds to work and see if we can generate solutions that you can take and apply to your individual, specific circumstances.

But for now, we’re interested in hearing what your biggest concerns are. This is the big picture stuff. Is it copyright? Is it audio fidelity? Is it information overload? Getting a break?

Hit the comments, and let us know: what are The Issues That Matter?

Give us the things to think about, and we in the Think Tank will put our Thinking Caps on. 

Welcome to the Think Tank

Music Think Tank is a brand new group blog, featuring some of my favourite thinkers in the online music world. The site’s so new, it barely has any words in it - but it’s already picking up interest as the new source of the best conversations about music online.

I’m looking forward to growing the site and developing some new and exciting features (keep an eye out for the Friday Clinic - coming soon), as well as introducing you to my friends who are - without exception - talented, witty, knowledgeable, intelligent, insightful and passionate people, who are all totally committed to music, musicians and the (new) music business.

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts, and if you’d like to get in touch, there’s a link on the sidebar for just that purpose. Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed and stay up to date with all that’s going on in the Music Think Tank.

Thanks for stopping by!