more on Musicians Looking To Let Internet Replace Record Cos

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:10:19 -0800
From: DV Henkel-Wallace <gumby () henkel-wallace org>
Subject: Re: [IP] Musicians Looking To Let Internet Replace Record Cos
To: dave () farber net

Dave,

For IP if you like:

>By taking record labels out of the equation, artists could put
>downloads online themselves, becoming their own retailers and setting
>their own prices.

Eno and Gabriel are smart guys, but they're fooling themselves if they
think that the music field can disintermediate away something like the
labels.

The Internet has done precious little disintermediation; it just
shuffled the deck a little.  We still buy our plane tickets from
travel agents, though they may be called Travelocity or Expedia.  We
don't buy our shares directly from companies, the exchange, or other
individuals; we use the same old brokers.

And the music market is a classic combinatoric disaster: the product
of A artists cross L listeners is a VERY large number.  The labels have
grown up largely to manage this.  I don't see a significant number of
people buying music directly from the band.

Make no mistake: the labels, like the movie studios, are doomed.  But
they're not threatened by the artists themselves.  (Remember the studio
United Artists?  That was an early 1920s attempt by actors to take over
the studio system.  It just turned into another one of them).


I believe that the music and film business will have to revert to an
earlier model: a 500-year-old model in fact called patron-funded art.
But the modern-day Medecis and François 1er's are called Nike and
Intel.  You can already see this happening, with BMW sponsoring short
films by serious directors.

Within 15 years the current machine that churns out boy bands will be
gone.  In its place will be sponsored tunes that the sponsor will
_want_ you to share.  I doubt it will be ham-fisted product
placements, at least in the case of music, but I can imagine Fatboy
Slim writing a catchy tune that riffs off Intel's four-note signature
theme.  Or Nike having Nickleback write a tune that plays off Nike's
current tag line (Air?).  These will in fact be good tunes (if you
like Nickleback anyway) because the more they're shared the more they
drive home the rest of the marketing message.  The more they sound
like "the man" the less they'll work.

And these companies won't seek out the bands themselves, they'll use a
mechanism like the labels...but it will be ad agencies, and agents.

If Eno and Gabriel want to make money out of the Brave New World of
music publishing, they should be signing up acts and flogging them to
the big guys: Microsoft and Budweiser.  Remember, music and film are
together a $30Bn industry...and advertising is $245Bn p.a.

And music will take another significant step down the road to
homoginisation.

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/