Seeing Beyond Music Sales
People were asking about what business models are working for musicians, and I started listing out some examples, and a loud gentleman in the front row yelled out that the business model that had to be at the center was selling music. I responded with what I thought was an important question: "Why?" and again people started yelling. Of course, no one answered the question, and then the panel shifted gears to another topic. But, the reaction from the crowd on that question cemented for me one of the biggest reasons why some in the industry have struggled to grasp new business models. As I discussed in my NARM presentation a few months ago, selling music is just not a good business model, but it doesn't mean there aren't good, very profitable, music business models. It's just that selling music isn't a very good one. Instead, you need to learn to use the music (which still needs to be good, and is still the central reason why these other business models work) to sell something else -- something scarce, which can't easily be copied.
Some of you long-time TeledyN readers will remember all those many posts about the One-Track Universe where music was your vector, your broadcast channel communications wave connector straight to the heart of your fans and how it made no sense whatsoever to charge people to pick up the phone because you wanted to tell them about something important, or because you wanted to heal them, or lead them to dance together in joyeous celebration of their community of inter-life as humans. The vast majority, of course, thought me crazy, a handful did support the idea, some more tentatively than others.
Today the idea is mainstream Rock-Press fodder, the bread and butter of more artists than I can track. More and more have caught on to what I said about Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire and the sure fire way to totally obliterate the DRM issue by stepping beyond the copyright of the copy-able. Today we are on the edge of a world where live music generates more actual in their pocket revenue for artists than does the dead shadow of sound etched in billions of non-recyclable plastic disks.
So while I didn't get to be a direct part of the new music economy, I am delighted to see it playing out precisely to my plan, and delighted to see not only the new young and nothing to lose artists embracing a free-share mp3 business model, but also now among some name acts, even one or two household names, the idea doesn't just make sense, it is simply and factually the way it is.
