December 29th, 2008
They both have to “get some traction” before cutting deals and getting funding.
An insightful article titled Musician Finds a Following Online in The Wall Street Journal Shelly Banjo and Kelly K. Spors tell the story of how bloggers, myspace and new promotion platforms such as TuneCore.com, CDBaby.com, Sonicbids.com, Slicethepie.com and Musicnation.com are changing the landscape of how music is produced, distributed and monetized.
The article chronicles Justin Vernon a musician who after recording an album in “his parents cabin” posting it to MySpace and sending it to key music bloggers was able to garner a good deal of traction with fans get on David Letterman, form a new band and get signed to a major label.
“Mr. Vernon’s rapid success shows how small, relatively unknown artists can gain fame via the Web without the large marketing budgets and backing of a major record label. The exposure on blogs, YouTube, social-networking, marketing and other sites can allow them to nurture a following quickly and cheaply.”
To me the takeaway is simple: Give a musician a record deal and he will eat for a few years, teach a musician the mechanics of the business and give him the tools, and he will eat for a lifetime.
Digital technology, the internet and the ever lower learning curve that creatives have to to create micro-enterprises will soon enough replace the macro-enterprises created by the economy’s of scale driven corporations of the 20th century.
I would dare to posit that once more talented (artist) musicians like Just Vernon discover and begin using the (rather simple) tools available to them to create, distribute and monetize their product (art) the music industry as is today will give way to micro-enterprises with the artists as CEO’s of their own destiny.
Lets look at some of the tools outlined in the article:
TuneCore.com: Create, upload and distribute your own music to iTunes, Amazon, eMusic and more. Keep 100% of your royalties.
CDBaby.com: The largest seller of independent music (CD’s) on the internet.
Sonicbids.com: Brings musicians and promoters together. Musicians pay $5.95 to $10.95 a month or $50 to $100 a year in membership fees.
Slicethepie.com: Allows musicians to raise money to record and promote their albums. Anyone can invest including the fans. Slicethepie keeps a 10% fee and a percentage of royalties for 2 years.
Musicnation.com: Connects musicians to fans by giving them tools and a platform to market themselves. Also gives contracts to to top talent.
This is only a small slice of the pie of what I know is out there.
It is unavoidable that new business models like direct sales, corporate sponsorship, touring and merchandise and others yet to emerge will make the 21st century the century of the creatives.
To quote (one of my favorite authors) Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind:
“The last few decades have belonged to the computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to creators, designers, storytellers, caregivers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”
And I believe this so much that I am betting on it. I created an education company to help educate creatives on business. I even called it:
Evilbusinessman
Can I get a “muahhahahahaha” from all my fellow creatives.
