An email article called ‘Giving It Away’ by Bob Lefsetz argues that the music industry can no longer compete because too many up and coming artists are prepared to give their music away for free. He compares today’s artists with the British Invasion – bands that were doing it for the music not the money. Here’s an extract:
It’s an eye-opener. That your model is IRRELEVANT!
YOU need to pay the mortgage. YOU need to go on vacation to the Caribbean. But the new musicians? They’re willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen. Hell, they’re in their twenties, they’re not on the corporate track, they’ve got different ambitions!
This flummoxes the old wave. Especially after the eighties and nineties. You’re supposed to go through the usual filters. Get a lawyer and a manager and then shop your demo to labels, who get to not only decide whether to sign you, but what your music should sound like. But the music coming from said majors…it makes the new music-makers puke. So they’re doing it their own way. They care as much about the old system as snowboarders care about skiers. In other words, NOT AT ALL! They believe they’ve got a better system.
Popular music wasn’t always such big business. Go back to the press of the British Invasion acts. They were doing it on a lark, they didn’t expect it to be a lifelong career. And they got ripped off and underpaid until they survived long enough to work on THEIR terms.
…You say kids can’t make it giving their music away for free because YOU can’t make it. But they can outlast you, starve for years all in pursuit of their art. They don’t want an expensive video, never mind a stylist. They don’t want to play the game. And, if you don’t play the game, I hate to tell you, it just doesn’t cost that much.
To believe that the majors will be the logical filters in the future is to be completely ignorant. They’re only necessary if you want to reach the masses INSTANTLY! Is that a good thing? Furthermore, as every day goes by, it’s easier and easier to reach more people for almost free. Hell, you post your stuff on MySpace, and if you’re any good, your friends will tell EVERYBODY! You might not sell “Thriller” numbers, but “Thriller” was twenty five years ago, when we were all beholden to the box, to MTV. Today everybody’s scattered in a million different directions. The mainstream is the Top Forty joke of the seventies. It’s a dying vine. Hell, just look at SoundScan. The “hit” albums sell ever fewer. And the problem isn’t piracy, but the fact that so much of the theoretical potential audience has tuned out, isn’t paying attention. Why listen to crap radio when you’ve got an iPod?
…You just can’t beat these kids. Your only hope is to help them, not decry them or try to reeducate them. Somebody’s gonna figure this out.
Meanwhile, Wired’s Listening Post blog points us to a white paper by economist Will Page that suggests that the music industry has passed the tipping point where music will become free. Here are some of the paper’s key points:
• “The paper offers a framework to help understand the economics behind the commonly held observation that the price of recorded music is ‘heading towards zero’.
• “This economic approach helps show us how recorded music has long lost any notion of being a ‘pure private good’ and now risks becoming a ‘pure public good’.
• “Music has become ‘non-rivalrous’ (If I consume an mp3 file, that doesn’t prevent you, and vice versa) and ‘non-excludable’ (it’s increasingly hard to deny others access).
• “The theory is supported by evidence: P2P networks creating non-excludability and the unlimited ‘long tail’ supply of digital content is non-rival in its consumption.
• “Both supermarkets and Spiral Frog are shown as ‘Tipping Points’ which risk pushing recorded music into a public good status – where the market could fail.
• “So, given that digital music will never be ‘rivalrous’ in its consumption; the challenge is to force some measure of ‘excludability’ back upon the consumer, again.”
Page argues that the idea of excludability is the only way to charge for music. Exludability in the age of the web? Nah…
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
I think Lefsetz is being far too general in his assertion that musicians will “starve” for their art with no expectation of reward. Artists are no different, and yes, they do starve for a while pursuing their dreams, but in the end they too have to pay the rent (unless they’re adults still living at home with Mom and Dad). I’ve seen many of my art college classmates go through the same thing. It’s nothing new.
It may not be as romantic to believe, but there are plenty of young musicians (and artists, and athletes, and actors, and…) dreaming of fame and fortune. There’s a reason American Idol is the biggest show on television. And that reward is, for them, a way to justify the extreme lengths to which they’ll go before they give up and get a nine-to-five job. Without reward, they’ll burn out faster and understandably so. One need only look at the difference between the Western system for IP and the old Soviet system to see the results. Yes, the U.S. system is currently badly broken, due mostly to abuses of power, but the core reasoning was sound.
That said, I’ve also argued that the future of music is “free”. Same is true for all media, but even for many tangible products when the digital files themselves are swapped and fed into home-based fabbing systems.
“Exludability in the age of the web? Nah…”
Actually, yes. It’s already happening (surprised it took this long, tbh). For media products, the future is in Experiences. Concerts are “real” experiences. Meeting authors at book signings are Experiences. Check the price of attending live venues over the last 30 years. Research shows a phenomenal inflation in pricing to the point where, as it once was, seeing something Live will be a privilege afforded the wealthy.
For tangible product, it’s the materials that are used by fabbing machines themselves that will have worth. It’s a printer ink world that’s coming… at least until technologies allow us to efficiently recycle using things like bacteria or build objects using nanofactories.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Another thing to consider is that musicians don’t all think alike. As much as we have in common, we can also be miles apart when it comes down to the wants and needs of a band – which is why so many break up.
So it would be presumptuous to assume that “they”, the musicians, are all in agreement with how the industry is today and what “they’re” willing to do for their music.
March 29th, 2007 at 5:25 pm