Exciting times to be sure, but I’d like to step back for a second and play the role of Devil’s Advocate.

First, while it’s true that there are more possible income streams for independent artists than ever before, it’s a bit distressing that the revenue generated by most of these streams is exceedingly small. In the case of on-demand streams rates can be as low as a tenth of cent to be divided between the owner of the master and the owner of the publishing.

Also, while corporate sponsorship may offer an artist significantly more pay than the newest wave of streaming services, it doesn’t seem to offer much opportunity the way of true community and/or brand building. It seems like it’d be awful hard to get out from beneath a brand as giant as Coke; building your own identity seems less likely than being subsumed by Coca Cola’s identity in such a case.
An approach to music marketing that I think is particularly interesting is the “1000 True Fans” idea, which is basically built around the idea of building a ravenous core community that can support your work:

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

Along those lines, some artists are making very good money packaging their music elaborately and selling direct-to-fan. Topspin Media provides tools to artists that are built around this idea:

http://www.topspinmedia.com/

One thing that does seem to be happening with the adoption of ad-based streaming services, however, is a reduction in the overall amount of music piracy–it seems that the easier it becomes to preview/listen to music legally the less likely folks are to pirate that music. So these services may actually directly competing with piracy rather than CD sales.

There’s an article in this week’s Economist to this effect; definitely worth reading!

Cheers, and thanks for the great post,
Dean.

Music labels and recording studios used to hold so much more power because the technology was not accessible to many people. Plus, the marketing and promotion efforts that are so vital to musicians getting their music heard was expensive and limited. But with the Internet and other technologies, opportunities seem to be out there for anyone with the talent. For example, Creative Allies (http://www.creativeallies.com/) is a website that will soon launch, giving musicians and their fans a network to work together on various things like posters, t-shirts, videos, etc.

What I find to be so interesting is this: How will rights management and protection look a decade or two from now? Music rights has always been a very segmented area of law with copyrights, recording rights and performing rights. I suspect that it may very well be the same structure, but there may be a chance it changes since its current structure was a direct result from the industry structure that was. There is definitely an opportunity for rights consolidation.

Here is an article about the (potential) changes coming in the music industry:

http://www.physorg.com/news170743952.html

Both Lala, Imeen, Pandora or Last.fm are doing a great job, making it possible to reach this small projects.

In Europe a similar project, Spotify, is doing a great job in three different aspects:

a) It provides a better user experience, specially thanks to the easy creation and sharing of user lists, that can even be updated automatically.
b) Their music library is simply gigantic, so you don’t have to switch from one web service to another in order to change the music style you want to hear. Not only have reached agreements with the bigger companies (you can hear with CD quality up to 40 different Duke Ellington records from Columbia Legacy) but also have put a lot of stress in small independent labels.
c) There is a paid version and another free with audio ads, as a regular radio. In Spain most of this ads were by independent artists –so I guess they are cheap– that wanted to present their new record in front of an audience that probably doesn’t know them.

Xx

Great article. Just wondering what your take is on things like corporate sponsorship? Also, do you think that musicians perceive their audience in a different way because of the internet? Are more turning to niche rather than mass marketing?

Like you mentioned, it’s a very exciting time for muscians. Hopefully it’ll will allow for more artists freedom as well.

Thanks for the informative post. You might also be interested in this “reverse-engineered” new business models piece at the Future of Music Coalition website. It’s by Brian McTear of Weathervane Music Group, and it describes real-world ways in which artists can directly support musicians.

http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2009/10/29/how-actively-support-music-you-love-–-brian-mctear-weathervane-music

Stay tuned for more from FMC on artist revenue streams in the digital age. . .