The Music Consultants

Blog Archive

Wed, Feb 24 2010

The Wild West ....

The wild west is still full of cowboys. Even the Sheriffs are stumbling around in the dark….

During the summer of 2009 attended a music industry convention in London. It was about the future of the way music is promoted, sold, consumed – and the key word, monetized. There was a very obvious slant on digital.

Some of the current “brains” of the industry were there, many of them on panels. A&R men and women, lawyers, managers, label executives, entrepreneurs, MD’s of startup models. I went like an expectant puppy – someone on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, or at the end of a Dan Brown novel, when they are about to discover “the secret”.

I was about to discover the secret. The key to music on the Internet. Marketing, sales, breaking new artists. The infamous online campaign. The “oh yeah, that one broke virally” – or “it was such an organic start, it was all about MySpace”. These, after all, were the people in the know, and who better to learn from so I could take away the secret that everybody except me obviously knew.

I was wrong. There is no secret. We are all in the dark. Only some of us don’t chose to admit it! There is no answer; there is no magic code. There is certainly light at the end of the tunnel – new models are emerging everyday and experts predict it will be another 3-5 years of uncertainty, and then a distinct pattern will return; one of the models will be victorious, and the industry – probably unrecognizable – will back on its feet again.

In the meantime what remains, is the artist. Talent takes itself to market although its sometimes confusing to see where “the market” is, or how best to reach it. The Wild West is still full of cowboys. Even the Sheriffs are stumbling around in the dark…. Look at Warners trying to insist that they control the ad sales on their content. Are they a music company, or a media buyer? In my view you can’t be everything. If you try, you lose focus on the most important thing. The artist. And the music.

Somewhere in the region of ten million new domain names got registered in the last few months of last year. I wonder how many of those will be new music related offerings. One new one is Guvera, whose mission statement seems to be ”Make music free for the people, prosecute no-one, pay the artists full price, share the love.” Unfortunately they aren’t sharing the love yet because despite probably the best registration process yet (although they insist on a postal address) - once you are a member they tell you that they haven’t gone live yet. They will offer ad-funded downloads, free to the punter. Lets hope they don’t go the same way as Spiral Frog, which didn’t really share much love at all with the same offering a while ago, before they, err, croaked.

Speaking of which – Sellaband declared bankruptcy last week which is a real shame. I hope they get rescued as it says on the website. They are good people and it’s a good model that just needs a little jiggling. OK, more than a little. But its still sound and deserves to survive.

Oh the shame of it. I Shazammed a song I liked. Then to my horror I discovered was Kasabian.

On the up side (or sunny side up) - I am playing “10/10” by Paolo Nuttela. Rico Rodriguez (MBE nonetheless), what a star. OK so Paolo may have missed out at the Brits but hey, having an album produced by Ethan Johns is a far far better accolade. I saw Rico a few times. I have even seen him playing with Jools Holland. (Jools Holland is amazing live) And he sings too. (Rico, not Jools, who doesn’t). His singing voice is divine. Award for coolest guy goes to Rico. (See him along with many others at the Barbican’’s Chris Difford curated Songs In The Key Of London on March 9^th.)

Hats off to Boston’s MORE THAN A FEELING, this weeks result in the synch world. And Glee – Still Number One in the Albums chart. Brilliant. Its also good to see the Global Stars still at Number One, selling over half a million copies I think.

Tesco are going to exclusively release the new album from Simply Red, which is effectively making it a record label, distributor and store …. And via purchase somehow customers will also get priority access to live tickets, betchabottomdollar it’s a presell with the booking fee split between Tesco and you know who. Think about that.

Listen very closely to an advert featuring a well known cheeky chappy. Is it real or is it Memorex? That’s all I’m saying.

Donkeyboy. There is a buzz so I am listening. I like it. The singer sounds suspiciously like a Norwegian Jon Anderson, but that is a good thing. I think.