Music discovery just got a pretty big bump with some of the facebook changes that were recently rolled out at the F8 summit. This is thought of as FB’s music discovery service. Actually, as it was referred to in an interview I recently listened to on This Week In Music with Ian Rogers, it is a “music service” “discovery service”. It basically helps to direct facebook users to the various music subscription services available (a/k/a – Spotify, MOG, Rhasody, Rdio, to name a few). This is how it works. When you are using a music subscription service (and if you are not using a music subscription service, you’ve got to join the party), the music that you listen to now can be posted on facebook in the area on the top right of the screen that is referred to by FB as the timeline. I’m sure you’ve seen this by now. Next time you are reading through this ticker-tape type news feed take a closer look you may see “so & so is listening to Graceland by Paul Simon on Spotify” or something to that nature.
It Keeps Changing – Don’t Freak Out!
This is a big deal in the music world right now. The music subscription service model (Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, etc.) is the best answer (that I know of) so far to the current condition of terrestrial radio (this condition being that it SUCKS! in my humble opinion, of course). Once the empire of terrestrial radio has toppled, there will be even less use for the major record labels then there already is (their usefulness has been narrowed to something very specific already). The two biggest things they have right now are a budget and clout with radio and their budget is fading fast. In fact they don’t even want to take on new artists anymore unless they can be sure that it will be a huge hit. I mean HUGE hit. Otherwise they don’t make any money. They don’t even care about a gold record anymore. This means that the artist needs to get a certain distance down the road themselves before a label will care or even take notice. Once you are down that road already it is conceivable that you can do it without the label (this has been my point with Indie Leap from the beginning).
Yesterday’s Music Industry
Ok… So let’s look at this for a minute. The labels used to generally control these things:
- Quality Recording
- Manufacturing
- Distribution
- Marketing/Advertising
- Promotion (Radio, Press, etc.)
Today’s Music Industry
Now let’s look at what you can do on your own as an independent musician:
- Quality Recording – Toys have been coming onto the market since the late ’90′s that enable artists to create a quality recording themselves. Most of the time, one can make a quality recording in their basement with equipment that can be purchased for less than $1,000. If this is not quite enough – maybe a high end vocal mic is needed or a real piano – then there are project studios that cost in the range from $25/hour to $75/hour in someone else’s basement that have pretty decent mics and a protools set up that is perfectly adequate.
- Manufacuring – I think it was the mid ’90′s when CD duplication became affordable to an independent artist (actually my first job in the “music business” was as a sales person (or the guy answering the phone) for a CD duplication company in New Hampshire – New England CD. They are still alive and kicking – Say hi to Gary for me!)
- Distribution – This was a big one. It took a couple of big happenings to get to where we’re at now, but, for simplicity’s sake let’s say it was itunes & ipod combo and CD Baby that did it. itunes & ipods popularized digital music and CD Baby founded by Derek Sivers gave independent musicians a vehicle for selling their music online (again, this is a gross oversimplification of the historical facts. There were many more players and stages of this process. These were just the big ones). The current climate offers a large selection of digital distribution services to independent musicians that allows for their music to be available digitally and/or physically through online stores such as amazon.com. Note: this was a MAJOR part of the record label’s business and they are still crying about the large-scale availability.
- Marketing/Advertising – This one is close to my heart as this is where I have landed in today’s music industry. As an independent artist, gaining exposure is now 100% possible on your own. You don’t need a life-sized cutout of your self or your band placed some where on the floor of Tower Records or a billboard in Time’s Square. You just need a facebook, twitter and youtube account. This is not to say that as soon as you set these things up, you will instantly gain exposure. You need to learn the best practices on how to use this stuff. But, the point is that you can learn this stuff. It’s not just social media that is available to you, either. Email services are cheap and even free in some instances. This allows everyone (not just musicians) to become direct marketers over night. And you can broadcast your thoughts and pictures for nothing (or next to nothing) on a blog (as I am here).
- So that brings us to Promotion. Now, let’s separate this out. Promotion encompasses a lot of things, such as: Press, TV, News coverage, reviews in trade magazines, reviews on music blogs and yes also radio air time/rotation. I would like to point out that everything on that list, with the exception of radio, can now be done effectively by the artist themselves. Again, this does not mean that it is easy. It is far from easy to learn how to do this stuff. In fact, it is only getting more complicated. With every artist, small business, major corporation and their Grandmas clamoring for attention, the corner stones of the PR world, the content curators are being overloaded and when everyone is talking at the same time it just sounds like noise. So, don’t misunderstand me, because these things are available doesn’t guarantee success for anyone, even the most talented artist.
Now, To Look at Radio
It seems to be the last sticking point here in the inevitable major restructuring of the music industry as a whole, which has been under way for more than a decade. Overall, in order to make it HUGE as an artist (which, I would argue shouldn’t be your goal at this point, but that is a different post) a good solid radio rotation is still very effective. So, great! Let’s go shop our album to the radio station and get this thing on the air! Sounds good, but it doesn’t work that way. There are consultants, executives, analysts and robots that are testing (in effective and ineffective ways) to ensure that what they put on the radio immediately connects with the listener demographic. I read a great article posted by Rick Goetz of Musician Coaching, an interview with Tony Monte, the Founder and President of New Music Director who used to work at RCA and Capital records. The first half of the interview was about radio. I feel like the main take-away from this portion of the interview was that the metaphorical machine that controls radio content selection and rotation has no tolerance for music that does not pass their tests for appropriateness on the first try. Another point that Tony was making was that it is just getting harder and harder to get on the radio. It seems that they have the same mindset as the major labels at this point – If it is not a HUGE hit, then it is not worth their efforts.
That’s the problem… So, what’s the solution?
A New World Order
Now that all of the pillars of the record label’s positioning in the music industry have been toppled except for radio, let’s move on. The question posed by all of the blabbing above is… How are current events changing radio? The answer is… they’re not… yet. The addition of the music subscription service to the timeline of facebook is another step toward giving the audience other options for (legal) music discovery beyond traditional radio. In reality the options have been available for some time. While these subscription services have “caught on” to some degree, their user-ship is generally low as compared to the number of pairs of ears necessary for a real industry shift. Don’t quote me on these numbers, but, I understand that user-ship of music subscription services is at 6,000,000, or so. Like I said, it’s caught on, to a point. Facebook on the other hand has something like 750,000,000 users.
When you balance the current user-ship with the exposure these services are gaining via facebook, it is nothing less than very significant. I fully expect to see one or more of these services emerge as a mainstream, household name service in the coming months or years. With more people using subscription services instead of radio, radio will begin to struggle.
When radio begins to struggle the record labels will all but lose their power completely.
AND… WHEN THE MAJOR LABELS CEASE TO HAVE POWER, THE INDEPENDENT MUSICIAN WILL TRULY BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEIR OWN CAREER/INCOME/DESTINY… HA, HA, HA, HA, HA… (that was an evil laugh, but you knew that).
I don’t mean to sound anti-label like that. I am just pro-indie and I wanted to write in an evil laugh. Actually, it is my philosophy that the labels still have a use and looking at them for their specific uses is a much better approach than looking at them in the “knight in shining armor” perspective.
I will write more about these music subscription services (like which one does what and how to get your music available to them and so on) in another post.
Thanks for reading,
Tom Siegel
P.S. – For all kinds of information about DIY music marketing sign up for our newsletter and download our free ebook The 7 Essential Pieces to Marketing Your Music Online.
