I came across a new site called Slicethepie which has an interesting take on the marketing and distribution of music for up-and-coming bands. It has some of the elements that I mentioned in my post about artist collectives, most notably a community-centric model that helps fans connect to artists (including a Facebook plug-in to foster the word-of-mouth advertising that is essential for a new band). The site also holds contests for bands to win studio time to produce their albums. This should help some with the catch-22 that bands face where it takes money to cut an album so that you can make money. None of these concepts are particularly new; sites like Last.fm already provide many of these tools. What makes Slicethepie most unique is its use of a basic concept of economics to look at music in a different way.
In additional to fans and artists, Slicethepie defines the role of a music trader. This is not a trader in the traditional sense of one who trades music files with their friends but rather in the same sense as a stock trader. Music traders on Slicethepie are essentially replacing the role that record labels have traditionally played. The basic unit of trade on Slicethepie is known as a contract unit. These units can be purchased for $3 each (or $1/ea. with the purchase of an artist's album in digital form for $10). As with traditional stock dividends, if a band is successful the stock holders see a share of the profits.
Users rate how much they like an album and Slicethepie pays back dividends at regular intervals to those holding contract units for artists in the top 2% of popularity. This is an ingenious use of the concepts of economics to help bands get over that critical first hurdle. By creating a pressure for people to find the next big thing Slicethepie is focusing the diffuse energies on the internet on a specific task. Not only is the goal to discover the artists that are worthy of funding but, more importantly, to have the community fund them.
If they can make this model work, it truly is a win-win situation. Bands get much needed exposure and (if they're good enough) the funding to establish themselves. Fans can use the internet to provide a more direct feedback about the music that they like - much more so than listening to the radio or buying CDs from retailers ever allowed them. Last but not least, Slicethepie takes their cut from the contract units that fans purchase, some of which they reinvest in the community to ensure its continued vibrancy.
The only unfortunate (though necessary) aspect of this model is its slavish devotion to the whims of the masses. A band's value is based solely on the reviews of users; Slicethepie does not have experts adding input to the system and everyone's vote counts equally. Ideally this democracy is laudable, but the risk is that Slicethepie becomes yet another online niche for the boom-to-bust fads that already plague the online community on a macro-scale. In the end, the community is all about serving the users but I can't help worrying that this will lead to the same kind of one-hit-wonder pop outfits that the labels have been foisting on us for so long.
In any case, I can absolutely see the potential in this idea and it excites me to see other people using the internet to think up new business models. At the end of the day, it can only be good to have more power in the hands of music fans and artists and less power in the hands of the big four and their RIAA attack dogs. When I get a chance, I plan on digging deeper into Slicethepie and I'll be sure to post my findings.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Drawing Way Outside The Lines
I saw Tool at the Frank Erwin Center last night and it exceeded all expectations. For them to sound this good seventeen years into making music is a testament to their dedication. As with their tours for Lateralus and Ænima the light show was in full effect with many songs accompanied by their respective music videos and some new material. Maynard's voice sounded great and the acoustics of the venue were perfect for Tool's expansive sound.
Following them through the years it has been interesting to see their evolving sound and the way that it informs their live performances. I know that there are some fans that feel that Ænima is the high water mark of their career; as good as that album is, I have to disagree with this sentiment. Last night was undeniable proof that Tool's transition from alt-rock vitriolics to prog-rock epics has been one for the better. Don't get me wrong, I love Ænima, along with OK Computer, it is one of the few true masterpieces of post-Nirvana 90's rock. The difference is one of cohesion.
One can certainly make the case that, taken individually, tracks on Ænima are better than tracks on their more recent albums but I believe that this is failing to see the forest from the trees. Tool albums are no longer about individual tracks, this is especially telling when one looks at which tracks are played on the radio. The radio format is all about three to four minute time slots for listeners with short attention spans and it has become increasingly difficult for their label to get Tool tracks on the air. When even the shortest Tool songs (excluding segues) often stretch to six or seven minutes the only option for radio play is to chose on of the shorter songs and hack it down into a four minute "radio-edit". The reality is that Tool has long since left the land of easily packaged, radio-friendly "popular rock" music. Tool's more recent work is not about tracks, but concepts.
Take, for example the "Wings for Marie (Pt 1)" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)" song cycle from their latest album. What starts slowly with a quiet brooding over the course of seventeen minutes builds into a cathartic release that to experience live borders on some kind of religious epiphany. This is not about seeing your favorite band crank out rock songs so that you can sing along and wave your lighter. At the risk of sounding maudlin, this is about the experience of seeing a group of dedicated artists create something positive and beautiful. This is all the more powerful from being made in a medium that so often is just used to sell iPods and Volkswagens.
It's been a few years since I've gone to a big stadium rock concert and there is a new trend that has become disturbingly pervasive. Three of the people sitting in the row in front of me spent most of the night alternatively texting their friends (presumably about being at the Tool show) and taking video clips and picture snapshots with their camera-phones. Did I miss a meeting? Since when is it not sufficient to just experience something? I can understand the juvenile need to show off the fact that you were at a big rock show, but to spend the whole evening watching the show through the blurry two megapixel lens of your phone just boggles my mind. I must say the irony was certainly delicious to look out over a stadium thronged with thousands of fans, cell phones held aloft to capture the moment, singing along:
Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I
Live while the whole world dies
You all need it too - don't lie.
Following them through the years it has been interesting to see their evolving sound and the way that it informs their live performances. I know that there are some fans that feel that Ænima is the high water mark of their career; as good as that album is, I have to disagree with this sentiment. Last night was undeniable proof that Tool's transition from alt-rock vitriolics to prog-rock epics has been one for the better. Don't get me wrong, I love Ænima, along with OK Computer, it is one of the few true masterpieces of post-Nirvana 90's rock. The difference is one of cohesion.
One can certainly make the case that, taken individually, tracks on Ænima are better than tracks on their more recent albums but I believe that this is failing to see the forest from the trees. Tool albums are no longer about individual tracks, this is especially telling when one looks at which tracks are played on the radio. The radio format is all about three to four minute time slots for listeners with short attention spans and it has become increasingly difficult for their label to get Tool tracks on the air. When even the shortest Tool songs (excluding segues) often stretch to six or seven minutes the only option for radio play is to chose on of the shorter songs and hack it down into a four minute "radio-edit". The reality is that Tool has long since left the land of easily packaged, radio-friendly "popular rock" music. Tool's more recent work is not about tracks, but concepts.
Take, for example the "Wings for Marie (Pt 1)" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)" song cycle from their latest album. What starts slowly with a quiet brooding over the course of seventeen minutes builds into a cathartic release that to experience live borders on some kind of religious epiphany. This is not about seeing your favorite band crank out rock songs so that you can sing along and wave your lighter. At the risk of sounding maudlin, this is about the experience of seeing a group of dedicated artists create something positive and beautiful. This is all the more powerful from being made in a medium that so often is just used to sell iPods and Volkswagens.
It's been a few years since I've gone to a big stadium rock concert and there is a new trend that has become disturbingly pervasive. Three of the people sitting in the row in front of me spent most of the night alternatively texting their friends (presumably about being at the Tool show) and taking video clips and picture snapshots with their camera-phones. Did I miss a meeting? Since when is it not sufficient to just experience something? I can understand the juvenile need to show off the fact that you were at a big rock show, but to spend the whole evening watching the show through the blurry two megapixel lens of your phone just boggles my mind. I must say the irony was certainly delicious to look out over a stadium thronged with thousands of fans, cell phones held aloft to capture the moment, singing along:
Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I
Live while the whole world dies
You all need it too - don't lie.
Friday, November 9, 2007
187 On The Album
Ars reports that Jay-Z will not be offering his latest album, American Gangster on the iTunes Store. His reason is an interesting one: he doesn't want the album broken down and sold as individual tracks (something that iTunes requires but many other online music stores do not). From what I can tell, the general consensus is that he should just offer the album as individual tracks and be happy that people want to buy his music. This issue lies at an increasingly busy intersection of technology and art that I am fascinated by so I want to dig a bit deeper into the details.
In reading many of the responses to this announcement I was struck with how strong the sense of entitlement is among many on the internet. Granted the quasi-anonymity that the internet provides can certainly skew people towards the whiny end of the scale it still seems like many people feel that artists owe them something. It is telling that people who, by their own admission, are not Jay-Z fans are indignantly demanding that he "get with the program" and just offer his tracks up on iTunes like everyone else. Even many Jay-Z fans are using this as further rationalization for their use of peer-to-peer networks. There is a wonderful irony to someone saying, "why don't you offer your music the way I want it" out of one side of their mouth and "I don't actually pay for your music" out of the other. So where does this sense of entitlement come from?
Like many of the problems plaguing the embattled music industry, I think much of the responsibility lies at the feet of the record labels and the RIAA. Their policies have been driven solely by greed for so long that they don't know any other way to operate. This is an industry that routinely sells CDs (which cost pennies to manufacture) for $18 while giving the artist an average of less than a dollar per CD sold. Ask them why and they will spew a river of garbage to put Cuyahoga to shame. The reality is that the relationship between labels and artists has always been one-sided which is why many established artists are looking at abandoning their labels entirely. So the label's greed has hurt the artists they claim to promote and has alienated the fans that they claim to serve.
Before the internet there wasn't much that a disgruntled music fan could do. You either paid the exorbitant cost of a CD or you listened to the homogenized sound-gelatin of the radio. The emergence of the internet, along with completely destroying the traditional distribution model for digital media, has provided a forum for the disenfranchised music fans. It is appropriate that an industry enslaved to the economic principle of maximizing profit would be blindsided by a technology that trumps its strongest suit. Manufacturers spent years perfecting CDs to the point that they cost almost nothing to produce. Labels hired armies of lawyers to craft contracts that would turn artists into indentured servants. Then Napster came along and the whole game changed. The cost of distribution shrunk to almost nothing and now all of the music fans, sick of being overcharged for mediocre product, revolted en masse.
So now there are myriad P2P tools that allow anyone to easily get their favorite music for free and music fans (for the most part) are gruntled. Like any revolution, the digital revolution of the early 21st century has left some behind. The artist, long at the mercy of the labels, can now see a way out of bondage but the internet has not yet fulfilled that promise. As in many revolutions, some of the P2P revolutionaries have taken things too far. What started as a rebellion against the records labels has transformed into a culture of entitlement. The motto of "free music from corporate tyranny" has been perverted into "I deserve free music".
To be honest, I'm not a fan of Jay-Z but I do support his decision to not allow his album to be split apart. Technology has dramatically changed the landscape of music, mostly for the better, but music is still a creative endeavor. A painter is (usually) given input into how their paintings are displayed in a gallery. This is because the gallery owner is not solely driven by a desire to sell paintings, they have tempered that with a desire to respect the artist's intent and creative sensibilities. In this context I think that Jay-Z's request that his album be appreciated as a whole and not as individual tracks is completely reasonable. In fact I would argue that anyone selling his album has a mandate, just like a gallery owner, to respect his creative intent. Napster and its mutant offspring may have demolished the distribution model for music but this does not destroy the relationship that an artist has with their work.
In reading many of the responses to this announcement I was struck with how strong the sense of entitlement is among many on the internet. Granted the quasi-anonymity that the internet provides can certainly skew people towards the whiny end of the scale it still seems like many people feel that artists owe them something. It is telling that people who, by their own admission, are not Jay-Z fans are indignantly demanding that he "get with the program" and just offer his tracks up on iTunes like everyone else. Even many Jay-Z fans are using this as further rationalization for their use of peer-to-peer networks. There is a wonderful irony to someone saying, "why don't you offer your music the way I want it" out of one side of their mouth and "I don't actually pay for your music" out of the other. So where does this sense of entitlement come from?
Like many of the problems plaguing the embattled music industry, I think much of the responsibility lies at the feet of the record labels and the RIAA. Their policies have been driven solely by greed for so long that they don't know any other way to operate. This is an industry that routinely sells CDs (which cost pennies to manufacture) for $18 while giving the artist an average of less than a dollar per CD sold. Ask them why and they will spew a river of garbage to put Cuyahoga to shame. The reality is that the relationship between labels and artists has always been one-sided which is why many established artists are looking at abandoning their labels entirely. So the label's greed has hurt the artists they claim to promote and has alienated the fans that they claim to serve.
Before the internet there wasn't much that a disgruntled music fan could do. You either paid the exorbitant cost of a CD or you listened to the homogenized sound-gelatin of the radio. The emergence of the internet, along with completely destroying the traditional distribution model for digital media, has provided a forum for the disenfranchised music fans. It is appropriate that an industry enslaved to the economic principle of maximizing profit would be blindsided by a technology that trumps its strongest suit. Manufacturers spent years perfecting CDs to the point that they cost almost nothing to produce. Labels hired armies of lawyers to craft contracts that would turn artists into indentured servants. Then Napster came along and the whole game changed. The cost of distribution shrunk to almost nothing and now all of the music fans, sick of being overcharged for mediocre product, revolted en masse.
So now there are myriad P2P tools that allow anyone to easily get their favorite music for free and music fans (for the most part) are gruntled. Like any revolution, the digital revolution of the early 21st century has left some behind. The artist, long at the mercy of the labels, can now see a way out of bondage but the internet has not yet fulfilled that promise. As in many revolutions, some of the P2P revolutionaries have taken things too far. What started as a rebellion against the records labels has transformed into a culture of entitlement. The motto of "free music from corporate tyranny" has been perverted into "I deserve free music".
To be honest, I'm not a fan of Jay-Z but I do support his decision to not allow his album to be split apart. Technology has dramatically changed the landscape of music, mostly for the better, but music is still a creative endeavor. A painter is (usually) given input into how their paintings are displayed in a gallery. This is because the gallery owner is not solely driven by a desire to sell paintings, they have tempered that with a desire to respect the artist's intent and creative sensibilities. In this context I think that Jay-Z's request that his album be appreciated as a whole and not as individual tracks is completely reasonable. In fact I would argue that anyone selling his album has a mandate, just like a gallery owner, to respect his creative intent. Napster and its mutant offspring may have demolished the distribution model for music but this does not destroy the relationship that an artist has with their work.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
White Chalk
PJ Harvey's latest album is a rather dramatic departure from her more recent work. A minor-key piano heavy affair; Harvey uses her voice to great effect to create the somber mood of the album. Gone is the throaty growl of her early work, replaced by a ghostly timber that is startling to hear at first but ultimately works remarkably well. It is a testament to PJ Harvey's versatility as an artist that she can execute such a dramatic transformation. Her choice of delivery fits the theme of the music perfectly for ultimately this is an album about loneliness. Not the quiescent solitude of one who chooses to be apart mind you, but the bitter regret of one who has lost, who has been betrayed. She has explored these themes before but never has PJ Harvey's choice of delivery given this particular subject matter such potency.
The opening track "The Devil" along with it's sister track "Silence" underpin the major themes of the album. Both deal with the pain of lost love, they describe the pangs of need that lead one to a shared rendezvous in the vain hope that what is lost will be waiting there. This powerful metaphor runs throughout the work and we are like moths drawn to the light of her revelatory confessions. At different points the lyrics mention nakedness, in the literal sense, but this is only a metaphor for the raw emotional state of Harvey's tragic heroine. To be sure, this is an emotional excision; the feelings of loss, betrayal and blind hope all torn from her breast and laid bare before us.
Between the esoteric instruments (Optigan, broken harp, mellotron and mini-moog) and the antiquated language (ether gets prominent mention) White Chalk feels like a Victorian elegy for a lover lost in some tragic Poe short story. The raw sensuality of Harvey's work, often far more overt, here slowly builds to a roiling boil over the course of the eleven tracks until the dramatic climax on the album's devastating closer, "The Mountain". Repetition is used very effectively to establish a mood early and maintain it throughout the album making it feel more like stanzas of a single Sapphic poem than discrete tracks. Like much of PJ Harvey's other work, White Chalk took multiple listens to scratch the surface and reveal the deeper beauties hidden within but she makes the scratching hurt so right that you can't help yourself.
The opening track "The Devil" along with it's sister track "Silence" underpin the major themes of the album. Both deal with the pain of lost love, they describe the pangs of need that lead one to a shared rendezvous in the vain hope that what is lost will be waiting there. This powerful metaphor runs throughout the work and we are like moths drawn to the light of her revelatory confessions. At different points the lyrics mention nakedness, in the literal sense, but this is only a metaphor for the raw emotional state of Harvey's tragic heroine. To be sure, this is an emotional excision; the feelings of loss, betrayal and blind hope all torn from her breast and laid bare before us.
Between the esoteric instruments (Optigan, broken harp, mellotron and mini-moog) and the antiquated language (ether gets prominent mention) White Chalk feels like a Victorian elegy for a lover lost in some tragic Poe short story. The raw sensuality of Harvey's work, often far more overt, here slowly builds to a roiling boil over the course of the eleven tracks until the dramatic climax on the album's devastating closer, "The Mountain". Repetition is used very effectively to establish a mood early and maintain it throughout the album making it feel more like stanzas of a single Sapphic poem than discrete tracks. Like much of PJ Harvey's other work, White Chalk took multiple listens to scratch the surface and reveal the deeper beauties hidden within but she makes the scratching hurt so right that you can't help yourself.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Artist Collectives
So early estimates are that Radiohead has made from six to ten million dollars on sales of their new album, 'In Rainbows'. This is significant because Radiohead eschewed the the traditional model of releasing through a record label and instead offered their album for download on their own website at a price of the individual's choosing. That's right, many of the 1.2 million people who downloaded the album from the official site chose to pay absolutely nothing. Most estimates have the average price paid at between $5 and $8 so obviously many people who have downloaded the album are paying for it.
Also telling is the fact that 500,000 people chose to skip the official website altogether and downloaded the album via P2P file sharing software. For these people having to register their email address on the site was too high a cost, or (less likely) they simply where not aware of the web site's existence. For some this could also represent complacency as they have simply grown accustomed to getting all of their music through the black market, unhappy with the high prices ($15-18 retail) and low quality of much of the music on offer.
What does all of this mean for the recording industry? Well the math is pretty simple, when the typical recording contract offers an artist pennies for each album sold even if Radiohead is only making $5 per album via this new distribution model they are still coming out way ahead in the bargain. Sadly Radiohead has decided that they will also release "In Rainbows" with a record label some time next year. Apparently they do not want to exclude the less tech-savvy among their fans from hearing the album. I have a feeling that the percentage of Radiohead fans that don't know how to download and play MP3's is pretty slim. We may end up looking back on this album as a lungfish in the evolutionary process towards a better model for music distribution but the great leap is certainly underway.
Recently other bands such as Nine In Nails, Oasis and Jamiroquai announced that they will be joining Radiohead in using the internet to cut out the middle man and connect directly to their fans. Individual band members from established bands have also started to use the internet as a way to test the waters of solo work. The technology, and more importantly culture have reached a maturation point where it is possible for an artist to communicate directly with their fans on a worldwide scale. If Andy Warhol were alive today I'm sure that he would be smiling.
Pundits have been quick to point out that this only works because Radiohead is already at the top. They rightly point out that a new band could never do something like this because no one has heard of them and thus the demand does not already exist. Certainly the record labels have used their vast marketing armies to great effect beating the market into submission. The reality is that the internet has changed all of the rules of the game, not just on the distribution side but on the marketing side as well. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have proven that the simple point-to-point communication of word-of-mouth is every bit as effective as the labels' shotgun approach.
The internet is young enough that methodologies have not yet even be invented to measure the true impact of this new form of marketing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the millions of emails, blogs, forum posts, reviews and interviews have a greater impact on a band's album sales than that glossy full-page ad in Rolling Stone magazine. Anyone who doubts that the internet is the future of marketing need only look at the latest stock quote for Google.
To be sure a band with no recognition at all will have a hard time recouping their cost to make an album in the first place. In fact the initial barrier to entry into the music business is probably the single biggest reason why the record label's have survived this long. The adage that you have to spend money to make money applies to music just as it applies to any other business.
The solution, I contend, has been sitting right in front of us all this time. Established bands such as Radiohead can utilize the memetic power of the internet to create artist collectives. Using their websites and social networks as a sort of wellspring, established bands can start a stable of like-minded artists and use the low cost of distribution as a way of helping up-and-coming bands establish themselves. Seed money for studio time can come from the more established acts and the the up and coming bands can get exposure both on-line via recommendations and in real life by appearing as the opening acts for their patron bands.
Doesn't this you just turn established bands into record labels themselves? Yes and no. True, in this model established bands would fulfill many of the same roles as traditional record labels but the difference is one of scale and locality. A good metaphor would be the difference between letting the parishes of Louisiana manage relief resources versus letting FEMA try to manage them for all of the people affected by Katrina. One of these models is obviously more efficient and less susceptible to corruption than the other.
The internet obviates the bands and their affiliates of many of the responsibilities formerly held by the major labels. Instead of a worldwide distribution network consisting of shipping, routing and retail channels you can simply hire a hosting company to run your website. Instead of a global marketing department that spends millions of dollars on a few specially placed ads you can use the legion of internet users to help spread your message. Sites like Youtube and MySpace has already proven the power of the meme; if you make something that people want to watch/listen to/interact with and you lower the barrier to entry they will come to you in droves. The internet has lowered the barrier of entry tremendously, if the established bands can just help talented newcomers get over that first hill then the momentum of the internet is ready to carry them the rest of the way.
There is one essential ingredient for all of this to work. You have to make music that people actually want to listen to. If this model is less amenable to the kind of slick, marketing-manufactured pop bands that have become the label's raison d'être of late then we will be all the better for it. There will certainly still be fads, the near-zero barrier of communication means that fads are born, grow into huge phenomena and die out all with the blink of an eye. As many traditional marketing firms have learned the hard way, the marketing that the internet provides is more diffuse, more mercurial and thus more susceptible to the vicissitudes of culture.
Picture it, instead of a few dozen local radio stations cramming the same tired shlock down our ear canals we have the endless array of streaming radio stations, podcasts and ad-hoc downloads all a click away. Instead of walking into a big-box retailer on a Tuesday afternoon and choosing among the new releases of a few bands that are targeted at our demographic we can go to the portal of our favorite art collective any time, night or day, and immediately download music from groups of our choosing. The future truly is wide open.
Also telling is the fact that 500,000 people chose to skip the official website altogether and downloaded the album via P2P file sharing software. For these people having to register their email address on the site was too high a cost, or (less likely) they simply where not aware of the web site's existence. For some this could also represent complacency as they have simply grown accustomed to getting all of their music through the black market, unhappy with the high prices ($15-18 retail) and low quality of much of the music on offer.
What does all of this mean for the recording industry? Well the math is pretty simple, when the typical recording contract offers an artist pennies for each album sold even if Radiohead is only making $5 per album via this new distribution model they are still coming out way ahead in the bargain. Sadly Radiohead has decided that they will also release "In Rainbows" with a record label some time next year. Apparently they do not want to exclude the less tech-savvy among their fans from hearing the album. I have a feeling that the percentage of Radiohead fans that don't know how to download and play MP3's is pretty slim. We may end up looking back on this album as a lungfish in the evolutionary process towards a better model for music distribution but the great leap is certainly underway.
Recently other bands such as Nine In Nails, Oasis and Jamiroquai announced that they will be joining Radiohead in using the internet to cut out the middle man and connect directly to their fans. Individual band members from established bands have also started to use the internet as a way to test the waters of solo work. The technology, and more importantly culture have reached a maturation point where it is possible for an artist to communicate directly with their fans on a worldwide scale. If Andy Warhol were alive today I'm sure that he would be smiling.
Pundits have been quick to point out that this only works because Radiohead is already at the top. They rightly point out that a new band could never do something like this because no one has heard of them and thus the demand does not already exist. Certainly the record labels have used their vast marketing armies to great effect beating the market into submission. The reality is that the internet has changed all of the rules of the game, not just on the distribution side but on the marketing side as well. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have proven that the simple point-to-point communication of word-of-mouth is every bit as effective as the labels' shotgun approach.
The internet is young enough that methodologies have not yet even be invented to measure the true impact of this new form of marketing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the millions of emails, blogs, forum posts, reviews and interviews have a greater impact on a band's album sales than that glossy full-page ad in Rolling Stone magazine. Anyone who doubts that the internet is the future of marketing need only look at the latest stock quote for Google.
To be sure a band with no recognition at all will have a hard time recouping their cost to make an album in the first place. In fact the initial barrier to entry into the music business is probably the single biggest reason why the record label's have survived this long. The adage that you have to spend money to make money applies to music just as it applies to any other business.
The solution, I contend, has been sitting right in front of us all this time. Established bands such as Radiohead can utilize the memetic power of the internet to create artist collectives. Using their websites and social networks as a sort of wellspring, established bands can start a stable of like-minded artists and use the low cost of distribution as a way of helping up-and-coming bands establish themselves. Seed money for studio time can come from the more established acts and the the up and coming bands can get exposure both on-line via recommendations and in real life by appearing as the opening acts for their patron bands.
Doesn't this you just turn established bands into record labels themselves? Yes and no. True, in this model established bands would fulfill many of the same roles as traditional record labels but the difference is one of scale and locality. A good metaphor would be the difference between letting the parishes of Louisiana manage relief resources versus letting FEMA try to manage them for all of the people affected by Katrina. One of these models is obviously more efficient and less susceptible to corruption than the other.
The internet obviates the bands and their affiliates of many of the responsibilities formerly held by the major labels. Instead of a worldwide distribution network consisting of shipping, routing and retail channels you can simply hire a hosting company to run your website. Instead of a global marketing department that spends millions of dollars on a few specially placed ads you can use the legion of internet users to help spread your message. Sites like Youtube and MySpace has already proven the power of the meme; if you make something that people want to watch/listen to/interact with and you lower the barrier to entry they will come to you in droves. The internet has lowered the barrier of entry tremendously, if the established bands can just help talented newcomers get over that first hill then the momentum of the internet is ready to carry them the rest of the way.
There is one essential ingredient for all of this to work. You have to make music that people actually want to listen to. If this model is less amenable to the kind of slick, marketing-manufactured pop bands that have become the label's raison d'être of late then we will be all the better for it. There will certainly still be fads, the near-zero barrier of communication means that fads are born, grow into huge phenomena and die out all with the blink of an eye. As many traditional marketing firms have learned the hard way, the marketing that the internet provides is more diffuse, more mercurial and thus more susceptible to the vicissitudes of culture.
Picture it, instead of a few dozen local radio stations cramming the same tired shlock down our ear canals we have the endless array of streaming radio stations, podcasts and ad-hoc downloads all a click away. Instead of walking into a big-box retailer on a Tuesday afternoon and choosing among the new releases of a few bands that are targeted at our demographic we can go to the portal of our favorite art collective any time, night or day, and immediately download music from groups of our choosing. The future truly is wide open.
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