Songwriters are taking it on the chin. What’s the solution?

In January copyright law (technology and music) expert Chris Castle posted a great interview with Rick Carnes the President of the Songwriter’s Guild.

Carnes speaks for the songwriters that are getting screwed in today’s tech-driven, share-don’t-care world of music and celebrity labels. Songwriters “don’t sell t-shirts, don’t play shows, and don’t have all the other income streams available to them” (as the performers do). They are getting “remixed out of culture”. As a consequence, “there are fewer and fewer original professional songwriters around every year.” “The days of the ‘stand alone’ songwriter appear to be over.” “Songwriters were the number one loser of income in the US economy in 2004”. “We (songwriters) make our money on record sales and radio airplay. Or, we USED to make our money on record sales. Illegal downloading ended that. Now we are looking for new jobs.”

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Artist will put a tag cloud on her back to raise money for her next album.

Coming on the heals of Bob Baker’s latest Music Think Tank post on Fan Funded Models, here’s another viable alternative to consider:

An artist from Los Angeles is offering to turn her back into a giant Tag Cloud to raise money for her next album.

Artist Grasmaand First told Music Think Tank that the tag cloud on her back will generate over $100,000 to fund her next album. $40,000 will be used for production and the remaining $60,000 will go toward promotion.

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Remember the mullet? File sharers are next.

Updated on April 1, 2009 by Bruce Warila

Can you say stuck in the past? According to the news, the new U2 album has been downloaded illegally over 400,000 times since it was released. While this isn’t a number to sneeze at, it reminds me of the mulletheads that put hood scoops and air blowers over their carbureted engines in the early 1980s. When the rest of the world switched over to fuel injection, the mullet-powered Camaro became a thing of the past.

Someone click over to Torrent Freak and tell darkshare, labeldeath and redfilephantom to garage the Camaro and trim the mullet; fuel injection has arrived. Sorry angry dudes, the cost of acquiring a music collection is approaching zero

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download music business legal documents for creating your own 360 deal

If you are setting up a legal entity (a corporation for your band / music-related business) with the objective of providing economic and upside incentives to everyone that is or will be involved in your business (your bandmates, your management team, your potential investors, and possibly even your sponsors/promoters), here’s a free set of legal documents that you can use as a basis for creating what the music industry calls a 360 deal (as in 360 degrees).

What is a 360 deal?
A 360 deal (in my mind) is a catchall term that describes a structure whereby everyone involved pledges all related (related to the core of the business) rights, services and assets into a corporation that is owned by all of the participants. A 360 deal may or may not include investment capital.

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My song sucks? You must be an idiot! What’s the right way to review music?

Someone once told me that to negatively critique a song is like telling a mother her newborn baby is ugly. Every mother thinks her baby is cute and every artist thinks his or her latest song has (massive) unrealized potential.

Over the last year, my favorite posts on Music Think Tank were my shortest. I learned a lot, and your answers helped shape the products I worked on. The comments on the following posts were great.
Do most fans really want anything from you other than your music?
Do great songs really ever go unheard?

Now, I’m going back to the well. Music Xray is about a launch a social-network-like music submission and review utility. The application does four things:

1. It enables music industry professionals to earn a bit of revenue through the music submission and review process.
2. It enables song owners to get legitimate feedback quickly and inexpensively via an environment where they can review the reviewers.
3. It exposes songs (in some cases) to the people that can connect songs to exposure opportunities.
4. It gives Music Xray the best way to get a ton of songs professionally tagged, which will help to make all the songs in our system easier to find.

Here’s the challenge: What’s the right way to review music?

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Google Trends on Music Think Tank

I just added multiple Google Trends as clickable links on the left side of Music Think Tank. Any time you want to review a current music industry trend, just click a link.

Each graph generated by Google Trends demonstrates two trends:

• The upper trend line demonstrates global keyword search trends (the number of times a word or phrase is entered into the Google search box).
• The lower trend line demonstrates occurrences of each word or phrase on blogs and websites around the world.

All the data in graphs produced by Google Trends is normalized. For most of the graphs below, the number 1 represents the average across a time span. Read more about Google’s graphing methods.

I decided to put all these graphs into one post, because it’s the best way to get the big picture.  Graphs are shown below each title.

There are some interesting trends to note. What do you think? What other trends should we link to?

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Fan-Driven-Private-Concerts - the next big thing?

On Music Think Tank Open, contributor Andy Malloy has written a couple of posts about Fan-Driven-Private-Concerts. In the first post, Andy talks about the model. In the second post, he covers justification for the model and the marketplace opportunity.

Fan-Driven-Private-Concerts seems like a great idea to me.  Could this be one of the next big things (revenue opportunity) that all artists should be looking at right now?

What works?  What's needed?  How can the vision be refined?  Would you like to have all of the dates on your calendar filled by fans staging private concerts?

Artists considering this model should also be reading Steve Lawson's blog.

Should the New Law of Music Absorption alter your music business decisions?

Music absorption is the process that occurs between music discovery and the (self) conversion of an average music consumer into an active fan.

I believe the music absorption process is radically different now than it was just two years ago, and understanding how this process has changed should impact your approach to succeeding in the music industry.

The New Law of Music Absorption
Consumers are rapidly accumulating vast libraries of songs from around the globe at unprecedented rates. As a consequence, the speed (the time) that it takes the average consumer to absorb new music is increasing proportionately.

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Do most fans really want anything from you other than your music?

I think this is one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves. Do most fans just want your music, or do most fans want something else from you beyond your music?

Why is this question so important? In a world where music is generating less and less revenue, it’s important to understand what fans truly want; especially if you plan to sell them something other than your music.

The following quote is from Ariel Hyatt’s last post about Twitter.
“People want personality. They want authenticity. They want a genuine look at the person behind the music.”

Personality, authenticity, a look at the person behind the music… I am trying to understand who, why, when, what, how and how-many fans (what percentage) would trouble about anything but your music, tickets or t-shirts.

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Do great songs really ever go unheard?

FOLLOWUP NOTE:  THE COMMENTS ON THIS POST ARE EXCELLENT!

I am not talking about good songs, I am talking about great songs.  I know good and great are subjective, but can you point to a song that you said to yourself - “that’s one of the best songs I ever heard in my life” - and then that song went on to die on the shelf; never to be heard by more than a handful of humans again?  Does death by obscurity really happen to great songs, or does lack of traction only happen to mediocre songs?

I am doing some research.  Can you show me links to songs you think should have been certifiable hits?  Or, just comment on this post.  Thanks.

A publishing and distribution deal from the same company - is it smart?

As an independent label, is it better to have a distribution and a publishing deal on the same major label?  Or is it better to have a different publisher to your major partner [label]?

I was asked this question by someone funding a small label.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

The only thing wrong with Music 2.0 is your mental model of how it should work.

Metaphorically speaking, this is a post for those looking to become rock stars and their advisers.

I loved Rhodri Mardsen’s article on Music Think Tank.  The post was entertaining and it perfectly expressed the sentiment that I hear from artists and managers everywhere.  Moreover, the comments were equally telling.  The music industry is a bitch. You have to do it because you love it.  Music 2.0 hasn’t changed anything for artists.  It’s harder to earn a living than it’s ever been.  The consultants, the promoters and the bloggers - all their talk is a bunch of repetitive, give your music away, start a blog, post banner ads, sell t-shirts, build a brand, and other blah, blah, blah bullshit.

Ok, since I’m not one to swim in the tide of current sentiments, I spent the last seventy-two hours asking myself what’s wrong with that picture.  After all, artists have gotten just about everything they asked for…  

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Could The TechCrunch Tablet Be The Final Nail In The Music Sales Coffin?

The tech world is buzzing today about the TechCrunch Tablet concept announced on TechCrunch this morning.  Regarding the music business, I have to ask two questions:

1)  Could the TechCrunch Tablet be the final nail in the music sales coffin?
TechCrunch speculates that a device like the one shown in the picture above, could be built for under $200.  Now, I realize that everyone has a mobile phone, so why is this different?  Why would this product be more disruptive to the music industry?  

Imagine every kid carrying one of these around in his or her backpack.  Full screen browsing!  Go to any music 2.0 site and interact with the full kit; not the watered down version you experience on a smart phone; you get it all: commenting, friends, music players, blogs, schedules, videos, sharing, streaming, etc.  What do you need to buy or own music for?  Moreover, this thing becomes another form of entertainment that subtracts from the pool of entertainment time you compete for.

2)  What can artists do to prepare for the day when everyone has something like this?
Music will not be your primary product; it will be a component of your brand.  Imagine your blog filling the screen above.  It’s imperative that you build your own brand, or become part of a boutique brand on the Internet.  To build the most value, you should do this under your own URL.  

One of the easiest and cleanest ways to build a branded blog under your own URL is with SquareSpace (powers this blog and my own).  Buy me a beer by clicking my SquareSpace referral link here.  Read this related post titled Communities Dominate Brands for more info on building your own brand on the Internet.


I read this great quote on Kevin Kelly’s blog: “You would starve to death in a field of wheat, if you had never heard of flour.”  Study the picture.  Learn how to make flour.

Digital music can’t be marketed, it can only be found.

Click here to read the update to this post.

With the exception of marketing music to naïve teenagers that consume anything that’s fed to them on FM radio, it’s becoming impossible to market music to people that know what they like.

In the old days, mystery, intrigue, celebrity, and real or imagined bullshit benefits could be baked into the product and into the packaging.  Record labels profited wildly by being experts at it, but digital music has changed all this.

Music is now the most naked product on Earth.  Music sits upon the shelf unwrapped, raw and void of packaging.  Consumers can fully try it before they buy it; they can take it home unmolested; and they can pay for it randomly, or not at all.  I can’t think of another product that is so fully exposed and vulnerable to quick and precise, pre-purchase decision-making as music.  You click.  You listen.  You buy.  It doesn’t get any quicker or more precise than that.  

I fully believe, of the five billion tracks sold on iTunes to date, a billion (20% or FAR more) have been sold to consumers that have NEVER seen the artist, have NEVER visited the artist’s website or MySpace page, and have NEVER had any interaction with the artist…other than exposure to a thirty second clip.  A billion(s) of iTunes purchase decisions have been driven off simple recommendation algorithms (those that liked X, also liked Y).  

Fortunately for artists that make great songs, the same naked qualities that make music impossible to market, also make music the easiest product in the world to recommend.  Once again, I can’t think of another product that has the viral qualities that are inherent in music.  It’s the only product where the entire product (the MP3) can be easily attached to the recommendation.  Try doing that with chicken nuggets.

In my mind (no jokes please), the greatest unintended consequence of being stuck with a product that can’t be marketed, and can only be recommended, will be the overwhelming desire to seek brutal feedback and rapid validation.  You can no longer say: it’s a marketing problem…when marketing was not an option.  The only questions worth pondering are: does this song suck?  If so, how can I make it better?  Nothing else really matters in the recommendation-driven world of naked digital music.