3 approaches for small to mid-sized music outfits to consider in the current music market

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Jason Bunyan
examiner

If you are an entertainment professional who specializes in digital media and have not yet read consultant and NYU adjunct Clay Shirky’s essay, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, it is worth the read. Shirky interlaces a clear discussion of modern publishing’s woes with historical details and thought-proviking points about exonomics, revolution, and social interaction. He suggests that “society doesn’t need newspapers. What [it needs] is journalism.” Arguably his most compelling reason: “The core problem publishing solves - the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public - has stopped being a problem.”

Shirky’s arguments can be applied to the music industry as well. Although the recording and publishing industries are not identical, they have common concerns. With the emergence of mp3s, file sharing platforms, e-commerce, and seasonal waves of new social networks, many of the problems that the recording industry used to solve can be addressed with free to low-to-moderate-cost alternatives. In sum, society doesn’t need the recording industry (caveat: or at least, the same one from the 90s). What it needs is music. Yet, while the traditional corporate music industry may be dying, its decline has already forced change on the collective and individual level. In other words, organizations and professionals still need to figure out exactly what they can do to cope, even if that means entering new fields, or developing new models that have a risk of failing. Shirky’s essays do not present solutions but contain a number of ideas that, when carefully considered, suggest possible approaches that could be used in the current music market. Some of these ideas may be of particular use to smaller, more nimble organizations who can make changes without going against. Here are three possible approaches:

1. Consider using experience, rather than content, as a base unit

In general, the availability of the printed word on the internet has reduced the effectiveness of a paid content publishing model for publishers. Popular music’s paid content model is streamlined in comparison, but with the myriad of ways that music can be acquired online, many people are less inclined to pay for it. Perhaps, however, this is part of the problem: labels are trying to sell something that it is no longer difficult to obtain. Perhaps the new challenge is to develop multimedia experiences that feature music in conjunction with other experiences.

This approach may be daunting for some businesses, but there appears to be increasing acceptance of the idea. Consider Universal’s rumored Vevo project or, Rio Caereff’s statements at the Leadership Music Digital Summit, or Conduit Labs Founder Nabeel Hyatt’s statement that LoudCrowd, his company’s new social network is a destination for people who want to do more than listen to music, and that many music sites are passive and lack social interaction.

2. Reexamine inclusion and social networking

Many companies are aware of the power of social networking, but it is startling how many of them still don’t use it. On publishing models, Shirky writes that man of them “will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or greants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results.”

For both the music business and artists, inclusion of fans - beyond the traditional internship sense of the word - can prove to be effective. In a time where is a premium on organic marketing and superdistribution, including people in the release, distribution, and growth of your business or material appears to be winning out over telling your supporters what they should be doing. Talk town to your supporters and on a good day they may ignore you. On not as good a day, the results could be far worse.

3. Where possible, reassess your team’s identity, collective priorities, and views of each other’s views of the current market, and consider whether there are other services that you can provide

Of the three approaches, this one sounds the simplest, but is the most difficult to use in practice because it involves both perceptual and qualitative considerations. On the subject of revolution, Shirky writes that they “create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals.” When the market is not normal, it is easy to begin viewing pragmatists as out of touch and listening to fabulists who specialize in make their colleagues feel that everything is business as usual. This can become a serious problem for teams that are under pressure to earn revenue, are troubled about what the market has become, and do not feel that taking the time to reconsider their role is a worthy exercise. As an increasing number of companies, artists, and consumers seem to be turning away from the traditional model, holding onto the past looks to be a losing bet.