I don’t want your money. I would kinda like to borrow a little bit of your fame down the road. But mostly, I need your insight and creativity, if you’re willing to share a bit.
It doesn’t take a supergenius to figure out that there are a few terrible things wrong with the state of the music machine. Specifically:
- The average quality of what comes over the airwaves is horrible. It’s all the same 4/4 pop fluff, squeezed off in three minute turds for popular coprophagia. The fact remains that now matter how fancy your drive-thru window, it’s not possible to decent steak in the time it takes to get to the front of the line. That’s why we’re all eating hamburgers. That’s all there’s time for. The biggest thing I’ve enjoyed about your music, even the shorter pieces, is your ability to develop a theme. But it’s atypical, bordering on eclectic.
- Modern music isn’t made to send a message, or move people. It’s made to distribute in bulk and sell ads on the radio, the same way TV shows are made to sell commercials, and movies are made to put butts in the seats. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for pissing people off, or alienating elitists.
- Admittedly from the sidelines, it looks an awful lot like the RIAA is at war with music for the sake of greed and desperation.
- No one seems to be taking actual direct advantage of the internet or the trend toward openness and sharing that is resulting.
Here’s where you can help. You (and perhaps an agent?) have experience with music distribution channels, setting up shows, and the like. I don’t need to know the gory details of how a show is marketed or a CD is pressed, partly because a lot of that knowledge is outdated, and partly because expert can be hired to handle some of those things. I need a basic understanding of the broader strokes.
Here’s the idea.
An independent music label with a couple of big names (I mentioned borrowing your fame, didn’t I?) and a lot of smaller ones, whose distribution deal makes money for everybody the first time a CD is pressed or a concert ticket is sold. The kicker is this: the basics of the label’s agreement with the artist is posted on its website and in every CD in big bold letters.
The fundamental problem with the RIAA, and not using the internet, is that they’re terribly busy chasing dollars, and creating a huge overhead expense doing it, instead of enticing the dollars to come to them, and settling for fewer of them. Is a hundred thousand less really so bad if you don’t have to spend an extra million to get it?
Without knowing much at all about music as an industry, it looks like touring and merchandise are where the money is, and CD’s only stand to make money if there are a lot fewer of them as a value-added item for dedicated fans who want to own something tangible. Imagine if NIN CD’s only came out in numbered batches of 10000, with the music completely free for download? You could sign them all in a week or two, sell the last 9000 for $100 apiece, and auction off 1-1000 for $1000 each. That’s $190 per disc. Sell a collector’s edition at each concert, with a max of 100 for each concert.
No more CEO’s and marketing execs in the studio. No more lawyers telling me where to get my music. No more magazine publishers sending me a CD, telling me which songs I’m going to play most that week, and then demanding payment for it.
I submit to you that the only reason “the industry” is currently winning anything in this underhanded little crusade of theirs is that they are going almost entirely unopposed. I aim to change that.
Eric LaBrant
P.S. – I have copied this almost entirely to my blog at labrant.wordpress.com because it’s insightful and I wrote it. I sure as hell ought to be able to make use of it.
