by, Nic Paton
Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.
- Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief , Wired Magazine.
This is a synopsis of 3 recent articles :
- "A small new future" by Alec Hanley Bemis in the LA Weekly, 08/04;
- "The Long Tail" in Wired Magazine, 10/04; and
- "Music’s Brighter Future" in the Economist, 11/04 on the state of the music industry, with a very useful background.
Up? Down? Lets cut through the noise
Most people acknowledge the sea-change in musical sales patterns through which we are passing. Broadly put we might say over 10 years, compression technologies such as mp3 have allowed music to assume a new portability, and file sharing networks have allowing unprecedented ease of access to this music.
So what have we been told about the current state of the music industry? For the most part the headline reads "Sales down due to piracy". But while the "majors" (being 4 Recording conglomerates traditionally representing 75% of the music market) have been telling the world how their business is collapsing, what’s happening underneath their decibel levels is a whole different story, an excited chattering which has gone largely unheard.
In actual fact, sales of music overall have increased in the period in question. This is not a fact that the majors would have us know. A case in point : Independent online music retailer CD Baby, who in October 2004 announced that they had paid over $10 million dollars directly to musicians for CDs sold worldwide through their online store at cdbaby.com, have almost doubled their income every year for the past six years.
This other "25%" of the market is known as the "Indie" sector. Meaning Independent of the conglomerates; these small and medium concerns are largely dedicated to music, and are not music divisions competing with, say, consumer electronics in the case of Sony.
The hit-oriented model in use by the mainstream industry is now on very shaky ground. Some observers stand by and observe with some smugness the devolution of these structures, while other actively set out to overthrow them. One such example is downhillbattle.org "Moving forward doesn't mean helping the corporate music industry stay alive, it means putting the majors out of their misery as soon as possible ... The result will be an explosion of diversity in mainstream music as the marketplace finally opens up to independent music. It's within reach and it's worth fighting for."
In 1999 the top 5 albums sold a combined 60 million copies, according to the LA Weekly. In 2004 only 1 record sold over 5 million. Most people conclude that therefore music is in terminal decline. This is because they have been conditioned to evaluate the state of the industry exclusively via the corporate-controlled media. So if sales are up, what is selling?
Enter the "Long Tail"
If we graphically represent available titles on Rhapsody (a streaming service owned by Real Networks) ranked by popularity against total plays and compare this against titles available at the largest traditional (physical) CD retailer, Wal-Mart, we find a very much extended range being made available to us.
To quote Wired Editor Chris Anderson, "People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture)".
So the shift in shape means that while big-sellers are shifting only a small proportion of what they may have done 5 years ago, there is a groundswell of small-selling artists coming into the market place.
Previewability is this years black
Online Piracy is undoubtedly a huge factor in the diminishing fortunes of major acts. However, there’s more to it than people getting music for free. What they are getting is according to Alec Hanley Bemis the most important revolution in music: Previewability.
People can now, more so than ever before, hear before they buy. They can make their choices based on what they like, not just a tightly controlled release campaign. People are starting to respond to good, compelling music and not just market place hype. Perhaps a major reason why major stars are selling less is not because people already have the music, maybe they heard it and didn’t want it.
The pessimist within me says that people are like sheep and fear freedom, and they want to be told what to listen to. The optimist however says that once people are given the freedom to choose that they start responding like humans and not just consumers, buying what they are told.
Whatever the case this much is certain – culturally speaking there can only be good consequences from previewability and the availability of the previously obscure. The question of conformity "Where does this fit in?" will generally defer to the question of taste "Do I like this?". No one, no matter how conservative or conventional, says no to something once they get the chance to hear it and like it.
Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest 500 Albums of all time, when viewed by year, decreased from 25 in the early 1970’s to just 5 in 2003. As skewed by issues of taste and time as this may be, it is an indicator that recent musical output has not matched these golden years for quality. The Economist proposes that this is due to the "creative dearth of formulaic music" and posits that this may be a factor in shrinking record sales.
The short-termism displayed by hit-seeking record companies has created a crisis of quality. Television phenomenon Pop Idol and its spin-offs have made it plain for all to see: Music and Musical acts can be manufactured.
Of the top 10 all time best selling albums, the most recent is Shania Twain's "Up", in 1997. This, according to The LA Weekly, "studiously avoided every condition of great art". It was "bio-engineered to exploit", available in three colours no less. The Green Mix was country, the Red Mix pop and Blue Mix Euro International. Remixing is an art form in itself, but this approach does not speak of artistic re-interpretation, but of callous cross market exploitation.
One of the features of this new shape is that charting music no longer has the monopoly on saleability. "Misses" are now on an equal footing with hits. Hit-driven economics dictate the 80-20 rule that 20% of releases need to be hits to maintain profitability. Chris Anderson believes that this figure should be adjusted. Radically. To 99-1.
With drastically reduced storage overheads online based companies, both purely digital like iTunes or Napster, or "hybrid" – online retailers selling physical CD’s like Amazon and CDBaby, companies can now afford to keep an inventory that vastly outstrips their bricks and mortar counterparts.
Via a global network, audiences which are too thinly spread to be of interest to traditional markets can now be aggregated into a meaningful and sizeable group. Niches can be fully embraced and highly dispersed buyers can be reached.
"You can’t compete with free" – this has been one of the cries of woe heard in a post-Napster world. But is it true? Possibly not. If you add a fair price (seen by many as something like 79c, way lower than the current 99c per track), ease of use via an exciting, value added interface, and consistent quality, I think you can beat "free".
Lusting after the LAB list
Possibly the most crucial piece in the jigsaw is that of findability. Artists can be available on the internet, on Digital Shopfronts, and still be ignored. There is no getting around the age old rule "If no one knows no one will buy". Publicity is as vital online as it is off. On the internet things do not sell themselves. However there are some important new manifestations of the grapevine. These find their origins in hypertext itself.
The notion that a document, or piece of information, can contain a link to other information with a simple mouse click, is now part of our lives. The Web quite naturally links together strands of interest and similarity. Search engine results are likewise a convenient list of resources linked to a query.
Where this becomes pertinent for the aspiring purveyor of musical wares, is in a place like Amazon, with their "Customers who bought this item also bought" feature, or iTunes LAB "Listeners Also Bought" lists, links to related artists’ pages. Not only is this mechanism convenient, it is highly intriguing as well.
This is an exciting time to be making and listening to music. There is no secret recipe for success, and most of the normal rules of preparation, production, live performance and publicity are as they always were. But on a personal note, at the end of 2004, I have at along last a chance to make some music that might reach a significant number of people around the world. See my article "3 things I have learned in 3 years" (browse to the "articles" menu) for more.
Knowing that there is a niche audience out there gives my effort considerable meaning, and lends solace for those decades spent in the wilderness created by a culture which for the narrowest of commercial reasons would not tolerate the outsider.
Allow me to end by quoting Chris Anderson:
"The cultural benefit of all of this is much more diversity, reversing the blanding effects of a century of distribution scarcity and ending the tyranny of the hit."
Nic Paton is an independent singer-songwriter who launched his debut album "The middle of it All" in 2004, largely via his website.
Reprinted from Nic Paton's Website
www.nicpaton.com
A new musical optimism ©2004 Nic Paton & The Virtually Acoustic Club
No part of this work may be reproduced or linked to without the permission of the copyright owners