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Record labels dig their own grave, and the shovel is called TikTok
- patchtopic 4y agothere is an alternative, speaking as someone who purchases piles of music in lossless format from bandcamp and similar sites, from musicians who could not five a f*ck about tiktok or other lame surveillance capitalism platforms.
- skinnymuch 4y agoI’d love my fav indie bands to trend on tiktok. I want them to have more money. Tho yeah they aren’t in the business of caring about tiktok
- jokoon 4y agoFor the anecdote I discovered a lot of music by browsing tiktoks posted on reddit. There's even a bot you can summon that can identify a song like shazam does.
- itburnswheniit 4y agoWait...you mean the Chinese aggregator?
- mr_toad 4y agoI don’t get why artists even use record labels anymore. Is there something that Facebook/YouTube/iTunes etc doesn’t provide?
- jseban 4y agoYes, a team of professional composers who call themselves "producers" who will "make suggestions" for how to change your songs from having potential, to being actually high quality music.
- theflyinghorse 4y agoUpfront funding to get you going. Recording, traveling, promoting all costs money. We're getting better with cheaper tools, and cheaper promotion platforms (tiktok and all), but still there is a need for capital
- dragontamer 4y ago>> The singer Halsey put up a TikTok last week complaining about her label’s obsession with TikTok. “I have a song I love I wanna release ASAP,” she told fans on the platform, “but my record label won’t let me. I’ve been in this industry for eight years and I’ve sold over 165 million records, and my record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok.” ------- The article is talking about how Record Labels are no longer doing upfront funding. The artist has to become a viral sensation on TikTok __BEFORE__ the record labels put up the money for them.
- octodog 4y agoThat doesn't make sense. Halsey is already signed. She doesn't need the capital or really even the label any more. But at one point she did - so she signed away those rights and the record label is holding it over her right now.
- ushakov 4y agoOliver Tree told the same thing on a number of podcasts on YouTube they’re not gonna let him make an album unless he reaches a million followers on instagram and then changed this number to 6 million he just accidentally made a hit song “Life goes on” and only then was he allowed to make the next album
- wombatpm 4y agoAuthenticity. Once you can fake that you’ll really go places
- latchkey 4y agoIt is a lot more complex than it seems from the outside. If you want to play a live show somewhere big (reach the most fans, sell merch and earn the big bucks), Live Nation owns the venue. Live Nation is Clear Channel and Ticket Master. Live Nation also owns radio, where your show would be advertised. The big labels all have deals with Live Nation. It is all super super shady.
- KevinGlass 4y agoIf you're a popular enough artist you can still get to big venues, even on important dates. Vulfpeck, an independent funk band, played a sold out show at Madison Square Garden with no label and no manager and that was in 2019. Things are slowly changing.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoWho wants to build a competitor?
- s5300 4y agoThe entity you’re trying to compete against has enough money & reach to have your body dissolved in acid & dumped in the Mariana Trench within a few hours if they so feel. The incentive to do so as well. If you’re not already part of the family, your chances of successfully competing against is nil
- latchkey 4y agoCompetitor to what, Live Nation? It is a wide range of different businesses. There is nothing to compete with since you're competing with everything. Any time something infringes on one of their areas, they just buy it or put it out of business. Them being a global company makes it impossible to even get started. Case in point, check out Insomniac... Insomniac produces some of the most innovative, immersive music festivals and events in the world. Enhanced by state-of-the-art lighting, pyrotechnics and sound design, large-scale art installations, theatrical performers and next generation special effects, our events captivate the senses and inspire a unique level of fan interaction. The quality of the Headliner experience is our top priority. Insomniac produces 10,000 concerts, club nights and festivals for seven million attendees annually across the globe. Since its inception, Insomniac's events have taken place in 13 countries across five continents. The company's premiere annual event, Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas, is the world’s largest dance music festival and attracts more than 525,000 fans over three days. The company was founded by Pasquale Rotella and has been based in Los Angeles since it was formed in 1993. Little do they tell you... "In 2013, Insomniac entered into a creative partnership with Live Nation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomniac_(promoter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomniac_(promoter) Such a close creative partnership that LN hosts the jobs page for Insomniac... for example... https://livenation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/InsomniacExternalSite/job/Calabasas-CA-USA/Insomniac---Software-Engineer_JR-42798-3 https://livenation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/InsomniacExternalSi... If your record label isn't in cahoots with these guys, you aren't playing anywhere public. There is nothing that YouTube and TikTok can do to help you there...
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- VWWHFSfQ 4y agoFacebook/YouTube/iTunes doesn't give your band a $200,000 advance and fund a tour schedule across the USA eastern seaboard.
- batiudrami 4y agoPerhaps they should rebrand to “angel investors”
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoRecord labels don't do that either unless you're already massively successful.
- ruuda 4y agoRenting a studio, musicians, engineers, etc.
- imstate 4y agoYes, - Marketing - Industry Connections - Cashflow The majority of the modern Musician's job is marketing through social media. A label helps to alleviate that burden.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoI hate to parse words but the article isn't about artists. It's about pop stars. Corporate puppets. Literally, tools of the trade. Who gets the massive streams for the next release? It doesn't matter to label. That's the nature of pop music. There's always the next big thing right behind the current big thing, which pushed out what is not the last big thing. Artists? Artists don't play these type of games.
- skinnymuch 4y agoEdit: now that I skimmed the article, I overall agree with you.
- bsder 4y agoMoney. It's neat that your song went viral on TikTok, but that didn't get you any dosh. So, your band just went mega-viral and you need to do a tour. How do you get Ticketmaster to call you back so you can book venues bigger than 100 people? "I just want to release songs" is great. Just release songs. Easy. Ah, but I see you want to release songs and actually not starve while doing so. That's a completely different problem. So, what are you willing to trade for that?
- alar44 4y agoYou realize you can't just show up to a big venue with your gear and start playing right? It's like wondering why famousactor$ doesn't just make his own movies. Behind every artist there's like 1000 people behind the scenes making it all work.
- shellfishgene 4y agoI mean, it even goes the other way: I recently talked to someone who works for an "influencer agency", not sure what the proper term is. They sign up YouTube creators who have done everything themselves and became quite successful on their own. But they apparenlty see value in the agency managing their ad contracts, advising with video production, doing promotion, finding new topics to cover, and give them a good cut of their revenue. Sure, they probably don't sign over the rights to their content (or do they?), but it's a similar arrangement I think.
- nikanj 4y agoThe label pays (via cash, favors, festival tickets, etc) for Spotify / radio stations / ads / tv-shows etc etc to play your song. Discoverability is a huge issue, more songs get made every year. How do you recon the ”Hot new artists” list on Spotify is created? There’s a ton of deals, payments and polics behind it - and getting placed on a list can make/break a career.
- anm89 4y agoI think I'm just an old guy at this point who doesn't get it but what is so different between tik tok, youtube, bandcamp etc? Can't you view popularity metrics on all of these platforms? Why are they so focused on this one platform?
- bombcar 4y agoTikTok is where the teens are apparently, and so they want to capitalize on that. Whether it actually coverts to dollars may remain to be seen.
- pessimizer 4y agoBut judging by the 90s-00s Disney Channel stars we're swamped with now, I'd say that all indicators point to yes.
- sidlls 4y agoBecause TikTok is mainly (not "only", just "mainly") about people watching short-form content like stupid dancing/music memes, "edgy" political commentary, "challenges" and other low-quality garbage content consumed primarily by teens since humans left trees. And teens are the primary target audience for a certain segment of the music industry.
- 0des 4y agoJust call it what it is, they're Blipverts
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoTikTok is another level of content recommendation that's unmatched by other platforms. Partially due to the short form content that allows TikTok to learn preferences quickly. TikTok has session times almost as long as Facebook which means users are watching a lot of videos. I imagine this allows users to be targeted very effectively and that's why TikTok is talked about a lot as a platform that makes random stuff go viral quickly.
- AlbertCory 4y agoWhen I read this, I was trying to map "record labels" and "music" onto "big 5 publishers" and "books." The Big 5 are not quite there yet, but you can almost feel it gestating in the minds of those executives: "publish your book yourself, and if it's a hit, then we'll reprint it and do your next one." In the other article by Ted Gioia (the talk with Rick Beato), Ted said, back in the old days, half the people in the record business were Mafia, and Rick said "literally Mafia." I don't think ethical standards in the music industry have risen materially since then.
- BMc2020 4y agoRicks youtube video with Brian May was so good I sent it to friends. Try to find him doing one of your favorite songs if you want to hear stuff like "here they go from an F sharp into a diminished 7th and that shouldn't work but they make it work." I know nothing about music but I love to hear master craftsmen, no matter the craft, talk about their trade and not dumb it down.
- damontal 4y agoYou might like McCartney 321 on Hulu. He basically sits at a sound board with Rick Rubin isolating tracks and talking about how the songs came together.
- sumy23 4y ago
- chasil 4y agoIn the age of internet virality, who would accept an offer from a promoter that demands >80% of your profit? Unless you are acting for reasons of charity, the answer is no.
- scarface74 4y agoA popular “musician” is just a front person for an entire organization of producers, videographers, lawyers, promoters, that can get you into venues, choreographers etc. It still takes a lot to produce a hit and the money is still made from concerts https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/11/137705590/the-friday-podcast-manufacturing-the-song-of-the-summer https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/11/137705590/the-...
- hluska 4y agoIt sounds like there's an ML based way to get rid of A&R reps and that labels would be interested in it. If someone rolls with this and makes A&R obsolete, you've likely done a good thing for the music industry.
- sorenjan 4y agoI saw a video about this on Youtube just a few days ago: "We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral", by Vox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1m-KgEpoow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1m-KgEpoow
- ushakov 4y agoif you want to learn more about how music business works for artists, here’s a famous 1993 piece “The Problem with Music” https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
- spread_love 4y agoThis article mentions why this model (and your article) is quickly becoming outdated: > record labels who sign TikTok stars initially demanded complete ownership of all the master recordings, and tried to keep 85% of future revenues. [Musicians] wouldn’t even collect the paltry 15% until they paid off their advance. > but TikTok influencers now have so many labels chasing after them, they can play them off against each other [...] labels are now offering a 50/50 sharing arrangement, while also agreeing to return ownership of the masters to the artists at some later date
- ushakov 4y agothe model won’t disappear any time soon do you think people really care about TikTok artists? one example i’m familiar with are the Island Boys they’ve got their 15 minutes of fame, but no more than that TikTok audience is practically trained to receive a new dose of serotonin on every swipe and if they’re seeing the same person again, that ain’t gonna do it
- hammyhavoc 4y agoObviously you underestimate the ability of teen demographics to become obsessive and form a long-term fandom. See K-pop.
- ushakov 4y agoK-pop industry is literally a star factory K-pop, like pop is only popular because it’s forcefully shoved down your throat by marketeers who’s goal is to recoup the investments for the hit factory obsessive teens is merely the result of marketing efforts this is what happens when capitalism takes over culture
- majormajor 4y agoInterestingly, labels playing games about releasing albums is an old trick for various old reasons too. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/apr/15/artists-held-hostage-labels https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/apr/15/arti... https://www.buzzfeed.com/azafar/what-happens-when-your-favorite-artist-is-legally-unable-to https://www.buzzfeed.com/azafar/what-happens-when-your-favor... for a couple old references A change in negotiation power seems like a good evolution of the industry for anyone but record industry execs. But this "record industry is committing suicide" story that the software world likes to read about is even older than the "hollywood is committing suicide" story, since Napster was just music to start with. And yet here we are. Other than the shift in the cut (which is great!), what's going to change? There's still going to be centralization around platforms (TikTok, Spotify, radio) and a need for a partner for things like touring and marketing etc. So will the new boss look that different than the old boss?
- notyourwork 4y agoIts only dragging on because record labels have some of these mega mainstream artists by the balls. As contracts die, as we see more independents rise to the top mainstream record labels will die. It's just going to be slow like cable companies. Inevitable but undoubtedly.
- throwaway_1928 4y agoIf artists negotiated like Drake, record labels would face a bleak future. https://musically.com/2020/07/20/steve-stoute-if-drake-goes-independent-the-music-business-is-over/ https://musically.com/2020/07/20/steve-stoute-if-drake-goes-...
- winternett 4y agoThat video is advertising a digital distribution service which is owned by a well known record label exec. The sales figures are quite exaggerated... 99% of artists never sell anywhere near the volume that Drake does. I think it's important for artists to call out and quit pushing the mostly false profit models that the industry keeps pushing to put artists on a pedestal and to keep artists worshiping the big music industry machine. If Russ was making $1m a week, he would not be doing self-produced promotional videos and tiktok posts about how to succeed in music. Even $1m a week for a well known music artist is not realistic in a good economy when Spotify only pays a fraction of a penny per play.
- magicroot75 4y agoSocialedia algorithms are the perfect testing ground for product:market fit. This is pretty old news.
- paulpauper 4y agoThese tiktok people should just do youtube math videos and do podcasts in the style of lex fridman. I am not joking...there is so much ad rev from those niches. Insanely high CPM + product placement for VPNs. 3 blue 1 brown videos get as many view as even pop culture/mainstream stuff.
- pabs3 4y agoSounds like TikTok/YouTube/etc now has the same role as a music label had before; providing access to an audience.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoThis 100% they are new gatekeepers and far richer.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoThey make money of engagement, and have more leverage on smaller players. So the idea that they want to "gatekeep" instead of promote new artists with engaging content is suspect.
- Manheim 4y agoEven though TikTok is a new platform the phenomena this article describe isn't new. It can also be attributed to other publisher industries than music, i.e. book publishing. Imagine you where a startup and you go to a VC. The VC tells you that they want to invest. However, they want full ownership of your IP, they want their investment money repaid by taking 100% of your startup's earnings before the company can use any profits (read; It must be entered as an expense in the accounts), and you are not allowed to take out any personal salery until they have their money back. After they have gotten their initial investment money repaid, they want 85% of all profits forever. In return they will maybe try - and this is important - they will MAYBE try to help you succeed. Basically you must accept that you need to do all the lifting, not only the heavy lifting but all lifting. Would you take their investment money? Probably not. These terms are ridiculous. But artists, writers and other creative producers of their own content have had to live with these kind of terms since forever. The reason has been that the publishers controll the market. They own or control the distribution, and they have the market budgets and connections (often even ownership) to get access to media, whether it is the radio or TV shows that promote your content through talk shows and airplay, or it is the magazines that write about you and your product. Almost no content on the commercial media platforms are there by chance or because an editor found them interesting. It's a market in play. We might think (and maybe hope) that social media and different self publishing platforms will change this, but the market and industry has gone from too little distribution to too much distribution. There is so much content put out into the market every day that it it is next to impossible to get enough attention to your product. On top of this the attention span on platforms like TikTok is very short. Warhols' 15 minutes is today 15 seconds. I do not believe we will see the end of publishers like record labels. We will see a shift in their role, and maybe in power distribution among the different players in the market. However, so far it seems like it is the media companies that take all the profit nowadays. Spotify is an excellent example of this, but also "older platforms" like YouTube.
- SyzygistSix 4y ago>But artists, writers and other creative producers of their own content have had to live with these kind of terms since forever. The reason has been that the publishers control the market. People accept these terms but others do not. Independent artists and collectives exist. Publishers control the fame and stardom market. They do not control the entire creative market.
- Barrin92 4y agoThis is a much observed secular trend as Ted Gioia points out, tech platforms are disintermediators, Ben Thompson has been writing about it for ages. Platforms give creators the possibility to directly interact with consumers and it's the traditional distributors who are getting canned. In some cases this has arguably significant downsides, say in the news industry where traditional outlets have many social functions that platform owners don't feel obligated to provide, but honestly record labels with their at times mafia like behavior shaking young artists down have it coming.
- wardedVibe 4y agoThis makes me wonder to what degree will firms in general start dissolving as we move more and more into digital markets.
- gilrain 4y ago> give creators the possibility to directly interact with consumers and it's the traditional distributors who are getting canned If this is true, why are the distributors making bank while the (median) creators are barely scraping by? Your ideal doesn’t match reality.
- infinitezest 4y agoMy guess is that this has to do with volume. If you are a platform and you take a piece of every single artist's income then you're going to make a lot more money than the individual artists.
- april_22 4y agoI think web3 will disprupt a lot too. Whole new streaming services based on the Blockchain will evolve, with easier distribution and payment.
- iostream24 4y agoHahahahaha I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn, all offers considered
- wvh 4y agoI don't want the bridge, but I'd pay good money for a unique picture of it!
- redivysoft 4y agoI need to start a parody 'religion' of you chaps but be about another data structure. Maybe one about tries, those are cool
- t_mann 4y agoThe only objection I have with this article is the implied notion that record labels going out of business because they are no longer needed would be a bad thing. Not that I like the idea of TikTok being their de facto successor, but the music industry has a dark history of abusing young artists in various ways that it has never really faced up to.
- Coolerbythelake 4y agoBeing a musician and audio engineer right now for 30 years, I see all this and I simply shake my head. I've long given up the hopes of monetary success for my music. One thing that remains is the energy exchange between an artist and the audience in a live setting. If you love music and you are not an emotional robot you know what I am talking about. Software can't replicate that and the artistry in the performer knows how to heighten and transmit content in that moment. This act of creating and adapting to the feedback and pushing energy back and forth is the only reason I'm still playing music. Computers don't do that. Tik tok doesn't do that in 30 seconds. Pop music has been reduced to the equivalent of taking a shit and a lot of people don't know it.
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- dannyw 4y agoHigh fidelity digital is nearly indistinguishable from analog.
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- croon 4y agoI'm not sure what this means. There is an incredible amount of music created digitally and transmitted digitally that is anything but cold and thin, whatever that means. If my ear can't tell the difference, there is no emotional or practical difference as a listener. (I've been playing acoustic guitar for 30 years and enjoy almost all genres of music if relevant)
- cultartawayyyi 4y agoProbably someone who really likes tube amps. Many audiophiles scoff at "digital" music, i.e. audio that is amplified with silicon transistors. Modern transistors are very fast, so noise that gets through the filters typically sounded like sharp pops and hisses. With older (and slower to respond) analog technologies, unwanted noise gets smoothed into more pleasing hums and modulations. These days, there are excellent affordable digital options like the O2 amp. But it would be a boring world if we were all the same.
- shrimpx 4y agoGreat article, and eye-opening. Related tangent: VCs are trending in the same direction. Even YC increasingly wants to “see more” all the time before funding. That’s what they tell founders who are rejected in the interview phase. Come back with users, revenue — proof of a market. The more traction, the higher the chances you’ll get in next time. Simultaneously, the more traction you have, the less incentive to give YC 7%. It seems they’re trading one type of risk for another: the risk that promising founders with little traction will fail vs. the risk that promising founders with traction will not apply again. It doesn’t seem at all clear which type of risk is “riskier”. Edit: An additional, obvious type of risk: Promising founders who are running out of personal runway will get a job and not apply again.
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- langsoul-com 4y agoI think the larger and larger costs means they they don't want to take on unnecessary risks. The expectation of return is higher than ever, thus, as VC managing other people's money, they have no choice but to comply. Fund what already has an a market and traction. So, like you said, VC are digging their own grave, but I reckon they know it and can't do a damned thing about it.
- bertylicious 4y agoWhile I agree that legacy media is very slowly killing itself, I'm very much less optimistic about it, because I don't buy into that brave new world of independent artists. The author totally ignores their dependency on the platforms they release their art on. Those platforms more often than not demand constant care and effort in order to build and maintain an audience the artists can live off. Gone are the days where a band retreated into hiding to work on a new album while the label had their backs. If you stop feeding whatever opaque algorithm the platform runs on, you'll just slowly disappear. Worst case is that artists are forced to release nonsense because it's faster to produce. Of course, that exact same problem always existed. But I think it's not hard to see how algorithm-driven platforms push this trend to the extreme. And good luck appealing to Google when some bot decides to demonetize your videos.
- blablablerg 4y agoAn import distinction to make is that this is about the (major) record labels in pop music. The vast majority of (independent) record labels are small companies, that focus on the music. They won't make you dirty rich or famous, but if your music is good they will publish and make your music available to their respective scene.It is not an easy path, it requires a lot of commitment and you have to very talented, but you can still become a professional artist that way. If it is just about being famous and a commercial success, well then those 'artists' and record labels get what they deserve with this tiktok bs.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoI suspect the problem with music (and writing, and art in general, really) is that there are way more talented musicians than there is demand for music. A few get lucky and hit the big time, and everybody fights over how to get a piece of the money generated. The great majority of musicians will never be able to make a living at it.
- tmaly 4y agoI think Seth Godin describes this as permissionless marketing. I have been experimenting with Tiktok and it is quite a feeling to put yourself out there.
- rednerrus 4y agoIsn't Macklemore the poster boy for this and didn't he break out 7 years before tiktok?
- SergeAx 4y agoWhy do we need record labels today, exactly? We don't have to spend tons of money on recording studios and equipment, on producing master record, on replication, logistic from factories to music shops. Music is just to be recorded on $100 mic, mixed on $1000 laptop and uploaded to several streaming services, that's all.