4 ms·

Forgot to mention that the underlying concept was that it was more profitable, in the long run, to make a fan than it was to make a sale.

backprojection 15y ago
So why was this not more widely adopted? I mean, if you want to convince a corporation to adopt some business model, all yo have to do is show it's more profitable. Or is that naive?
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  How do you demonstrate that a fan is more profitable with something more than speculation? In a way that can still be charted in a PowerPoint for the suits to see?
  - omouse 15y ago
    You demonstrate the opposite; that pissing off fans is unprofitable. The music industry is no stranger to speculative charts and graphs; they use them all the time to justify their stance on piracy! "Potential revenue lost".
steve-howard 15y ago
The entire M.O. of the modern music industry is to shatter our preconceptions of just how short-sighted somebody can possibly be.
- Tuna-Fish 15y ago
  This is because the modern music industry honestly believes that it is going to go the way of a dodo. When you think that your sources of revenue are dying, it makes sense to try and extract as much as you can from them on the short term, despite the damage it does to them long term. Of course, this makes the prediction self-reinforcing.
  - Jgrubb 15y ago
    I would actually counter that it's not the music industry that believes it's going the way of the dodo. I'm in the music industry. Have been for almost 15 years now and have never worried for one second about my career. I'm a musician though. The people who are rightly worrying that their jobs are in peril are the suits (though often dressed in Tshirts and ballcaps) who bring less and less value in an age where experiments like Louis C.K.'s are a widely publicized and self-produced success. Disruption at it's finest and most liberating. You're basically right, I just want to reinforce that there are lots of us modern music industry types who couldn't be happier about "the situation". As a side note, I wonder how someone could plot the frequency of usage of auto-tune in the studio with record sales.
  - nettdata 15y ago
    One thing that most people don't realize is that a lot of the major record companies are in fact more manufacturing and distribution companies than anything. Here in Canada, EMI produces and delivers, via physical distribution, a huge number of CD's and DVD's. As soon as things "go digital", that goes away. I think that physical channel, more than anything, is what they've been trying to salvage, by staying away from digital.
    - joechip 15y ago
      I worked for one of the big 5/4/3 music companies and they are actually desperate for physical distribution to go away. Universal Music (the largest music company) sold its CD manufacturing plants a few years ago and all their focus is on digital exploitations. They are looking to the future and that rarely includes people buying CDs in retail stores. I can't stress how desperate they are to take advantage of the huge number of digital assets that they own. So, start-ups, don't be too afraid of them. If you have a way for them to make money they will be interested in you, just don't assume they are idiots. You may also want to start thinking about writing software to help them manage the millions of digital assets that they have - its not a simple problem - imagine the digital rights that needing tracking (for every type of exploitation in every territory), the royalties to be paid, the SOX auditing, the contracts, digital workflows, let alone the challenges with taking digital content and pushing it to a huge variety of downstream partners.
- digispaghetti 15y ago
  Shows like the X-Factor, and the endless tirade of crappy movies, prove this - big labels are essentially music/film factories that pump out the lowest common denominator, wrapped in a DRM bundle. Here we have someone who loves their craft, actually has some respect for the fans and proves that by willing to put trust in them, and it paid off. It's not going to work for everyone - if you're not established I think this model will be quite hard to work with at the moment, but it opens up spots for independent companies to step in and help provide the distribution channels needed (and we've already seen this work with music to some extent).

backprojection 15y ago

So why was this not more widely adopted? I mean, if you want to convince a corporation to adopt some business model, all yo have to do is show it's more profitable. Or is that naive?

sliverstorm 15y ago
How do you demonstrate that a fan is more profitable with something more than speculation? In a way that can still be charted in a PowerPoint for the suits to see?
- omouse 15y ago
  You demonstrate the opposite; that pissing off fans is unprofitable. The music industry is no stranger to speculative charts and graphs; they use them all the time to justify their stance on piracy! "Potential revenue lost".

steve-howard 15y ago

The entire M.O. of the modern music industry is to shatter our preconceptions of just how short-sighted somebody can possibly be.

Tuna-Fish 15y ago
This is because the modern music industry honestly believes that it is going to go the way of a dodo. When you think that your sources of revenue are dying, it makes sense to try and extract as much as you can from them on the short term, despite the damage it does to them long term. Of course, this makes the prediction self-reinforcing.
- Jgrubb 15y ago
  I would actually counter that it's not the music industry that believes it's going the way of the dodo. I'm in the music industry. Have been for almost 15 years now and have never worried for one second about my career. I'm a musician though. The people who are rightly worrying that their jobs are in peril are the suits (though often dressed in Tshirts and ballcaps) who bring less and less value in an age where experiments like Louis C.K.'s are a widely publicized and self-produced success. Disruption at it's finest and most liberating. You're basically right, I just want to reinforce that there are lots of us modern music industry types who couldn't be happier about "the situation". As a side note, I wonder how someone could plot the frequency of usage of auto-tune in the studio with record sales.
- nettdata 15y ago
  One thing that most people don't realize is that a lot of the major record companies are in fact more manufacturing and distribution companies than anything. Here in Canada, EMI produces and delivers, via physical distribution, a huge number of CD's and DVD's. As soon as things "go digital", that goes away. I think that physical channel, more than anything, is what they've been trying to salvage, by staying away from digital.
  - joechip 15y ago
    I worked for one of the big 5/4/3 music companies and they are actually desperate for physical distribution to go away. Universal Music (the largest music company) sold its CD manufacturing plants a few years ago and all their focus is on digital exploitations. They are looking to the future and that rarely includes people buying CDs in retail stores. I can't stress how desperate they are to take advantage of the huge number of digital assets that they own. So, start-ups, don't be too afraid of them. If you have a way for them to make money they will be interested in you, just don't assume they are idiots. You may also want to start thinking about writing software to help them manage the millions of digital assets that they have - its not a simple problem - imagine the digital rights that needing tracking (for every type of exploitation in every territory), the royalties to be paid, the SOX auditing, the contracts, digital workflows, let alone the challenges with taking digital content and pushing it to a huge variety of downstream partners.
digispaghetti 15y ago
Shows like the X-Factor, and the endless tirade of crappy movies, prove this - big labels are essentially music/film factories that pump out the lowest common denominator, wrapped in a DRM bundle. Here we have someone who loves their craft, actually has some respect for the fans and proves that by willing to put trust in them, and it paid off. It's not going to work for everyone - if you're not established I think this model will be quite hard to work with at the moment, but it opens up spots for independent companies to step in and help provide the distribution channels needed (and we've already seen this work with music to some extent).