4 ms·

The current model doesn't work for most less popular artists. All the artists who came up through the system and are now superstars were less popular once, and

by jfruh 15y ago

The current model doesn't work for most less popular artists. All the artists who came up through the system and are now superstars were less popular once, and the promotional machinery had a big part in making them popular (and rich). This is sort of how I feel about the traditional publishing industry. The way it's worked traditionally is that can't quite tell which authors are going to be big sellers, so you take a chance on a bunch, and the more successful ones subsidize the less successful. Now the successful ones for obvious reasons resent this and can shift to a self-publishing model. The problem is they never would have gotten successful had some publisher taken that initial chance on them. Where's the next generation coming from?

_delirium 15y ago
An interesting angle is that the current model actually works quite well for the least popular artists: someone else pays for the cost of recording, usually at least a small advance, and tour, and if the record ends up selling nothing and the tour is a bust, the label eats the expenses. Such people would be quite a bit worse off if they paid for the recording/tour out of pocket and it went nowhere. The people who get screwed are those who do moderately well, where the record company takes most of the profits.
- wnight 15y ago
  But this is a symptom of one-size-fits-all solution the labels cram people into. Like VCs, they don't care at all about moderate success, anything less than phenomenal success is failure to them. So they'll burn your band/company out trying for unreasonable goals instead of helping you achieve whatever you can. Your band could have been poised to be a very successful mid-level act and have been mispositioned, because mid-level acts aren't hugely profitable, and thus seemed to be a failure in a market you weren't wanting to compete in. The small bands don't need a ton of financial support, especially these days. Recording a song can be done, professionally, for just a few thousand dollars and traveling to nearby concerts is pretty cheap. If you drop the idea of trying to sell an album in stores (payola!), and doing continent-wide tours, it's not all that expensive to spread your music to fans and enjoy a moderate return on investment.

by jfruh 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago

An interesting angle is that the current model actually works quite well for the least popular artists: someone else pays for the cost of recording, usually at least a small advance, and tour, and if the record ends up selling nothing and the tour is a bust, the label eats the expenses. Such people would be quite a bit worse off if they paid for the recording/tour out of pocket and it went nowhere. The people who get screwed are those who do moderately well, where the record company takes most of the profits.

wnight 15y ago
But this is a symptom of one-size-fits-all solution the labels cram people into. Like VCs, they don't care at all about moderate success, anything less than phenomenal success is failure to them. So they'll burn your band/company out trying for unreasonable goals instead of helping you achieve whatever you can. Your band could have been poised to be a very successful mid-level act and have been mispositioned, because mid-level acts aren't hugely profitable, and thus seemed to be a failure in a market you weren't wanting to compete in. The small bands don't need a ton of financial support, especially these days. Recording a song can be done, professionally, for just a few thousand dollars and traveling to nearby concerts is pretty cheap. If you drop the idea of trying to sell an album in stores (payola!), and doing continent-wide tours, it's not all that expensive to spread your music to fans and enjoy a moderate return on investment.