What do bands and record labels do now? By Áine Gilligan
The
last decade has borne witness to a digital revolution
that has left many of us scratching our foggy noggins thinking “huh?”
The old
record-churning music industry, in particular, needs a bigger face-lift
than
Joan Rivers ever will.
New media such as MySpace, YouTube, Spotify, and Slicethepie
have come flooding in, and alongside person-to-person filesharing,
threaten to
wash away the very foundations of the music industry. Can these new
sites create a sustainable future for artists
or do we still need to keep the big labels watertight? Music
commentators,
managers and musicians immediately become divided whenever this
question is
posed.
Music correspondent and deputy
editor of the Irish Daily Star on Sunday, Paul Mallon, is among those
who view
the Internet as a springboard of opportunity. “The
music industry has no choice but to embrace the digital
age. By the mid-2000s people were sick of paying €20 for a CD and maybe
only
getting a few tracks they liked. What legal sites like iTunes and
Spotify have
done now is provide a guarantee of audio quality for the consumer,
without fear
of computer viruses or the piracy police bursting through your door.”
Spotify, in particular, has experienced huge popularity
since its birth in Sweden in 2006. It allows users to listen to a vast
database
of top quality music. Unlike its illegal counterparts however, it
packages the
music in a nice, neat, legal bow by putting advertising breaks between
tracks.
Mallon says, “The success — or failure — of start-ups such
as Spotify is of huge interest to all new media industries and the
music
business.” The value of Spotify has yet to be understood, he
adds;
“a recent
report in a Swedish newspaper, called Expressen, claimed that one
million plays
of her hit, Pokerface, in Sweden alone earned Lady Gaga a meagre $167.
That’s a
bit scary.”
The concept of fan-funding
websites for artists has also
become increasingly popular. Slicethepie is one such example
where fans
invest in their favourite artists in the hope that the band will secure
the
£15,000 target to record and release an album. The site’s
Communications
Manager, Grace Hammond, says it “was launched in 2007 and since then
the site
has seen 28 artists raise finance (between them over £450,000) and over
100,000
users sign up to the site to rate, review and invest in artists.” Grace
claims
that the system acts as a “really powerful filter” as “music fans get
paid to
review and rate tracks uploaded by artists. We then only put forward
the top 2%
of artists for financing.”
Ultimately the concept still relies on the major labels that
power the traditional music industry model. The supreme goal for artists
and investors on the site seems
to be to get a record label. She states “one of our financed artists
(Scars on
45) recently signed to Atlantic Records (Warner) in the US - a great
achievement for both the band and the fans that had invested in them on
Slicethepie. Fan-funding enables smaller
acts with a following to build their career and have control and
flexibility
over what they do,” but “major labels still provide big marketing
budgets which
are needed for some acts.”
Mallon is an advocate of bands producing their own music and
sees the Internet as a major marketing tool in itself. “This is an
amazing
thing for musicians. Studio quality software has meant that bands don’t
have to
save thousands for a couple of days in a run-down recording studio with
some
hungover, has-been engineer who doesn’t give a feck. As a distribution
tool for
musicians, the Internet is priceless. There’s no guarantee of the
quality of
the tracks, but the reach is endless.”
Hugh Rodgers is the manager of the Internet
sensation/phenomenon (however you want to put it) that is Crystal
Swing. He
disagrees with Paul when he says: “the price of making a CD now is so
expensive
it’s unreal and you just haven’t much money coming back from it, but
you have
to have the product there. Downloading; it’s a two-way thing. It’s a
great way
of getting the music around the world, but on the downside of it,
there’s the
artists, who would actually perform the music, would get very little in
return.”
However, he has to admit
that if Crystal Swing’s video
“hadn’t gone on YouTube this wouldn’t have happened.”
The musicians are a product of the digital age. “It spread a
little bit like wildfire. I think there’s different sites up there at
the
moment… but I think if you added them all up there’s well over a
million
there.” He does agree that it has the potential for music to reach a
“world
wide audience. If you went back a few years ago you wouldn’t have a lot
of this
type of stuff and you were dealing with faxes and telephones and even
to get
airplay on radio stations (was hard).”
Hugh thinks the only way to make money now is through
touring. Paul agrees saying, “bands will have to tour their arses off
as we’ve
seen in Ireland in the last few years. Whereas before, a band could
make an
album, do a tour then take a year to record their follow-up, these days
the
same acts are back every summer; The Killers, Kings of Leon, Coldplay.
They’re
all trying to make as much while they can.”
Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry has a very relaxed
and alternative answer to this dilemma. The artist pioneered the
pay-what-you-want approach to music long before Radiohead made it
famous.
She set up a very unique
payment system on her website.
Customers can choose to receive Jane’s music as an ‘artist gift’, which
is free
and legal. They can also pay the market price for it or else pay a
‘self-determined’ amount.
She describes this business model more as a lifestyle
choice saying, “I try to create a world that I like to live in.” She
says that
she can sleep easy at night by using this system. The artist does sometimes
receive more than the market value
for her tracks but she does admit that the solution also has its flaws.
“It doesn’t work for everyone,”
she says. Jane is lucky to
have loyal fans that would feel guilty if they didn’t pay for her
music. The
same model might not work for the likes of Pete Doherty for example.
If these four individuals have anything in common it is the
mutual consensus that there is hope for artists. The Internet has the
potential
to be profitable for musicians if it is harnessed in the right way.
A PRS (Performing Right
Society) report states,
“songwriters, composers and music publishers received more money in
royalties
in 2009 than 2008 for digital music as the growth in digital music
sales offset
the decline in traditional CD and DVD formats.”
However, it’s evident that the system still cannot survive
on its own without major labels powering the path forward. Artists are as dependent on the
traditional model as they
are on bright, new media. If this is the case, let’s just hope the
major labels
can stay afloat a while longer to support artists in these uncertain
times.
ainegilligan@hotmail.co.uk
