I imagine this has already happened. There is no mystique with artists and bands anymore, as they're all posting their daily minutiae online like everyone else.
Streaming networks' emphasis on playlists in effect created a bottomless pit of fragmented content, much like what FB and IG do with algorithmic feeds. Songs are heard in isolation, jammed in between two similar-sounding songs that come before and after. It's hard to care about an artist when they're one small thumbnail amid a sea of other thumbnails queued up to play next.
It has led to a situation where artists make music that's playlist-friendly, because that's where they have a chance of being heard.
The same way in which people write words on the Internet to match what users type into search engines.
And, in fact, there are plenty of folk who go to live music events because they want to be at a live music event, not caring too much about who is performing. This is particularly true at the bottom end of the market: go to any show in a major city in a 200 - 400 cap venue and you'll have an audience of people many of whom are more interested in instagramming and being able to tell their friends that they "saw this really cool band in this totally underground venue".
It is an interesting question how much music itself can advance while still staying enjoyable by a significant number of people. For instance much of the popular music nowadays appears to be rather simplistic in terms of rhythms and harmony, and the innovation has been happening more on the timbre.
In classical music more modern approaches such as atonality never seemed to gather such large scale interest as the stuff from older masters. Time will show if e.g. microtonal music will make a breakthrough at some point, but it is hard since the new harmonies sound just 'wrong' until the listener learns them. (Of course for some native listeners the same could presumably be said about western music.)
I guess it's not a completely unreasonable guess to say that there are some optimal thresholds of complexity for a human brain and that's why simple regular clapping and singing in thirds and fifths will continue to evoke the strongest emotions for the majority of people.
People say musicians always made a pittance, has that substantially changed in the past 20 years?
Labels seem to be buying up old catalogs, so there's some truth in that.
His point about platforms not being effective in breaking new artists seems right though. I remember an article where Grizzly Bear was quoted as saying that without Radio play, you seem to hit a ceiling in terms of building a large, permanent fanbase.
My personal suspicion is that without repeated exposure to new music, done semi-forcefully through radio, it becomes much much harder and expensive to break new artists.
A lot of people hear this and say: “well, I never spent $10/mo on CDs”. Sure, but some people used to spend $100s/mo, and now they don’t need to. I’d bet that music superfans/whales were once a very important revenue stream, just as they are for alcohol, sports teams and mobile games (likely less extreme than games though).
This trends has been observed in some places, like in Japan, where pretty much most if not all of the top music are pretty much tie-ins. (Although, it could be that people know artist already, but I do start to see the case where it's other way around.)
1. Record labels will become more relevant than ever - by specialising and becoming experts in very specific niches they will be able to amplify artists better than ever, owning audiences and data to ensure that they become the "go to" for artists looking to succeed.
2. "Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Peloton, BandCamp" doesn't make a huge amount of sense. TikTok is already breaking artists - but it's well recognised in the industry that a break through on TikTok (for example) needs a lot of follow through. Young audiences might coalesce around a song briefly, but that doesn't necessarily translate into mainstream success. YouTube, Peloton and BandCamp are VERY different platforms indeed. Peloton success comes from curation - which requires access to curators, and labels remain (and probably will remain) the gatekeepers of these relationships. BandCamp is not really a platform that helps market artists - but is a destination for good indie marketing where the margin is far higher than other stores like Apple Music and Spotify.
3. This has been the case for years. One of the major labels did some consumer research 5 or 6 years ago polling a bunch of late millenials/Gen-Z on current hit songs - they all recognised the breakthrough hits but barely any recognised or even cared about the artists. This is amplified by lean back consumption driven by "music second" entertainment platforms like TikTok and playlist-driven platforms like Spotify where you can consume music without ever being aware of the artist.
4. The impact of "ancillary deals" is always overestimated in the industry. Sync (using music in adverts, or TV shows, or movies) is a hugely lucrative revenue stream for artists and songwriters - in that if you land a single sync deal, the payday can be huge: tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thing is, against total revenues in the industry they are a tiny tiny part - a few percent. So while they can be very lucrative and life changing at a micro level they are not so significant at a macro level. Other deals - brands deals, etc, rely on having an engaged audience who care about the artist, and care about what the artist does - which is at odds with the previous "no one cares about artists any more" position. So yes - for successful artists with a great marketing machine behind them and the right connections, brand endorsements and other "artist brand" related licensing activity can be very lucrative. But that requires a whole lot of things to fall into place.
5. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. I think a lot of the appeal in heritage ("dead") artists is that the audio is an artefact, and represents something that was capturing a moment in time. This is just my gut instinct, but I think that a deep fake vocal performance of Etta James in Cadillac Records would actually have had much less impact than Beyoncé's reinterpretation.
6. Holographic performances are already happening. James Brown performing holographically at weddings? Not a change. Artist estates are incredibly protective of the brands they represent, and the chances of this happening are almost zero.
7. I don't really know what to say about this, because it's really how music has been operating since day dot - influence, absorb, appropriate is a very common cycle in music, cf K Pop, Reggaeton and pretty much all the big "break through" genres.
8. Already a huge business. Merck Mercuriadis (erstwhile manager of, amongst others, Beyoncé and Guns'N'Roses) runs Hipgnosis Songs Fund a music publishing acquisitions fund, which is paying enormous multiples on revenue to acquire the publishing rights on famous songs. There are a whole host of other investment managers trying to do the same thing, but I think Hipgnosis is currently leading the pack because they are so well funded and are so well equipped to better exploit the rights, having a deep understanding of the ecosystems surrounding publishing. Not just old songs though - BIG songs is where the value is - things that people will still be listening to in 20 years.
9. The "huge portion" going to Apple, Google, etc is not such a huge portion really - the labels and publishers (though, less the publishers) ensured that the deals that were done to launch the "all you can eat" music services benefitted them. These services cannot operate without the catalogues represented by the majors (Universal, Sony, Warner) and so they still hold a lot of bargaining power. There's definitely a concern within the industry about Spotify's podcast play, because as Ted points out you're bringing in more audience but splitting the revenues thinner. However, if Spotify can end up owning the audio experience (I don't think they want to own video - they experimented, then pulled back) and become the gatekeepers for all "major league" audio content then that has huge value for musicians as well as other audio creators. Get them in with a big name podcast, then send them to a playlist; or, get them in with an artist, and drive revenues for a podcaster.
10. Innovations in music have always come from outside music. The length of CDs was (supposedly) determined by the length of a recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony favoured by the wife of one of the Japanese Sony execs working on the CD format. Saying "major decisions about distribution, publicity, curation, presentation, etc. will be determined by Silicon Valley and its offshoots" kind of ignores the fact that major decisions about distribution, publicity, curation, presentation, etc. have always been determined by external parties - whether radio & TV networks, magazines & newspapers, live promoters like Live Nation, or record labels themselves. Innovation coming from outside the music industry is actually a really positive thing, because the music industry is REALLY BAD at innovating, and even worse at spotting innovations that are going to disrupt them. How do you tackle this? Get more innovators into the music industry - and this is happening, albeit somewhat hamstrung by budgets.
11. Record labels will be increasingly sophisticated, with "playbooks" that they can spin up to guarantee audiences and exposure. They will be data aggregators and offer huge value to artists who fit within their model. The waffle about nepotism is just... bizarre.
12. Most execs I know are doing everything they can to diversify the revenue streams for the artists they work with. Great! Doesn't mean they want out of the music business though. In fact, most execs I know love the music business and stay working in music despite being able to make more money elsewhere. Some people are happy to sell soap powder - but the reason you make more money selling soap powder is no one really cares. Getting to work with musicians day in day out is what drives most people in music, and for many people that's worth more than money.
If I understand it correctly, that would mean targeting very specific audiences based on genre and similarity to other artists a user listens to?
That doesn't seem to be a core strength of current big 3 labels. Their approach is using radio and mass exposure, getting a top 10 hit etc. We should see a big disruption in their business then.
>This has been the case for years. One of the major labels did some consumer research 5 or 6 years ago polling a bunch of late millenials/Gen-Z on current hit songs - they all recognised the breakthrough hits but barely any recognised or even cared about the artists. This is amplified by lean back consumption driven by "music second" entertainment platforms like TikTok and playlist-driven platforms like Spotify where you can consume music without ever being aware of the artist.
I wonder if youtuber/tiktoker have replaced musicians as the personalities young people connect to.
Pewdiepie might be a bigger 'personality' than any new artist of the past many years.
Correct. Indie labels are beginning to realise this and the good ones are bringing huge returns - and in turn being bought up by the majors. The majors also do it very well - you just don’t always see it so clearly because they are able to invest so much more broadly. But all the majors have numerous sub-labels/imprints with their own experts. The biggest strength of the majors is that they are now aggregating so much audience data that they can jump on trends way in advance of wider awareness.
That doesn't seem to be a core strength of current big 3 labels. Their approach is using radio and mass exposure, getting a top 10 hit etc. We should see a big disruption in their business then.
Radio is a smaller part than it used to be. But this is definitely an advantage that the majors have. What gets you radio play?[!] Good numbers elsewhere. What gets you good numbers elsewhere? Great marketing. What gets you great marketing? Cash.
It’s really difficult for indies to compete on the “big media” arena. But that’s been the case for decades, so they don’t. Also - majors tend to go after “guaranteed mainstream” which is “major media” friendly. Indies don’t - but that’s not to say that there’s not a very healthy business to be made out there in the lesser known climes.
[!] You need great songs too, but that’s pretty easy for major labels because their A&R teams can pay lots of songwriters and producers to work up tracks and really polish them.
But yes, the model has been disrupted significantly over the past decade and as a result the majors have invested heavily in harnessing expertise from outside the traditional “music industry” pool of talent. If you’ve got consumer brand experience or have run data at a tech company you’re probably more likely to be in demand by a major record label than if you’ve got 10 years doing something inside of music.
I wonder if youtuber/tiktoker have replaced musicians as the personalities young people connect to.
In terms of name recognition I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I worked with some YouTubers - not A league, but significant - a few years back. They wanted to do a single. I was ASTOUNDED by the numbers they got. Most early recording artists could not come close. All their sales & streams were driven through YouTube & Instagram. To have a fanbase who care enough to go from one channel to another and actually transact is the stuff of dreams for most musicians. What was most astonishing was the promotion of sales to streams - sales were way way higher than a “normal” musical release.
There’s been heavy investment from music companies into influencer agencies - and it’s no mistake (as seemingly negatively referenced in this article) that musicians and their execs are looking to this space for inspiration.
>Strange Article.
Agree wholeheartedly. It is as if someone who dont know much about music industry writing about music industry. I clicked his Bio and nothing much shows up.
Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
