Musicians Online Are Playing In Glass Stadiums With Billions Of Empty Seats
Guest post by Adam Steele, co-founder of Merge.fm, an online platform for musicians to offer their music to fans as engaging online events. Adam shared with us this clever piece that presents a concrete analogy between musicians and the Internet.
Picture an enormous concert stadium that is so big it can hold everyone. Literally there is a seat for every single person in the world. Now imagine this stadium is made entirely of glass and it also happens to have an open-roof.
There you are, up on stage with your band performing your most mind-blowing songs. When you look out, you see countless empty seats, behind which is an endless sea of people goofing around outside your stadium’s glass walls. Once in a while someone glances at you and maybe even listens for a bit. But then they quickly go back to texting their friends or stuffing that sandwich back in their mouth as they disappear into the crowd.
After a couple songs, someone from your crew walks over to you and says, “Look at all those people! You should sell them digital photos of your concerts.”
“That’s a ridiculous idea,” you reply. “Everyone has a hi-def camera phone connected to Facebook.”
But you trust this person, so you do it anyway. Sure one or two people who really like you buy some. But you soon realize that you can’t sell very many.
Then this same person says, “Okay… well, let’s add artistic effects to the photos so more people will buy them.”
So you give it a shot and sell one or two more to people with crappy cameras. But in the end you can’t sell very many no matter what other fancy features you add. Your point of value is the photos and once they are out there, everyone just shares them with the world instantly. Not many people think they’re worth anything.
This is really starting to make you angry, so you demand, “Silence! This is all illegal… they’re my concert photos… I own them!”
“Well, that’s true,” he replies. “But we can’t stop people from doing that. And it’s turning out that even the people that don’t want to be illegal can see the photos whenever they want. They just have to visit the art galleries that we allowed to show your photos in exchange for a cut of the revenue. Not to mention, everyone can look at you whenever they want legally and for free from outside your glass stadium.”
After you land a haymaker in that idiot’s face and you’re about to bring on the rage, you notice something.
“Look at all those empty seats! We’ve got an enormous concert stadium here. Why don’t we try to do something amazing on stage and then sell tickets?”
You think to yourself, “This sounds a little more promising. I like doing amazing things.”
But then someone else from your crew replies, “Well, if you just play a regular concert, who is going to buy a ticket when they can all just sit outside your glass stadium and watch from a distance?”
“Hmmm…exactly,” you reply. “Not very many people will buy a ticket if we’re selling a regular old concert, because they can watch a video of our concert (or get photos) whenever they want for free. We have to make it an event where the value is getting up close and personal with a chance to interact and engage.”
“What kind of events do that?”
“People who make it to the front need to get something special compared to the people who just watch from outside our glass walls. We could bring people on stage and involve them in our performance. We could even improvise a personalized song for one lucky fan while they’re up there. Or maybe we could let our fans that are musicians play with us and show off their own ideas.”
“How about inviting them to join your songwriting sessions later on,” someone suggests.
“Yes!” you reply. “I bet there are lots of events that will work in our enormous glass stadium just like regular concerts worked so well in our good old cement stadium.”
“But won’t people just pirate that stuff like they did your photos?”
“It doesn’t seem like people could pirate that type of value,” you propose. “The value seems to be in being there in the moment and experiencing it. And if they do copy and share parts of it, that’s probably a good thing because they are showing their friends how awesome our events are… which will sell more tickets for future events. The more sharing the better!”
Just as you’re starting to get excited about this, that first idiot wakes up from his punishing knockout and declares, “let’s try putting some flashing lights on those concert photos.”
–Adam Steele, co-founder of Merge.fm
But this is just silly.
Offering people involvement in what you do won’t increase interest in your music. If the point of this is ‘what can I offer that can’t be pirated’, then yeah, I guess, value added stuff, woo. But it’s not gonna bring anyone in the door unless your music is actually good. By this analogy, all the musicians are in their own stadiums like a street market, yelling to the passers by about how great their stuff is – so you have to set yourself out by working hard at making great music. That will always be the most important factor.
Agreed that making great music is always most important. But I think the point is to demonstrate what kinds of things you can successfully sell to people given the massive size and sharing on the internet. This is not about increasing interest. It’s about capitalizing on the interest you already have in a way that uses the scale of the internet to your advantage, rather than as a weakness as it is if you just try to sell mp3s.
And it’s not enough just to add value. It’s about understanding the point of value and choosing it carefully. You can add all the value to mp3s that you want, but your point of value is still the mp3…so the internet will always act against you because as history has shown: “things” on the internet want to be free. But if your point of value is not a “thing” such as a photo or mp3, but rather an event or some kind of experience, then that changes things which is what this post is demonstrating I think.
This is the worst article I’ve read this week. What a complete load of rubbish.
a) Hypothetical situations being used as allegory to describe problems and solutions you don’t understand make no sense in the real world. Try to articulate real world problems and solutions.
b) There is no substitute to good music. Much like this complete load of tosh is no substitute for a good article. What kind of point were you even trying to make?!
This is the best article I’ve read this week.
a) Concrete analogies to explain difficult concepts is the best way to understand things.
b) Not many people have a high understanding of the internet. The point I got from it was how musicians should regard the internet when trying to make a living with the good music they already made…rather than do stupid things without thinking and understanding first.
Love the post Adam! StageIt is another site that does this kind of thing in addition to your site Merge.fm. These are the future.
i believe you’re the idiot referred to in the post. that’s too funny!!!
The highest value is to just let the fans write your songs for you. Then everyone wins.
Pure genius.
So, the value of doing something for free, is to do more things for free and then let fans engage for free like an open mike night at my show every time and then finally just let the fans write the lyrics and compose my music…..so where does the revenue for the artists part come in again? Maybe its’ just the open mike amusement with the artists on stage and sorta like an experience at Disney or Universal….Oh yeah, the people outside the fish bowl looking in will just wanna actually buy a ticket to be inside the fishbowl instead of being outside the fishbowl seeing the show for free. No…..not sure that would bring in revenue…OK, so where does the revenue part come in? So, wait..a person/fan engaging backstage and being close to the artists onstage will video tape it on their Iphone and then sell it has the ultimate experience…but where is the revenue for the artists…? Oh, Ok,the artist tapes the show as a fan has the cool experience of being with nobody that may be somebody one day..and then the revenue from……wait…….but shouldn’t the artists actually be somebody first….so how does the artists become somebody without great music and a vehicle to be seen in front of enough people to actually draw enough that might pay to be in the fishbowl…?? So is there enough people actually standing outside the fishbowl “glass stadium” watching the one artists..or are they so distracted by so many fishes in the fishbowl (aka..all the wanna be artists now using software to make their own albums, EPKs, and online video tube shows)…so how does the fan actually see the one artists amongst the many? There still has to be some sort of vehicle driving those viewers to the one artists. Is it good music, is it a gimmick? But it takes money to make money no matter if you have goos music or not. The music has to be heard. The gimmick has to be seen. So how does the artists get the fish bowl in front of the right viewers, and then to keep the view, where is the revenue to maintain the appearance…?? Perplexing thoughts that you have stirred. So you basically have to provide everything for free until you build a big enough fan base and then get them to buy the experience that they are having because they certainly aren’t going to my music or novelties. Is that right?
The revenue part comes in selling access to “events” that 1) the artist can hold on the internet and 2) the fans are willing to pay for. In the same way fans pay for live concerts, artists can sell tickets to “events” that take place on the internet. But the question is, “What can an artist do online where fans will buy tickets?” You’re right that it’s not straightforward what artists can do.
But the point of the post is that if an artist can come up with good online events, the massive scale of the internet becomes an advantage rather than a weakness (like it is if you try to sell mp3s or other digital “things” rather than “events”). It presents a way to visualize the scenario in order to understand what kinds of online events might work well.
I would argue that there are plenty of events artists can hold online where fans will buy tickets. Three examples that seem to work are StageIt.com, LiveMusicStage.com, and Merge.fm
I would be happy just being able to see the lyrics written out, because often I can not understand them all.
Yes, pure genius! The perfect solution for a new generation suffering with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is to make them think that everything you do is all about THEM! The problem with that scenario, however, is that NPD is a one way relationship in the end. You might extract some money from that kind of person for a while, but only as long as you can supply the narcissism. Unfortunately, musicians and songwriters need to focus more on themselves and their laborious work in order to be any good at it. And there lies the problem with this Great Depression in the music industry. It can’t be about everyone all the time. As a society, we have to have a collective sense of what we value and we have to surrender our own personal egos long enough to open up to other people and their work. We can’t all be equally as talented and we sure as hell can’t all be superstars. The clutter of talentless wantabees among musicians is also burning out potential fans who simply don’t have enough time and patience to wade through that sea of mediocrity.