D.I.Y.

New Music Industry Think Tank Maintains There Are No Music Tech Tools For Poor Musicians

Back-porch-group-logoBack Porch Group is a new think tank for the music industry that claims to tell the "unvarnished truth." They're off to a strong start with their first blog post taking the stance that music tech companies aren't serving musicians who are scraping by on low-paying day jobs while trying to build careers in music. I, of course, beg to differ.

Back Porch Group, composed of Shawn Yeager, Brian Rawlings and Mike Fabio, describes themselves as a "think tank that offers insight, connections and development to creators and disruptive companies building the new music industry."

Back Porch Group takes a clear stance about their mission which they define as being:

"part of the solution…a group of smart, passionate people with a desire to reconfigure the music industry in a way that makes sense for fans, bands and those that connect them in meaningful, sustainable ways."

In the first blog post on their new site, Brian Rawlings puts forth an argument that I found a bit startling regarding the current state of music tech tools for DIY artists on a budget.

Rawlings maintains there are no music tech tools for impoverished musicians:

"There are tools galore and some of them actually work, but the old music biz establishment seems to think these are transitional processes that will one day return them to the glory daze of selling product at a high margin to cover the inconceivably high costs of their creative mistakes…"

"The music tech community mostly creates complex overreaching 'solutions' that are lost in a world somewhere between 'free music for all' and 'getting their piece of the pie'…"

"So what we have now is a slate of tools that would have worked perfectly for Lady GaGa if they had been around when she broke out (her numbers look really good in pro forma docs) but they do little for the 'next' big artists."

I asked for some clarification, stating that I viewed a pricing range for poor artists running from $0 to $10 a month.

Rawlings' response included the following:

"I think the pricing questions for music tech and 'poor' musicians is as much philosophical as it is practical. Each offering has to be reviewed on the cost/benefit curve like any business. The problem we face philosophically is that nearly all of the potential clients for music tech products start out below the poverty level. This is the nature of a fledgling musician."

"The 0-10 dollar concept is great except that it's too broad. You can't include $0 in a curve without changing the conversation and 10 bucks is a big spend for a guy that delivers pizza and plays in a rock band, UNLESS he can clearly see the 10 bucks coming back THIS MONTH! I think we should consider looking for new workable ad based solutions that are customized to DIY artists. Tech gave up too soon on ad based models because of the need for pre-market valuations…"

"In conclusion, pricing models are built on demand, sensitivity and competition (for the most part). Unfortunately we are in an anomaly based industry that can't realistically define these data points, so the price point is ZERO with a premium option for the odd lucky bands that make a couple of bucks.

In both the blog post and in Rawlings response I find points with which to agree but I think there are actually quite a few music tech tools using what I would consider freemium pricing for DIY musicians. Such tools offer basic features for free with additional features and services at various price points.

I failed to ask but am assuming that Brian Rawlings and Back Porch Group are excluding such free tools as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and WordPress.com since they aren't specifically focused on music tech. That's a problematic exclusion given that they would top the list of tools for impoverished musicians and all get a boost from their use by musicians but let's concede that point for the moment.

Here are some outstanding freemium tools for impoverished DIY musicians that I would categorize as straight-up music tech. They include services that do charge you but only as a percentage of actual revenue.

Music Tech Tools for the Improverished Musician

SoundCloud – audio posting and sharing

PledgeMusic – D2F funding campaigns and preordering

Adva Mobile – mobile apps for musicians

Audiosocket – indie music licensing

CASH Music – open source promo and sales tools

StoryAmp – promo to the press

Closely Related to Music Tech

BitTorrent's SoShare – large file delivery and download

USTREAM and Livestream – livestreaming events

Eventbrite and Brown Paper Tickets – ticketing

That's just a quick list of obvious contenders. There are a great number of awesome companies left out, many just as good as the above, but it does clarify that there are definitely lots of free options for impoverished musicians.

Feel free to add more in the comments.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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13 Comments

  1. I think the primary flaw with BPG’s stance on this is assuming that companies are supposed to simultaneously build incredible tools for musicians while figuring out some other way to make money. The minute a company says, we want to offer these tools free so that they’re accessible to impoverished artists, and we’ll make our money from ads, they have to split their focus between making tools that work, and optimizing their ad inventory and performance. The best way to maximize the value of ads is to drive more clicks and engagement to your sponsors, which is in direct conflict with helping fans engage with bands. You’re getting paid to drive people away from the music and to a sponsor, which is a distraction from helping artists. Yes, you can do both, but not nearly as effectively as you can by staying hyper-focused on one of them.
    Also, $10 may be a heavy price tag for a musician that delivers pizzas, but it’s pretty much nothing in terms of a starting advertising budget for a small business, which is what professional artists and bands are. This oft-cited viewpoint that artists deserve to make money just because they are a good guitar player isn’t doing artists any good. Bands are small businesses. Starting a business takes capital and hard work. If you wanted to open a pizza place, you would save up money or get a loan. You would make use of some free tools, and you would pay for others. If you want to start a successful band, it’s the same thing. There are plenty of companies out there making effective tools for musicians. There is no reason to assume they can do as good a job of it while making the tools available for free or basement prices. Good tools for businesses cost money. Anyone who thinks you can build an ad-based business on the backs of music hasn’t been paying attention to the market. Pandora lost $15M last year doing just that.

  2. Could we for once have a think tank with people who are actually relevant to some aspect of the music industry?

  3. Thanks, Clyde, for this post – hoping the comments here add to the conversation.
    To be clear, and I don’t intend to put words in Brian’s mouth, there most certainly ARE a number of free and freemium tools out there. LOTS of them, in fact, including the major players you mentioned and myriad others.
    What’s important is not that those tools are there, but that they are ultimately useful beyond their cost. No tool is free (advertising, selling your data, services that take a cut of sales, whatever it may be), and many free tools are inherently less feature-rich than their freemium counterparts (SoundCloud’s free accounts are great, but limit you to 2 hours of sound uploads, which is about 30 songs). Sure, the average artist can easily get away with using these services for quite some time – sometimes forever – but eventually they’ll be asked to shell out some cash, and that day often comes before the artist can afford it.
    I think the most salient point from Brian is that $10 a month is a very large cost to an independent artist. Hell, most people aren’t even willing to pay that for their own email provider (seriously, if Gmail started charging, you’d have a whole lot of new Yahoo users). And while I recognize that these companies have to keep the lights on like everyone else, asking independent artists to pay for products with unproven value to them creates an ecosystem of animosity and disillusionment.
    Again, thanks for the discussion, Clyde. Much appreciated.

  4. Oh and to clarify this comment further: I truly do think there are many valuable free tools available for artists. I use many of them myself on a daily basis. But the best of these tools demonstrate value to the artist that meets or exceeds the product’s cost.

  5. Hey Clyde, Sum here… intriguing post and think tank, I’ll have to look a bit more into them. Their mission statement is speaking to something that’s been on my mind for a while. I do agree with them to the extent that many music tech companies and startups are kind of operating in a bubble that has not too much to do with the actual lifestyle of the DIY artist who doesn’t have alot of money to invest, and doesn’t have a lot of time to invest because they’re working to pay bills, perfecting their craft and living life like normal human beings.
    The most valuable tools I have seen for expanding fanbase and then possibly converting that into some type of sale (from personal experience) are Earbits, Soundcloud and Youtube. The rest of the platforms and services out there are shots in the dark and are a little overconfident in their language about how useful they actually are to DIY artists. For the hours you may spend per week cultivating these channels and outposts on all these different platforms, the return might be minimal, and most times doesn’t justify the amount of time and/or money it may take to keep churning one’s presence on them. Although they may be free, to truly make them worth your time requires time (tagging, engaging, networking, etc), which is the most precious resource an indie artist has, and it’s usually in very short supply.

  6. Great stuff Clyde I appreciate the forum to clarify what I was focusing on in the original post. First I stipulate that the various “freemium tools” you listed are a great help to musicians large and small. My comments were directed at the current slate of new tools in development and I should have pointed that out. Our work at BPG is focused primarily on tools that are either in development or pre-market.
    I think the tools you pointed out are great examples of how we should be looking at the future. The reason FB became so massive is in large part that there was no barrier to it’s adoption. I have watched a handful of great ideas disappear under the weight of trying to build a pricing model that will support their fantasy valuation which is intended to raise more money. In retrospect I should have started the blog with “Dear Angels and VCs”. If you want to have the next Twitter, don’t build it based on a pricing model build it based on it’s unique power to move people. The money will definitely follow.
    I think your response and examples support my theory. The big plays in music tech are free or at least have a free version. If we’re going to make money in music we will have to get it from fans and sponsors. The poor guy on stage simply doesn’t have it.
    Thanks for thought provoking insights.

  7. What about Noisetrade? They have a nice little widget that is free to use. You can embed it on your site. Then you also have Bandcamp which is essentially free until you start making money.

  8. Did you read the site bios? Relevant…um…yeah I think so….

  9. – maybe I missed out on the related explanation, but how exactly are creative folk without money supposed to acquire the platform (Computer or muscular mobile device) to run any of the above on? The way I see it they’d have to be not-“poor” in order to even enter the discussed scenario.

  10. Most people without personal access use public libraries or community centers. Public libraries have been revitalized around free computer services.

  11. Actually having people who are already in the insuatry is the last thing we need. We need a fresh set of eyes and that is what theae guys are providing.

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