Indie Music

2014: The Year Nothing In Music Broke, and Nothing Got Fixed

Tech-trends-2014By Cortney Harding on This Week In Music Tech.

This was the year of the treadmill.

I mean that both for me personally (ever train for an ultra-marathon during a polar vortex?) and for the music business as a whole. 2014 felt like a whole lot of running, but there was no real forward movement — everyone wound up in pretty much the same place they started.

There was some big stories, of course. Beats Music launched, attracted something like 100,000 users, and then was snapped up by Apple for a cool $3 billion for…some reason, yet to be announced. Apple wants a streaming service, even though streaming services bleed money. Apple wants to be cool, because I know when I walk into a Bushwick Coffeeshop, it’s Dells as far as the eye can see. Apple wants to bundle the product with headphones, because selling a subpar product based on cool branding is the path to long term growth. Look, I’m sure they are going to do something amazing and I’ll be forced to eat my words. But from where I sit, I’m still not seeing the logic.

Amazon Prime launched a streaming music service and no one seemed to care. YouTube finally launched their streaming service and no one seemed to care, although to be fair it’s early and no numbers have been released. Deezer launched…something in the US and no one seemed to…you get the picture.

Spotify continued to grow, despite Taylor Swift’s best efforts. They seem to be fairly comfortable with their lead, given that the last time I looked, they were hiring a full time staff member to throw parties for other staff members. Wonder how things will look when they sit down to renegotiate contracts with the labels?

A bunch of small startups launched; a bunch of small startups died. Circle of life and venture capital.

BigdatabaseBecause here’s the real reason we’re still on the treadmill — fundamentally, nothing has changed. Artists still write “songs,” which are generally a few minutes long; they record and collect those songs on albums, which are released to the public on a pre-determined date. They do lots of press around those releases, and then they go on tour. Then they tour again, and again. Maybe they sell a song to a TV show, or an ad. Maybe a bunch of people at a music/tech conference have a panel called “Islands in the Stream” or “Radio on the TV” and talk about how this isn’t “selling out” anymore. And the beat goes on, and on…

No one is asking the bigger question, which is “why are albums?” Why are release dates? Hell, why any of this?

I understand artists and labels and radio need organizing principles. And I understand that this model has worked for a very long time. But it’s worth considering that maybe it needs to shift a bit. Maybe artists should release content when it’s ready, not when it’s some pre-selected Tuesday. The technology exists for them to be recording all the time, wherever they are. Some artists, and I won’t name names, are also recording whole albums worth of content that never sees the light of day — talk about a sunk cost. Unless it’s absolute garbage, what’s the harm in putting it out? Someone will probably like it.

The kids, as they say, have ever shorter attention spans. I’m not here to rag on millennials for their crippling ADHD — but I am here to say that they have millions more options than most of us ever had. Tinder is perfect site for them — infinite choices, and if you don’t like something, move to the next thing and forget it. But they also have short memories, and if you serve them something different the next time and they like it, all is forgiven.

So clinging to this old model of releasing bodies of work on a given date, based on all that we know, seems a little off, doesn’t it? And yes, right now some of you will want to Swift-boat me, but Tay-Tay is the exception, not the rule. She’s the 1% of artists if ever there was one.

If I had a wish for 2015, it would be this: kill the album. For some artists, who really want to present a body of work and tell a story, fine, keep it. For everyone else, just scrap it. Albums probably started as a cynical ploy to get more money (“they only want one song, but they have to pay for twelve of them, even if eleven of them suck! Brilliant!”) and this definitely reached a fever pitch in the nineties — and I should know, because I bought a lot of those albums. It became all filler, no killer, and then Napster laid waste to it.

So just start putting stuff out there. Kids are fine with imperfections. Some of the stuff they love on YouTube makes me feel seasick watching it because the camera work is so bad, but it doesn’t matter. Release little clips of tracks and see what the response is. If it doesn’t get a bite, toss some more chum in the water.

2014 was pretty much a wash, and that’s OK. We’re reaching the end of an era, and we’ve been reaching it for a long time now. A while ago, there was a political cartoon that had an illustration of every president since Kennedy saying one word, and it added up to “Don’t worry, Castro will fall any minute now.” It feels like you could replicate that with every editor of Billboard saying, “Don’t worry, the old music biz model will fall any minute now.” Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it didn’t collapse in one, either. But we don’t want to get to the point of collapse — it’s far better to pivot early and get ahead of the game.

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7 Comments

  1. I think the Beats purchase was as much an acquihire for a great marketing mind (Uncle Jimmy) as it was for tech/product and everyone’s pov on ‘albums’ will be different but when you look at the landscape, albums create moments for the music to built on. Drake can have a big single/soundcloud drop but its all part of content strategy to the larger push around…the album.
    The album drives the tour, merch, and experience. Just ask Kanye.
    The album is more than just songs: its how its released (Beyonce unmarketed drops with a full allotment of videos).
    The album isn’t just online but can a book, an art experience: the moment to set the tone for the conversation the creative is looking to have. Does that have to happen more often? Years ago I would have said yes based on the success of mixtapes and single drops but now you have to rise above the noise…and you need a big push/spend/reason behind it to make a dent.
    Singles feed the stream, but album moments shape the bigger conversation. Musicians can build a ground swell with an always on approach but when they are ready to and capable of large cultural impact, they need to see all the pieces as part of a strategy around where they want to be, not just what they want to scan and retail.

  2. Just listened to the podcast, and I think the fact that you both work for tech companies skews your viewpoint. Whatever Taylor Swift’s calculations are, the bottom line is that Spotify has almost no value for artists from a monetary standpoint. It’s solely a question of whether or not you get useful exposure from having your music on Spotify.
    It’s important to recognize that Spotify is fundamentally different from Pandora. Where Pandora can legitimately claim to be a type of internet radio, Spotify is an on-demand service. If you have a $10 subscription to Spotify, you essentially own every album on their service for the price of one. You can listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, as many times as you want, for as long as you pay that fee.
    When you do the math on Spotify’s catalog and payouts, it averages out to about $3-4 a month per song. With millions of users. On average, an artist with one ten song album on Spotify will make $30-40 a month from it. And the payouts are per-play, so popular artists make a much larger amount, and the average indie artist makes even less. Unless you’re a superstar, you’re making nothing from Spotify whatsoever. If the argument for Spotify is that people would just pirate the music otherwise, it makes little difference. Getting a few cents vs. getting nothing is meaningless if you’re trying to make a living as a musician.
    In short, if Spotify as currently constituted becomes the primary method of music consumption, there will no longer be any significant income from recorded music, period. That may be where we’re headed. But what it means is that will become even harder to make a living as a musician.
    Unless someone figures out a way to secure intellectual property, which is the real core of this whole subject, we will eventually be facing a future where there is no longer any such thing as a professional musician. There will just be a huge sea of amateur music made by hobbyists in their spare time.
    I think the traditional music industry needs to change, and the major labels may have to go away altogether. The optimistic view is that artists will be able to survive and make a living with a lean, heavily DIY model, taking advantage of technology to replace a lot of overhead. But it’s not clear that even that will be realistic.
    The public as a whole seems to have a huge appetite for music, but little willingness to pay for it. A lot of that is a result of conditioning in the internet era. The only way for artists to be compensated for their work may be for them to take a stand and say, “sorry, if you want to hear it, you’re going to have to pay for it”. In which case, Taylor Swift is standing up for artists, contrary to the view you expressed.
    To say that hurting Spotify hurts smaller artists makes absolutely no sense.

  3. “Beats Music launched, attracted something like 100,000 users, and then was snapped up by Apple for a cool $3 billion for…some reason, yet to be announced.”
    Priceless. I think you summed up my thoughts on that (as a former MOG fan turned Beats-refugee by a totally, thoroughly awful UI obviously designed to push label-hyped content) just about perfectly.

  4. I live in Berlin and I disagree. (this isn’t limited to Berlin though)
    This year I have seen big changes for many artist, who for example used to play on the street and are now filling the bigger venues we’ve got. I’ve seen songwriters switching from acoustic music to electro and making it big and the other way around. This could go on..
    What I want to say is, that while there might not be big changes happening for the tried and true (or not so much anymore) channels we knew, change is happening on a small scale. For every artist who can make it work. We’re coming closer to what music is really about.
    I don’t care if Apple or Google or any of the majors can squeeze out any more billions from the poor customers. IT DOES NOT MAKE THE MUSIC BETTER. It only creates jobs for people with wrong incentives. Who cares if they say: because of me Jenny from DC has found her new favorite artist… she would have found one without you anyway. There is so much good music.. If a small band can make you happy, that’s awesome for you and the band. They are out to put love into what they are doing. Music.
    The ‘big industry’ can try to find the next big thing. I won’t be looking, I won’t care. I’ll be free, getting up in the morning to practice, play a show at night, record an album, release it on my own, put some money aside for later, and keep doing exactly what I want for as long as I want.
    I love the way the industry is changing.
    Cheers,
    a happy musician with free time to make music and rant once in a while 🙂

  5. Kill the album and release music as it’s recorded? How about kill the novel and release sentences as they’re typed, or for that matter, kill the sentence and release…words.
    To many artists, a song is simply a component. A group of songs is a piece of work. In the 18th century, should composers have thrown out symphonies and operas in favor of one act or movement?
    For that matter, why is Hollywood still releasing movies? I’d much rather see a single scene as soon as it’s in the can.

  6. With regard to the music business. The solution could be that all artists who record music, stream it from their own servers. This is the only legal way to consume recorded music, and the artist gets credit for each and every stream.
    The business around this model is through building server platforms for artists, which includes registration, billing, and security.
    Another arm is networking, which combines artists into “labels,” genres, etc. These entities would be responsible for marketing and promotion of their network artists – still, they are directing listeners to the artist-owned streams, and the “label” is paid a fee for this service.
    Tour management and merch remains largely the same.

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