Hypebot Revisted: The Musical Middle Class
During Hypebot's 5th Anniversary we're revisiting some of my and our reader's favorite articles. This short post represents the beginning of a shift in my thinking and thus many of the post that have followed. It was (and still is) easy and popular to chronicle the downfall of the the old music industry. But what will the new music industry look like?
From October 2007
The digital music revolution has fractured media consumption into niches, shifted creation and distribution from the few to the many and nearly leveled the playing field between the powerful labels and the committed individual.
Welcome To The New Musical Middle Class
Musicians no longer need a big check from a label to record or a big promotional push to launch a career. With free software and a computer great music is being created in
basements everywhere. On social networking sites and virally between friends and across the blogosphere unknown music is finding an audience.
Slowly but visibly many of these artists are inventing their careers. Not a career fueled by Cristal and delivered in limos, but rather one earned by practicing their craft, listening to their fans and delivering the results live.
The fans may only number from 20-100,000. But without greedy hands in the middle, the profits are enough. And mercifully, the results of this labor are not as ephemeral as in the past. If the artist's effort continues; fans stay loyal.
There will always be mega-stars and one hit wonders. But how hopeful it is for musicians, fans and for music, that there is finally a place for a middle class proud of their craft and connected to their audience. And what wonderful opportunities await for the middle class of labels and other companies created to serve them.
Also: A Global Perspective and The New Models. (here)
It’s a great dose of perspective to read this again in 2009. I often find articles from 2005-07 and don’t even notice they’re out of date because we’ve basically been talking about the same issues for years now.
I think some of the debate originally came from a misunderstanding of what the rise of the musical middle class means. It doesn’t mean that anyone who works hard or posts good tracks on myspace will be able to make a living at it — the musical ‘working poor’ (and by working, I mean a day job) will always vastly outnumber those who achieve enough success to do music full-time. The point is, that rather than vast amounts of success being concentrated among the talented and/or lucky 0.001%, there will be more moderate success among a larger number of people. It may be less than 1% of the serious musicians out there, but still it’s a much more realistic, achievable goal to shoot for than a ‘major label lottery ticket’. If you can imagine a histogram of tracks-sold for every artist, there will still be a long tail of people selling fewer than a hundred — it’s more about fewer people going gold and more people selling in the tens of thousands. And because indie artists can now earn so much more per unit, that’s become a viable way to make a living.
One reason I post as much as I do on blogs discussing new music business models is that I’ve been concerned that the getting-signed-to-a-major-label fantasy has been replaced by a DIY fantasy.
The opportunity to make a living from selling music, merchandise, and playing gigs is still very limited. Unless you are teaching music, playing music somewhere that pays you a full-time salary, or doing a lot of private parties, you probably aren’t going to make enough to quit your day job.
Playing music for fun, self-expression, and as a way to connect with friends/family is a perfectly legitimate reason to do it, and that’s what most people will do.
The more people who try to play music full-time, the less average income most of them will make. So the more articles that encourage people to promote themselves online, the greater the competition among everyone to get heard.
I try to point out the reality to keep people realistic in their expectations.