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i thought a little self-aggrandizement was in order…
you can see original performance photography in two new places….
dianna, duchess of dance and people’s choice winner in the 2003 east coast belly dance classic competition.
and…
raqs sahara, the professional performance troupe under the direction of rachel kay brookmire.
dianna and rachel are both amazing performers and gracious people. go see them.
a while ago, i took a shot at a business model for the high end of the music business. i was a bit reluctant to go there, but it was an interesting exercise. it’s certainly not the only plan that could work and it might not work, but i think it’s got as much of a shot as most. that said, and with the exercise behind me, it’s time to come out and remind everyone that i ran away from the high end – and i’m probably still running.
at the top of the curve, where the music is locked up in back catalogs and huge promotion budgets, the whole pie is about $30 billion.
there are 5 major labels (going on 3), 7 major physical retailers (playing with echo) and at least 9 major players in the online music sales business – itunes, buymusic, musicmatch, napster 2, musicnet, rhapsody, an mtv project, a walmart project and a microsoft project. and maybe a few others that either escaped my attention so far, that i forgot about, or that are in “stealth mode” and planning to sneak up and take the online music sales business by storm.
that’s 20-ish major, well-funded (presumably) companies chasing after the same sets of ears. you can’t afford all this music.
tasked with the job of “preserving the value of the back catalog” – there isn’t a good solution. there is no perfect model. there is no formula. and, from all appearances, everyone is picking the same basic formula – online track sales at just under a dollar, drm, and a big catalog of all your favorite stuff.
walmart has decided to get into the online track-sales game. this is a big clue that the value in the back catalog is going to shrivel up and vanish, no matter how much copy-protection you wrap it in. and, by the way, as soon as you wrap it in drm, you’re destroying value. take many percent off the top right away.
for some musicians, licensing to advertisers (something i touched on here) is a good way to recapture some of the value in the back catalog – all your fans may already have the cd, but if microsoft is going to write you a big check, why argue? after all, “artistic integrity” is for people who can afford to eat.
while i was thinking about all this mess, crysflame pointed me to a thought from martin geddes.
with a long-term view, some interesting structural parallels emerge. where the telecom industry is facing the last circuit-switched call by 2020 (gartner’s prediction), the music business has many predicting the death of the cd (and while i don’t think it’s dead yet, even i’ll concede that 16 more years is pushing it).
let’s pretend for the moment that both industries are on roughly the same schedule – about 15 years until the last cd is burned and the last circuit-switched phonecall. (like martin, i’m painting in broad strokes).
the $30 billion recorded music business will have to “switch over” to new models to replace something on the order of $2 billion in sales every year for the next 15 years. while they’re doing that, they face the walmart effect – “lots of cheap crap.” even without walmart in the game, we’re quickly approaching a dozen online music sites, and the undisputed leader in the field can’t make money – despite a several-month head-start. will the 99-cent track survive? how many ways can you slice a dollar?
the race to the bottom from the high end is on.
my money is on artists getting squeezed first and hardest – in part because it’s tradition, and in part because they’re at a structural disadvantage – they have no leverage.
there is an upside – while the industry focuses on destroying itself and fending off the well-financed newcomers – those of us who aren’t already in the machine will find the cracks and some of us will get a toehold.
to add a little spice to the options of musicians to get their music out, i thought i’d take a little time to explore truefire.
truefire lets creative people self-publish and provides a marketplace for “literature, visual arts, original music, music instruction and reference.”
truefire comes to this self-publishing business from a [relatively] long history of music education (10 years or so). so, the truefire twist is its core of music instruction – and this has some interesting potential. the emphasis on education and participation extends to “tfu” – the true fire university.
at the moment, there are 87 (alternative) + 156 (blues) + 83 (classical) + 50 (country) + 44 (electronic) +25 (hiphop/r&b) + 130 (jazz/fusion) + 244 (rock) + 89 (world/folk) + 37 (industrial) + 50 (pop), or about 1000 tracks available on truefire.
while i couldn’t find an age for the truefire self-publishing option, i do have some concern about growth. with only 1000 tracks, and many of them free, it’s got a way to go to find sustainable revenue from track sales. on the upside, that’s not the core model, so they’re not depending on track sales to stay in business.
the site also has a pseudo-money system to help encourage participants to keep things at truefire moving. i always have some reservations about not-quite-money systems.
a few others have made comments: metafilter, john stahl, lingosphere, i breathe music, even the american library association has a few (not so kind) words – “one of many questionable publishing sites”.
since i started talking about sunncomm, it’s been a bit of a saga here (1, 2, 3, 4), and i’ve used it as an example to emphasize a few of my own thoughts or theories.
i left myself a note to come back and look again, and there really isn’t much to say… (that’s not terribly surprising)…
here’s the little bit of sunncomm news i could find: on october 29, sunncomm announced their latest deal for cd-damaging (to quote kevin) code. since then, the stock price has dropped 30% (from 10 cents to 7).
for all the bloggers out there that followed this story along with me (i hope i got everyone), the bright light on sunncomm haasn’t killed it yet.
a quick thanks to everyone who bounced thoughts around with me. i’ll probably revisit sunncomm again later, if i can still find them.
call me crazy, call me lazy, call me stupid, but tonight, i finally put two horn sections together in my head.
from jackie brenston and the delta cats (featuring ike turner) “rocket 88” (1951) and buckaroo banzai and the hong kong cavaliers (1984).
*ding*
i’d like to introduce everyone to the blues radio series hosted by keb’mo’, i’ve been enjoying this for a while now, and just realized that the whole deal is [shocking] on the web (windows media and real media only).
i’ve had the pleasure of meeting my local walking blues encyclopedia, nap turner on a few occasions, notably at the hr57 center for the preservation of jazz and blues (which happens to be the place this picture happened).
this is a wonderfully produced radio series, and well worth your time to listen – the web version has lots of extra audio, so come with me on this great journey through music….
as nap would say, don’t forget the blues.
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