meta-roj

in a clearly clueful development (and we’re all very happy that apple is still getting the clues), think secret reported several days ago on the rumors of the mini ipod. that development prompted the ubergeeks at slashdot to share their few cents… i took a spin through that quagmire to save you the trouble. the slash geeks missed the clues.

here’s what’s interesting about this (and it has nothing to do with batteries or storage technologies): it more-closely matches the individual listening habits of most people.

sure, a musigeek might appreciate carrying 10,000 or 20,000 (or 75,000 for that matter) songs on their hip, but most people don’t know that many songs, and certainly don’t want to waste the time to load that many tracks, set up playlists, organize and categorize that much noise. most people have a couple dozen songs they really love, and maybe a couple hundred that they’ll listen to “for now.” beyond that, it’s just too annoying. it takes too much attention.

another [less relevant, but valid] view is the dollar-economics. ignore the illegal music sources for a moment, and you’re looking at $600 for an ipod, plus $10,000 or more to fill it up. can you afford to risk loss or theft of a $10,000 gadet? [note to self: ipod track insurance] makes all the noise about battery life seem a bit silly, eh?

so yes. for another week or so, it’s just a rumor that apple will bring us mini ipods in 2004. but i think the nature of the broader music-listening public makes the mini ipod inevitable – even if it has to come from someone other than apple.

a few hundred songs is “good enough” for most people – and that’s important, considering the economics of itunes.

it is the end of the year, and there’s no doubt that a lot of wrap-up stuff is going to appear. since i talk about the high end of the music business here, i thought this set might be worth echoing.

pollstar says these are the top-grossing concerts of 2003. just to give you a tiny bit for thought, consider how many of these would be considered “new” acts… to that end, i’ve expanded on the pollstar data by including the date of their first album release, according to the all music guide (we run a value-added service here at meta-roj!):

1. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band $115.9 million. (1973)
2. Celine Dion $80.5 million. (1990)
3. Eagles $69.3 million. (1972)
4. Fleetwood Mac $69 million. (1968)
5. Cher $68.2 million. (1965)
6. Simon & Garfunkel $64.5 million. (1964)
7. Aerosmith-Kiss $64 million. (1973 / 1974)
8. Dixie Chicks $60.5 million. (1992)
9. Billy Joel-Elton John $50.9 million. (1971 / 1969)
10. Summer Sanitarium Tour with Metallica $48.8 million. (1983)
11. Dave Matthews Band $47.1 million. (1993)
12. Toby Keith $44.2 million. (1993)
13. Shania Twain $40.8 million. (1993)
14. The Rolling Stones $38.5 million. (1964)
15. Phish $35.8 million. (1988)
16. Kenny Chesney $34.5 million. (1994)
17. Tim McGraw $32.7 million. (1993)
18. Justin Timberlake/Christine Aguilera $31.8 million. (2002 / 1999)
19. Jimmy Buffett $29.3 million. (1970)
20. Pearl Jam $29.1 million. (1991)

justin’s cheating a little, because he got a 4-year headstart with ‘nsync. anyway, i just want to leave you with a thought about the value of longevity in this business of music. once you find your audience, they can be yours forever.

i’m going to drop this in here, simply because it’s a foundation concept that i hope to build on in the [near?] future.

you remember the band, not the label.

a month ago, i came across this bbc article announcing digital jukeboxes with 2 million tracks and all kinds of other neat net-enabled widgets. surprisingly, there isn’t much more in the bbc story than in the press release, so i put this on hold for a while hoping some substance would appear.

i haven’t been well rewarded in this regard. i did find a nice quote to share,

top40-charts

Norman Crowley of Inspired Broadcast Networks commented: “This is the most significant announcement to hit the music industry this year. We have spent a great deal of time researching the market place so we could launch a product that would change the way consumers listen to music outside of their homes. Our jukebox will give venue owners better ways to entertain their customers and will also increase revenue for the music industry.”

more significant than madonna kissing britney? more significant than the turnaround? well, i guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

i gave these guys a month to do something, so i’m going to give you what i have and get them off of my watch list. they’ll have to make “news” again to get my attention.

barry ritholz beat me to the punch on the story (i’m gonna blame the flu). there’s not a lot i can add – in classic barry ritholz-fashion, it’s well-documented and well-sourced and even his spin pretty much echoes the spin i’d put on it (gee, what DID happen to this story?). plus, he’s got a pie chart.

anyway, since i got beaten to the punch on this one, it puts me in the [much easier] position of picking the nits.

barry spends some time exploring the relative merits (or is that value) of dvds and cds – the big picture has a lot to do with the attention economy (not to be confused with the dollar economy). most entertainment is still linear process, so the ears you’re trying to grab as a musician may be otherwise occupied if the brain between them decides something else is more worthy of their attention.

a tiny nit i should pick here (just a tiny one – i don’t want to give you the impression i’ve gone to the dark side!) is that for films and concerts (that end up becoming dvds), the dvd is a secondary source of revenue for the production. the film or concert already made some money on tickets, and might already be “in the black” – so dvd revenue might be pure gravy. that gives the producers some pricing flexibility, and may go some distance toward explaining the cartel behavior of the record labels: they fear for their primary revenue stream.

fear is a powerful motivator, but the suggestion i have is to expand the view a bit – i’ve found at least three ways to create value with music and i hardly even tried. the “sell a million cds at $20 a pop” formula is only perfect for some artists. technology has given us the tools, now it’s time to get creative with them.

i’ve had a little theme i’ve been beating on here for a while – the death of the album theme. to fold that into this discussion, i need to point out that there’s no “death of the album” problem with a soundtrack or concert. the tracks are coherent, and already work together (and if they weren’t connected before, they are now by virtue of being in the film or concert). also important is that the artist(s) should already have been paid once (when their music was licensed for the film or tickets sold for the concert).

there’s a point of philosophy that’s going to stick in my craw, but barry has promised to dig into this later, so i should wait…

The more dangerous long term challenge facing the labels is “disintermediation.” The internet allows for the labels to be removed as the middle man between the consumer and the artist. Networked technology, not free MP3s, may very well be the meteor that eventually destroys the dinosaur labels.

to give you a little hint, my observation of “net era economies” is that this concept of “disintermediation” hasn’t played out very effectively. but let’s see what barry thinks before i show all my cards…

in the meantime, if this really gets your attention, you might want to check out my comments on plan g for some perspective on killing the dinosaur labels (or, in that case, the riaa…)

interesting to stumble into this over at metafilter….

then…
The Beatles, Abbey Road
Led Zeppelin, II
Tom Jones, Live in Las Vegas
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River
The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed
Santana, Santana
Temptations, Cloud Nine/Puzzle People
Blood, Sweat and Tears, Blood, Sweat and Tears
Crosby, Stills & Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash
Soundtrack / Easy Rider

now….
Ruben Studdard, Soulful
Alicia Keys, The Diary Of Alicia Keys
Various Artists, Now
Toby Keith, Shock’n Y’all
Josh Groban, Closer
OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Rod Stewart, As Time Goes By … The Great American Songbook Volume II
Hilary Duff, Metamorphosis
Sheryl Crow, The Very Best Of Sheryl Crow
Britney Spears, In The Zone

it’s the discussion at metafilter that is interesting… mostly in light of the death of the album thing happening here and the various follow ups.

maybe a chord was struck way back in november with the csm article.

i made a few predictions, both long- and short-term about the time universal announced their new pricing strategy for cd’s. a few months later, a story [included below] that ran in usa today and appeared in yahoo news provided some points of reference.

i’m not yet sure how cloudy my crystal ball is on this issue, but you might have some thoughts on the subject…
(more…)

something we’ve talked about here a couple times was the topic of a segment on npr’s all things considered program this past friday. see “the death of the ‘concept’ album.” a few choice quotes from people interviewed in the segment…

tim quirk, rhapsody

i think even if you just look over the last couple of years there’s arguably more artists making… that are album-based rock music at least than there has been in a long, long time whether that’s the flaming lips or radiohead or wilco…

todd rundgren [flash required]

before there were ever recordings, it seemed like serious composers always gravitated toward the long form. towards doing symphonic works as opposed to 3-minute minuets all the time.

perry farrell [also flash]

i haven’t thought in terms of an album for probably a decade. i’d rather be making singles.

record companies have gotten to be such hacks that they have made the idea of doing a full record almost impossible for an artist. it’s disheartening what little respect they have for people that have concepts of albums.

i really should have noticed this a while ago, but as an interesting challenge to those who disagree with me on the future of the cd, you have an opportunity to step up and put some money on it. long bets makes it legit and jake walker has thrown the gauntlet.

my post on the death of the album generated a bit of interest out there (thanks and a nod to robert kaye, grant henninger and the people who left comments).

i thought i’d take a little time today to see if there was another way to figure out this death of the album thing. rolling stone provided some data to check out – the 500 greatest albums of all time. certainly, there is rich material here. there are a lot of interesting things in this list, but since i’m coming from a “death of the album” perspective, i thought i’d go dig up release dates and make a pretty chart. it looks like this:

the earliest album to make the rolling stone list was released in 1952 (#276, Anthology of American Folk Music), and that introduces a problem with this list – anthologies. if i pull the “greatest hits” and other obvious re-releases, it leaves 465 albums. this second chart reveals an interesting bias – a disproportionate number of the more-recent “greatest albums” are collections of older material.

when you combine this picture with the quick analysis of itunes data, it does look like a pretty grim situation for the album. maybe not all the way dead, but mostly dead.

we could speculate about the pattern here and make observations about how it takes time to recognize greatness in art, and how it takes time for artists to mature to the point where they make great art, and that explains why the peak of “great albums” happened 30 years ago. i think it’s simpler than that. the industry has made a major shift from “organic” to “directed” music production. the development cycle at major labels is so short now that there is no room for a “growth” album. you’re signed, you make a hit, pump it as hard as possible, lather, rinse, repeat. if you miss anywhere along the cycle, you’re gone. the industry of music can’t afford to wait around for two or three albums while you find your greatness. outside the industry of music, i think there’s still a lot of room for musicians to develop with their audiences, but that’s getting a bit off topic. back to this album thing.

a lesson here is that there are two ways to get onto the rolling stones greatest albums of all time list – you can make a great album (93% of the list), or you can make a long, great career and turn that into an album (the other 7%).

i made light of it (and so did mick, apparently), but there’s a reason i had to say something about the knighting of the lead stone. sir mick happened because the rolling stones have a decades-long relationship with their fans. mick jagger has gone from from rebel bad boy to getting knighted by the same queen (well, indirectly – i understand prince chuck did the actual honors) the stones were screaming about in the 60’s.

putting together a few hit songs and filling out an “album” with garbage serves the record label well, but it doesn’t serve the musicians well. the hit is there (with some follow-up potential, of course), so there’s money to be made, and they will pull every string available to make it. but, if you alienate your fans by making them feel ripped off (gee, 2/3rds of this album sucks – why did i pay so much for it?) or inconvenienced (skip track 2. skip track 5…), then they won’t come back and buy your next release. they won’t come to your concert. they won’t keep you fed. you (the musician) broke the relationship with your audience, and that is the hard limit on your career.

your label, on the other hand, has a thousand people just like you waiting for their chance. the label has to deal with investors and quarterly financial statements and other short-term business things, but you need to keep some focus on the long term – you really don’t get to start over too many times in this business of music. this is your career (and diet) on the line. do it right.

for the musician, perhaps the broader question is: “should i worry about albums at all?” i’ll go ahead and answer that one for you – maybe. there is no perfect model. if you can produce a great album – an album that is coherent, that works for you, that builds a relationship with your audience, then yes. worry about it a great deal, and do it. do it well, do it right, and do it with 10 or 15 or even 50 songs if that’s what it takes.

on the other hand, if you don’t have that many solid tracks, or if you can’t make it coherent, or can’t afford to produce all of them right now, then don’t sweat the album thing. work with what you have. play your strengths. build that life-long relationship with your audience some other way. do it one concert at a time, or 5 great tracks at a time, or one person at a time. we (your fans) are smart enough to work with you on this, and we will respect you in the morning if you respect us today.

then again, we’re also smart enough to realize when we’re getting the raw end of the deal, and there are plenty of other bands out there for us to fall in love with…

…but have fun storming the castle…