meta-roj

about a month ago, i ran into this story over that the christian science monitor – the death of the album.

at the time, i thought i’d make some brilliant and insightful comments about how it’s a singles-driven market and the album is usually an artificial creation that doesn’t really have any integrity with the listeners, but it wasn’t something i could really get my teeth into.

when i got the “good news” from peter lowe over at apple, speaking at music 2.0, i dug into the “drafts” (that is, reminders) and realized i’d left it hanging. i won’t make you dig for this one, because it’s worth repeating.

the death of the album

The music store from Apple, iTunes, says that of the more than 17 million songs purchased since April, about 46 percent were downloaded as part of full albums.

news.com

Apple director of marketing Peter Lowe said that 45 percent of songs downloaded through iTunes had been sold as part of a full album, rather than in single song form. That indicates many people are still interested in purchasing large numbers of songs, or full albums, despite having a la carte options, Lowe said.

when i did this before, the assumption was 12 tracks per album (which is just a guess, really) – and i’ll use it again. since i’ve got two data points from itunes, i can do a little more.

based on the csm statement:
46% of 17m = 651,667 albums + 9.18 million singles. (6.63% of sales are albums)

based on the music 2.0 statement:
45% of 20m = 750,000 albums + 11 million singles. (6.38% of sales are albums)

that’s a 15.1% increase for album sales, and a 19.8% increase for singles sales. personally, i expect that gap to continue to widen.

my spin is already on the record (as it were). while that statement was directed at the high end of the music market, i think the concept holds from top to bottom.

as a musician, what you’re creating is a song that captures a tiny piece of that brutal attention market. it’s about getting some attention and building a relationship on top of it. that’s something that an album can do, but it’s not the only way, and it doesn’t work for that many artists. when it works, the single gets your foot in the door, and the album makes it a relationship. once it’s a relationship, it’s yours to lose (for example, by getting busted for lipsynching your whole career).

the problem for many artists is that the pressure to get something “out there” means that a few good tracks are bundled with a bunch of not-so-good tracks and called an album – it’s got 12 tracks, so it’s an album – but it doesn’t work like one. if your audience starts telling their cd player to skip track 2, then track 2 and 3, then 2 and 3 and 6 – you’re not building a relationship, you’re annoying your people.

yes. that kind of album is dead.

the death of the album

But what constitutes an album’s worth of music might also change as artists, freed from the restrictions of a 70-minute CD, could make their collections longer or shorter. If a band only has 20 minutes of good songs, then it doesn’t have to pad out the material.

that i don’t get. i just don’t see how “the restrictions of a 70-minute cd” preclude producing a 20-minute cd… i think the economics have shifted enough that producing a cd with 20 minutes of solid material is the way to go. it’s a very rare artist that can put together 70 minutes of quality material, let alone something that would only be possible once “freed” from the cd.

the csm article couples the death of the album format to the physical format. it’s probably obvious by now that i think that the cd will be with us for a while, so i don’t make that connection. the album was created as soon as a physical format made it possible, and for the subset of artists that can do 10 or more songs and make it coherent and use it to build relationships, the album will remain too.

technology companies and record labels have a great interest in coming up with new formats for delivering music – new formats mean new equipment and repeat sales (buy it on 8-track, buy it again on vinyl, buy it again on cd…).

the package matters to the industry, but not so much to the audience. we’ve seen cylinders and platters and tape and optical – 78s, 45s, lps (1948ish), reels, cassttes (1965ish), elcasette (1977ish), playtape (1967ish), dcc (1992ish), 4-track (1956ish), 8-track (1966ish), minidisc (1993ish), and dat (1984ish). we’re still doing it with superaudio cd and dvd-audio peeking over the horizon – plus the hundreds of other formats that have been cooked up in labs and never made it out. we just want something that will put the sounds we like into our ears.

update (8:22pm): i found this post over at arstechnica suggests that at least at the top of the market, it’s closer to 14 tracks per album. thankfully, that means my 12-per-album figure was generous.

based on the csm statement:
46% of 17m = 558,571 albums + 9.18 million singles. (5.74% of sales are albums)

based on the music 2.0 statement:
45% of 20m = 642,857 albums + 11 million singles. (5.52% of sales are albums)

update (2003.12.12): a different perspective on the phenomenon (my own follow-up based on different data).

update (2003.12.13): i should point out that “album” apparently originated with a collection of 78s, bound in a book format – hence the name and the legacy.

for more on the subject… from the people…
stefan doroschuk
clay shirky
richard hyett (it’s the comment that counts)
paul mcaleer
kevin white
dana blankenhorn
augie deblieck jr
brian w. doss
james guthrie

and from the media….
forbes
usa today
fox
salon [wants your money]

day two didn’t generate much news that i could find, so that leaves me without much to say…

it was supposed to be “the download on downloads” and “the future of radio” with a dash of “taming the peer-to-peer beast” and “remixing the home.”

maybe i’ll find some good diggable quotes later…

the 20-million-downloads number from apple on day one did get picked up in a few [mostly mac] places (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

just remember, that’s not 20 million sales, it’s 20 million tracks 🙂

slashdot points to fox, but you can get more here (zdnet), here (washington post), here (variety) and here (seattle post intelligencer).

no word on whether bradley buckles brigs no-knock warrants and usa patriot-backed secret searches with him to his new employer.

life just got interesting for all the computerless elderly music pirates.

well, despite being passed over for a keynote (that burden being borne by sean ryan of real networks, peter lowe of apple and wayne rosso of optisoft sl), i thought i’d throw a couple cents in the direction of the big industry hoe-down and love fest going on in los angeles.

as a victim of my own philosophy, of course, most of the important answers can be found right here.

(nobody brought a hecklebot….)

the day one agenda includes panels (well, they’re calling themselves “supersession panels”) with great titles like “rip! burn! sue!” and “reinventing the music industry” – then there are the lesser sessions on “what college students and consumers really think about music,” “the battle for consumers: can it be won?” “digital marketing strategies for music”, “the next wave for audio electronics,” and “wireless and mobile music: success stories for new revenue streams”

the agenda doesn’t tell the whole story, and since i didn’t attend, i have to rely on other sources. i found two media reports, one from news.com and another on the ap wire that give some hints. i can only really speculate about the good stuff. so, let the speculation begin.

no surprise, really, that some focus was directed at the 99-cent phenomenon.

news.com

Speaking at the iHollywood Forum’s Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles Monday, executives on both sides focused on the 99-cent price tag that has become the market’s standard for downloadable music.

also no surprise that the people who own the back catalog and are under obligation to preserve the value of the back catalog are feeling some pain at the 99-cent level while others think that 99 cents is too high to reach the mass market.

news.com

Critics say that that price needs to come down if mainstream consumers are to start buying in large numbers, making the Internet a serious factor in the record industry’s bottom line. Record labels say they can’t afford to go lower.

“There’s very little money in this to begin with,” said David Ring, vice president of Universal Music Group’s eLabs division. “A lot of people are already recognizing that we’re going to have to sell a lot more singles at 99 cents in order for us to make money, and for artists to be able to make a living.”

another hint is in the language. sean ryan (vp of the realone music division, which is rhapsody) had this to contribute…

news.com

“That’s where people want to consume, in their stereo, in their home theater system and eventually in their car and cell phone as well,” Ryan said.

which could be evidence that the people on the tech side don’t appreciate where the value is created. it may take some time for the clue to sink in that people aren’t just ears to dump music into… or wallets to extract dollars from.

the bright side, at least for the players involved at this level, is that tech and music are in bed together, to some degree, and people are generally impressed with the itunes volume (which is good, considering the itunes economics – don’t worry, they lose money on each sale, but they make up for it in ipods).

news.com

Apple Computer said Monday that it has now sold more than 20 million songs in fewer than seven months through its iTunes song store.

peter lowe of apple also shared this little bit:

news.com

Apple director of marketing Peter Lowe said that 45 percent of songs downloaded through iTunes had been sold as part of a full album, rather than in single song form. That indicates many people are still interested in purchasing large numbers of songs, or full albums, despite having a la carte options, Lowe said.

interesting number, but i guess it’s my duty to take it to the next level. if 45% of songs are sold in album format, and there are 12 songs per album (i just made that number up), then that means 9 million tracks were sold as albums, which is 750,000 albums, versus 11 million singles. so with 11,750,000 sales made, a little under 6.5% of sales are albums. given some previous numbers, this is a dramatic reversal from about 91.5% of sales in album format. just the fact that the number was presented the way it was suggests that the industry is clinging to the album – apple giving some comfort to the labels with a nice big percentage as opposed to the alternative. that can’t last – it’s about the singles (you can see my version of this here).

news.com

The Macintosh audience may not be representative of the larger market, however, since Apple buyers tend to have higher incomes and greater technological sophistication than the PC audience as a whole, and have previously had less access to the free file-swapping services.

yes, there could be a big difference between the apple market and the walmart market.

news.com

“I don’t think we can look at the old models of how we made money in the past and say we can duplicate them in the new world, that’s not going to work,” said Courtney Holt, head of new media and strategic marketing at Interscope A&M Geffen Records.

indeed…

news.com

“More players are coming into the marketplace,” said David Ring, vice president of business development at Universal Music Group. “But we still have kinks to work out. We don’t have all the artists there, and usually, almost in every case, it’s an artist issue, not a record label issue or a publisher issue.”

whoups. did someone just blame the artists?

the pair is in the middle of a 42-date tour, and just reported results for the first 14 dates. so rather than wait for the final answers, i thought i’d play with some numbers for a bit.

12 of the 14 reported dates were “sellouts” (this may not mean what you think it means, but that’s ok). reported gross is $22.4 million with attendance of 209,679.

$22.4 million/14 = $1.6 million per show.
209,679/14 = 14,977 people per show.

$1.6 million * 42 = $67.2 million for the tour.
14,977 * 42 = 629,034 people for the tour.

a quick flashback to the revenue of top music acts shows that this projection puts simon and garfunkel right in the neighborhood of sir paul mccartney, and way above the next-runner-up rolling stones.

there’s the new plateau for tours: $60+ million. that’s a lot of ramen.

anything less and you’re just not serious.

i’ve occasionally toyed with concepts of dimensions in music, perhaps as a tool to transcend genre for the process of discovering music – a potential solution to the discrimination problem. deep in my brain, i know this isn’t a new train of thought – people have been trying to find good music since the second person started banging on a log (and sucked, by the way… what ever happened to that first guy?).

back in late october (so long ago, now), i left myself a note when i found one thought – a visual approach – to this question. i found that thought among interesting collection of other thoughts on music (recommended reading). i think dan has some great questions – maybe even a few answers in there.

even longer ago – in may of 2002, inspired by quest to map musicians, dan came down a path quite similar to the one i find myself on, and wound up with a “six dimensional” concept (later extended to seven dimensions in the comments). this gives us artists, genre, time, location, esoterica/theme, technique/instrument and utility as potential “dimensions of music.”

i’d like to add that two very, very important dimensions are still missing…

the personal dimension

one is the personal dimension within the set of relationships for a given individual – the stuff that might be called “our songs” – it’s important not for anything thats in or about the music itself, but for some personal connection it’s made with me. an example from my own life is the sickeningly pre-electronica superhit “popcorn” which i will, forever, associate with someone dear to me and 3000 miles away. i’d tell you more, but she’d have to kill you (there is a small, but legitimate risk that she will wander in here and catch you, so i’m doing this for your own good). what i can tell you is that within a small group of people, it’s an “in joke” – so that group of people can mention (or play) “popcorn” and it brings with it a whole array of context and meaning that have nothing to do with the song itself, and everything to do with a particular person. (you’ll find another example in the footnotes).

it’s the minutiae of every individual life that add up to this dimension. it can apply to individual songs, artists or even whole genres. it’s context, on a one-to-one personal level that add relevance to the music. just to complicate things, it’s not a symmetric dimension either. a song means something to me because of my association between the song and someone else, but it’s entirely possible (even likely), that the song was personally associated with the other person for an entirely different (and perhaps now irrelevant) reason – or perhaps not even personally associated with them at all – it’s all in my head

coding this dimension is [probably] fundamentally impossible, so from an application or utilitarian perspective, there isn’t much to work with here. i doubt a person could even “list their personal songs” – but when they hear them, the associations come flooding back, and it’s generally a lifelong relationship.

the cultural dimension

for many people there is a common set of cultural themes that run through their lives and the lives of their peers. this is the power of pop icons – they are the themes of your life. these are the songs that will haunt you forever, that will play on the oldies station when you’re stuck in a nursing home, and that your kids will never, ever understand.

this is a concept i’ve touched on several times (just recently with missy), heavily in the discussions with tim oren. vaguely related to the “time” dimension and the “personal” dimension, this dimension is much easier to define because it’s a pretty solid bet that it’s the popular songs, within the genres you listened to, during your “formative years.”

this dimension will overlap with the personal dimension – that sappy popular hair-metal ballad was playing when you first got to second base. whoups. now you’re stuck with it. don’t feel too bad – that same sappy popular hair-metal ballad was playing when thousands of other people got to second base too. you probably don’t know all those people, but you all know the song.

the cultural dimension defines generations, serves as a common touchstone, and will give you the “echoing through your life” effect as it’s played – seriously or humorously – at reunions, weddings, funerals and all those other events that bring you together with those lifelong friends. these songs give you the quotes, the lyrics, the chord progressions that will “click” for people. it gives you a code, a shorthand, that you feel some ownership with, that you have some confidence “your kinda people” will understand.

still looking for a map

so i’ve complicated the picture, and now there are 9 dimensions. but i still haven’t found what i’m looking for¹….

….but that’s how it works.

¹ that’s the letter u and the numeral 2^2
2 that’s negativland^3
3 that’s ripped from casey

(and you thought this whole derivative music free culture thing was new 🙂 ).

i’ve tinkered with the high end of the music business here, but it’s really not my thing. that said, it’s foolish to ignore the rareified air and amazing dollars floating around up there, and one thing tim oren and i agree on is the cultural significance of these pop stars.

but today (well, yesterday), the new york times shares the missy [elliott] methodology. today we have a third-party comment on a second-party analysis of a pop phenomenon’s formula for success, so the margins of error are, well… grand.

that said, since there is no perfect model, this model has demonstrated success for at least one performer, so it’s worth taking a peek.

lay on the plan

we introduce the plan, in five simple life-changing steps. you can do this easily in just 1440 minutes per day!

step 1: get help
step 2: get into the grooves
step 3: get nasty
step 4: get ripped off
step 5: get over yourself

(you can count out this plan on just one hand. and it works!)

get help

the times article talks about musical collaboration, but i want to take this a couple steps further. nobody can do it all. most bands wouldn’t switch-up their instruments on every gig – sure, your guitarist might be functional on drums, but you got a drummer for a reason. specialization is valuable. consider the variety of skills and talents it takes to make a living in this business of music. embrace the philosophy and realize that you may be a great singer, but if you’ve never managed to balance a checkbook, it’s time to ask for help.

musical collaboration is a great thing (and something i definitely encourage), but that’s just not taking this point far enough. get help. lots of help.

get into the grooves

singles. singles. singles. i talked about it in here, and it’s come up before, but it’s about infecting brains with a single track. for some performers (and this model isn’t for them), a concept album is important – for some it’s critical.

what counts is breaking the ice on that relationship with your audience, and the tool you have to do that is your song. so make it count. make it good. polish it up and practice it and take it to the next level, and then find a way to get it into the ears of your potential fans.

get nasty

controvery helps. at the very least, it gives your audience something to talk about. prince knows it. missy knows it. push boundaries and challenge people. innovate. you may chase off the casual fans – and that’s ok. what will keep you eating better than ramen is the fans that connect with you on a deeper level – the ones that stay with you for years.

get ripped off and
get over yourself

these really overlap a lot for me. embrace your fans even if they are other musicians. take this all the way back to “step 1” and turn it into an opportunity to collaborate.

stay true to yourself and your art, and don’t lose your head (you aren’t all that)

that wasn’t so hard… now get out there and work it!

just in case you needed a specific reason not to exempt the riaa and mpaa, npr has a story about the indie labels suffering under the charms of the riaa – and hints that lawsuits or threats of lawsuits are the only way out.

erin kelly-burkett (fat wreck chords)

“basically, the only way we could get ourselves removed from that site was to threaten to sue them, which i don’t even believe in. i wanted my name off the site, and it really took us saying to them you know, this is defamation of character, this is copyright infringement, which is what.. supposedly you guys are all against right now and basically that’s what you’re doing to me.” –

matt jacobson (relapse records and release entertainment)

“it’s a simple principle. i don’t think they should include labels that are not members. period.”

“someone could say that it’s an honest mistake, and it’s possible, but being that we’re not the only label faced with this, i almost feel that the riaa has deliberately tried to make it look like more of the industry supports them and their actions than what is really the case.”

according to the npr story, it took almost two years to get fat wreck chords off the riaa list – and the riaa won’t comment “on the record.” heh.

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”.