Digital

The digital age, more music than ever, but most of it is shit

By | Published on Wednesday 14 July 2010

So, the problems, or not, of a more level playing field in the music domain have been aired more publicly than normal this week thanks to an interview in Wired with Tommy Boy man Tom Silverman who – while you may not agree with his opinions and you might question the stats he uses to justify them – is always interesting to listen to.

Silverman, who has previously questioned the ability of the DIY approach to launch new bands (ie he argues new talent still need a record label and six figure budget to get established), recently gave an interview in Wired in which he discussed the thousands of artists who are now self-releasing, capitalising on the fact that in the internet age anyone can get their music stocked in download stores like iTunes, utilising user-friendly independent distribution platforms like TuneCore.

But, Silverman reckons, the vast majority of the people selling music that way – 80% he claims – are selling only a handful of copies. These are not professional musicians, he reckons, but “hobbyists” who happen to have their music on iTunes via TuneCore.

In itself, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of those hobbyists may be future pop stars at the start of their careers. And, even if they’re not, and their music simply isn’t good enough to ever interest more than a handful of people, why shouldn’t everyone be able to get their music online?

Except, Silverman argues, all that music – a lot of it pretty mediocre – is clogging up the internet and making it harder for the real talent to get through, certainly without a largish record company on board and significant marketing budget to spend.

He told Wired: “Some companies like TuneCore [are building their businesses based on the thousands of tiny selling musicians] because they get the same $10 whether you sell one copy or 10,000. [But that is] cluttering the music environment with crap, so that the artists who really are pretty good have more trouble breaking through than they ever did before”.

Having picked specifically on TuneCore in the interview, it’s not surprising that that company’s co-founder Jeff Price felt the need to respond, and he has done just that via a rather long blog posting on his company’s website.

He points out, as Silverman critics have done before, that the Tommy Boy chief’s stats are often based on album sales rather than single sales, and that in the digital era the latter are becoming more important than the former. Price also suggests that Silverman’s criticism of the DIY approach and everyone-is-welcome distribution services like TuneCore is based on a fear that old-school record label chiefs – like Silverman – can no longer control what music we, the music consuming public, get access to.

Of course, the levelling of the music distribution playing field that has come about because of the web and services like TuneCore is in many ways brilliant, and for some artists – who would probably have never been signed to a label, but who might be able to generate and service a big enough fan base to make a living – the whole thing is hugely liberating.

But then Silverman is right to point out that while distribution is a whole lot easier now than it used to be, that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to launch a band, even if you’re only aiming for nominal commercial success.

And while it is possibly true that in the future there will be more small-time bands who make a sufficient (but no more) living from their music, and less globe-trotting millionaire popstars – which is possibly a good thing – that doesn’t mean everyone who puts there music online will be able to give up the day job. Many bands will still fail, and as there are more bands than ever, more bands than ever will fail. Silverman would presumably argue that aspiring music types should be aware of that fact.

To be fair to Mr Tommy Boy, while critical of the DIY approach, he isn’t holding on to traditional record industry business models either. On the contrary, in the same Wired interview he says the traditional record deal has had its day, and advocates the 50/50 label/band business venture model that an increasingly number of clever people in both the label and management community seem to be advocating.



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