Week 6- Digital Marketplace for Musicians

For this week’s readings I gathered a mixture of peer-reviewed journal articles and blog postings from prominent industry figures in order to get a clearer picture of the range of digital marketing options for independent musicians.

These readings helped contextualize first the history of music marketing and its various stages, revealing that the music industry model has, in many ways, come full circle. “Interpersonal music marketing” was the first incarnation of delivering music to an audience, direct from musician to consumer (Ogden, Ogden & Long, 120). With the development of recording technology, radio, distribution channels, and the 20^th century music business model many more components and players were introduced to the process. One effect of these developments was to galvanize resources and power at level of the major record label, resulting in ballooning profit margins and less control for the artist (ibid, 123-124).

Beginning in the later 1990s, these business models slowly collapsed in spectacular fashion, victims of their own avarice and the stiff resistance to shifts in digital music distribution and consumption. The wake of this disintegration has left the remnants of these labels and artists alike struggling to find new ways of generating sustainable revenue streams (significantly less than the salad days of the pre-naughties). One such strategy (and completing the aforementioned historical “circle” of music marketing) is what is known as the “direct to fan” business model- websites like Bandcamp et al. that allow musicians to sell directly to their fan base. In the case of Bandcamp, the artist’s page can be set up to allow consumers to set the price they are comfortable paying for the product or allowing for a donation type scenario. Berklee School of Music’s music marketing guru Mike King blogs about the band Metric, what he describes as a “middle class” act who sell in the vicinity of 50,000 copies of a given release (King, 2). This is less than what a major act would sell, but still, coming from an underground musician background myself, is certainly a benchmark of sustainable success. King goes on to show that the direct to fan marketing can work for mega-acts like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, etc. as well as mid-size bands like Metric. This business model works in that it greatly reduces the costs associated with bloated record label production and distribution methods, allowing for a much higher profit margin for the artist. I plan to look into the success of this model for smaller independent artists as a part of my larger research project. Watch this space…

Running counter to some of the conventional thinking on the current state of artist survival, Chris Wochagg believes that there is still a way for musicians to focus on the production of music as their main source of revenue. The more common viewpoint sees the music that artists create as “calling cards,” generating little revenue from sales but increasing the artist’s cache and profile (which in turn can allow for sustainable revenue streams from performances, merchandising, etc.). He argues that if online music services were set up in a more “transparent” manner (e.g. defining what amount of money the artist will receive from any given purchase) fans would be more willing to part with their money. He advocates for a “fairtrade” music policy similar to the programme set up for coffee producers (Wochagg, 1). Unfortunately, as one blog commenter points out, this doesn’t take into account that music, unlike coffee, can be shared and re-consumed infinitely through digital means. It also is slow to recognize that music consumers are increasingly moving toward “access models” of music distribution like Spotify, which allow consumers to enjoy music without actually owning it (Wikström, 7).

Works Cited

King, Mike. “Direct to Fan Model Working for Metric.”mikeking.berkleemusicblogs.com. Accessed Sept. 14, 2012. http://mikeking.berkleemusicblogs.com/2009/04/16/direct-to-fan-model-working-for-metric/

Lefsetz, Bob. “Today’s Music Business Paradigm.” Lefstetz.com. Accessed Sept. 14, 2012.             http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/12/17/to days-music-business-paradigm/

Ogden, James R., Denise T. Ogden, and Karl Long. “Music marketing: A history  and landscape.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18 (2011): 120–125.

Wikström, Patrik. “A Typology of Music Distribution Models.” International Journal of Music Business Research 1:1 (April 2012): 7-20.