Joe Ryder, (a)g

How To Kill The Music Industry | TorrentFreak 

I appreciate everything discussed by Jens Roland on TorrentFreak’s blog, but I am concerned by the history count he offers and the glance-over of a fundamental truth: the internet is the catalyst for the entertainment industry’s downfall, but it is both a result of free accessibility and the narrowing of consumption mediums. Musicians, filmmakers, artists, thespians… we are all content providers now.

I searched for a definition of “content provider” on Google. Even Wikipedia doesn’t have a direct link to its definition (I think I might want to start that page). The closest available definition was on Dictionary.com. In the context that I and other people in the internet industry have used this term, none of the definitions given on Google were accurate. So let me first define what a content provider is in terms we can use.

content provider

A person or entity that distributes audio, visual, written or moving image creative works over available mediums to audiences for consumption and possible redistribution. May also be a creative designer who creates original content and distributes it through available mediums.

This is as accurate as I can make it. Given the content you are producing or distributing, you will have specific opportunities to serve the content to consumers. Many of you will look at this definition as a marketing term. Not so, and the broadness of this term may be more poignant than you first realize.

Think back to the 1800s and what content providers there were back then. In reality, there was no difference. The delivery methods were drastically primitive, but, when you think about it, available mediums were not expanded from the printing press until around 1897 when Marconi launched the first radio station (even recording devices back then were not intended for speech or music until about 1912). So most of the delivery methods of content (paintings, poems, stageplays, musical performance, photography) were delivered in person. But the content was not much different in terms of final product than what we see today.

Really, it is capitalism and the modern licensing process that has starkly separated the art forms. One cannot clearly write a distribution license, and therefore a model of repayment, without defining the content being provided. So musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, dancers, theater performers, screen actors, digital artists, animators, writers, poets, photographers, mixed media artists… these people had to live in a title. If they crossed the streams, they could find definition only within the last 20 years as a “multimedia designer”.

While it is easy to analyze the recent anti-piracy crusades and the recording industry’s claims that piracy is its only real competition, it is more ambitious and productive to analyze consumption. After all, even in the black market there is legal demand (for instance, child photography for fashion, clothed, rather than sexual exploitation).

The problem the music industry faces is the subservient role of music today. When we think of music, we don’t experience it like we used to. I remember songs based on source, for instance. If I’ve heard a song in a movie scene’s background audio or on GarageBand.com, that is the association I make every time I hear it in the future. Rage Against the Machine’s song Wake Up was the ending music for the Matrix, and even though I found out it was on their very first album later on, I still remember it as Neo flying off into the atmosphere over the city. Then I remember the track Killing in the Name off of that same album as the first RATM song I ever downloaded off the internet: in 1997 on the original Napster.

Similar associations are made when consumers receive the music performance over radio, CD, iTunes, last.fm, YouTube, shared MP3, television or live venue. There is this assumption that music is in the background, a soundtrack to life. The only ones engrossed in music consumption as a practice are underprivileged teenagers, those who have nothing better to do than put ear buds on, crank their cheap MP3 players and draw in their rooms or while mowing the lawn (I know; that was me 13 years ago). I say underprivileged teens because those with money are still donning headphones as a soundtrack while they play WoW.

The lines between licensing and mediums are blurring. The internet is becoming the predominant channel of distribution for everything from movies to music, photography to dance performances, television to poetry compilations. Every kind of content can be downloaded, streamed, viewed, purchased and experienced online. Waiting for your favorite music videos on cable, buying a CD at Best Buy, going to an art museum, listening to the over-the-air radio stations at home and watching “Wicked” at a local theater venue are all becoming a second thought. The same list of activities are now happening online: respectively, watching music videos on YouTube, downloading albums from iTunes or direct from the musician’s site, watching a slideshow of a famous art exhibit on Flickr, getting commercial-free radio from last.fm or imeem or watching a shaky recording of “Wicked” on Google Video.

The truth is no one is going to forgo their ability to get free content if they can help it. What was common sense back when the album, as a medium, was invented (it was cheaper to get a collection of songs rather than a bunch of song singles), that consolidation of content worked because there was no cheaper option other than radio. Now, music is free all over the world. Good for listeners, bad for musicians. No revenue means no making a living as a musician.

Historically, and in my more recent experience talking to musicians in the Portland area, the only real money coming in is in live shows. This is not a great opportunity, seeing as most bands are three to five people and must split any profit from the night. A typical band plays an average of three shows a week in my experience, which, at a common take of $300 for the night, means each musician is making only $3oo a week, about minimum wage. Sure, as bands get popular they may make more. But income is inconsistent, and, again, many audiences will forgo a local bar cover charge if they can watch a decent recording of a show online. 

So musicians, as content providers, need to start looking beyond music.

In later posts, I will outline my suggestions. I am broadcasting this set of blog posts both on my personal blog, thoughtryder, and on my main site’s interactive marketing blog, JoeRyder.com.