My 2010 Winter Musings

While I was on my winter break, skiing in many feet of fresh pow, I had many opportunities to discuss music trends with the younger set, those mainly on snowboards while I still use the traditional ski. I find that catching up with people while they recreate provides some of the most honest opinions and you can certainly learn a lot that way if you listen up. Last year was a very interesting year in music and I though I would share my thoughts on a breakthrough star and what it could mean to the (near) future of music.
I want to confess right off the bat, I am no fan of Lady Gaga's music and while I freely admit that some of her tunes are quite catchy and her (1001) costumes are indeed eye popping, she is, in fact, far too "pop music" for my tastes. However, when it comes to marketing herself and selling music in a digital age, she takes a back seat to nobody. It is really an excellent case study in how to sell music in today's digital age.
Case in point; Lady Gaga's massive digital sales, almost all of them iTunes downloads, really only tell a small part of the overall story. The real truth is, much of Gaga's audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to free streams, indeed by the hundreds of millions, on YouTube and the other online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By extreme contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009. A difference (among many) between Gaga and the frumpy Scotswoman discovered on a British TV talent show: Ms. Boyle's material, including "Amazing Grace," was traditional—and so were most of her buyers. Some 97% of her albums were sold on compact disc.
"That tells you how pronounced the generational divide is," says BigChampagne founder Eric Garland. When it comes to the free streams that dwarf her still-impressive sales, Gaga isn't giving it away for nothing—musicians typically earn fractions of a penny each time a song is streamed on Yahoo, for instance. While most artists stand to profit more from high-margin CD sales, being embedded across the Web can pay dividends in exposure and the loyalty of fans.
In my humble opinion, the music biz needs many more Gagas. The failure to realize what digital music means over the last decade has forced the major record companies to cut their work force by 60% or more, just last month, dozens of Universal Music Group employees were laid off. Even Gaga's own publicist took a buyout and his job won't be filled. Labels have had to change their relationship with artists and lean on new partners, including the talent managers they often squabbled with in the past and the live show is becoming the important staple it was back in the 1960s, yes, do I ever feel old...
All of this upheaval has given rise to, in industry speak, the 360 deal, in which a label invests more money up front (for marketing, for example) in exchange for a piece of merchandise sales, touring revenue and other earnings that artists had long kept for themselves. Think Live Nation. This is more and more the future of mainstream music and I think the future bodes well for the industry if it can produce more Lady Gagas. What do you think? Please feel free to email me with your comments, I love to read them, even if you think I am crazy.

The Peacock Fades Fast...

I have a lot of respect for Jack Welch, but his final years at GE could have been better spent trying to rid the company of a boat anchor named NBC. GE probably had no business acquiring it to begin with but while he was at the helm, NBC was still a fine broadcasting company. Times have changed and so have things at the once proud peacock. Example; NBC News and MSNBC have gone so far left in the editorial content, it is an embarrassment now days and utterly unwatchable unless you have hate in your heart for former President Bush and the GOP. Example; Sunday Night Football has been polluted by the likes of the spiteful and petty Keith Olberman from the aforementioned MSNBC and the NBC Sports mental midget Bob Costas, who together have run the pre-game broadcast (and halftime show) into the ground. It has been beyond horrible this year and you can thank the washed up (sports programming guru) Dick Ebersol for that genius move in the booth. He has been in the job too damn long and has apparently lost his bearings. And what knucklehead thought moving Jay Leno to the 10pm slot was going to work out? Loading up his guest list for the first two weeks with the liberal tripe from it's own shell of a news division (can we really call it that?) certainly didn't help matters and booking conservative talker Rush Limbaugh once in the subsequent weeks seemed a desperate move to me. Even Jay looks uncomfortable as of late. NBC has been mired in third (or fourth/last) place for so long it would take a novel to chronicle all the programming boondoggles that have taken place in recent years and I won't be going there in this short missive. The whole NBC Universal Telemundo idea was about as bad as AOL Time Warner and look how that all worked out!

Now, we have the news that General Electric Co. and Comcast Corp have agreed on a valuation of around $30 billion for what remains of NBC Universal. Besides the real estate and the Universal movie catalog, what will Comcast actually get for it's money? Probably just the NBC name, because, sadly, there just isn't much anything left of value at the peacock network anymore. Anybody remember what happened to the once mighty ATT brand we all grew up with? I see the same scenario working out here because, to be frank, the way I see it, the "NBC brand" is all that's left as the once mighty peacock fades into the future...

Digital Shrink Wrap

As CD sales continue to slide and digital music sites such as iTunes and Amazon are very slow to add new artists and independent labels, ideas, both good and bad, continue to generate talk among some of the forward thinking minds in the music industry. One such idea whose time is rapidly approaching could help completely change the music landscape and also generate much needed revenue streams for music labels, big and small. I am talking about the "digital shrink wrap" concept which, at this particular time, could easily be summed up as an iPhone app but in the future will likely expand to include all matter of portable media devices as more and more of us drop the CD/DVD and just go completely digital.

A recent perusal of submitted music apps in the iTunes App Store turns up the fact that out of 20 submissions, 6 of them are "single artist apps", basically apps written around a popular musician or group that in one degree or another showcases music videos, photos, news, photo-jumble games, concert listings, and/or community features that let fans share photos with each other. The one thing they all have in common is that they were made with iLike’s iPhone app toolkit, a relatively simple process from a service I recommended over a year ago. These artist-specific apps, which music labels currently develop in-house, place a constantly-updating tattoo on fans’ phones. It’s like having a music subscription, but in the sense of a fan club, rather than in the sense of subscribing to music in general as one would with a company like Rhapsody. If you have a Blackberry, it works like your (push) email, always updating every now and then, keeping you completely up to date on what the artist or label is promoting at any given date. Today, many of the apps are free, but I see the future as more of a monetized affair where apps cost anywhere from 1-5 dollars or even more for the hardcore fan who is willing to pay for in depth material the casual listener may not have the time for.

So things continue to percolate in the digital world of distribution and it is becoming clear to me that the real innovation right now sits with the audio heads rather than the visual geeks. That makes sense because the music industry has been dealing with a more pronounced downturn in sales for a longer period of time. I am sure things will start to even out between the two sides though, innovation does actually spur more innovation. In all complete candor, the app store broke the rules for selling music through iTunes, and the ramifications of that fact are just now beginning to be felt. Today, many other mobile platforms are emulating (or attempting to) Apple’s modular app concept whether Apple likes it or not. The app trend is truly massive and leads me think the "artist-specific app" could actually become a formidable music format in its own right, and, if that happens, the idea of buying a bundle of music won’t die with the album/CD, it will survive with the app. That should make music lovers everywhere happy...

What do you think about (music) apps for mobile devices? Is it all too much or something that will possibly change the way you digest music today or in the future? Email me with your thoughts, I always look forward to getting your comments.