In a post about the Pebble watch (which I really, really want and am considering donating to so I can get one in September for less than retail value and without waitlists), Bob Lefsetz wrote this about the music industry and my mind was kind of blown. 

I’ve thought about this in a kind of abstract way, but not in so many words as he put it here, likening it to a season ticket like in sports, where if you have the passion and the resources, you can buy a pass to see an artist X number of times. They can put in incentives to bump the price up and blah blah, but God, I would do this for Coldplay and The Strokes (I think it’s more suited towards a Coldplay-type band than a Strokes-type band). I basically already DO for Coldplay, without the pass part and without the incentives part. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this except for the fact that I can see this being profitable depending on the artist and a hot commodity for fans and it should be tried out by someone that already has a good fanbase. 

I’m otherwise completely neutral on John Mayer, but his new ticketing policy just pushed him into my good books. 

EVERYONE should be doing this. 

This is SO PERFECT and submitted by one of the people on here that I have the best conversations with. 

stateofkind:

The music industry sucks, so let’s make it better!

One of the reasons I rarely purchase music is the way in which revenue is shared between artists (10%), distributers (30%), and record companies (60%). It would be very ignorant to simply state this as unfair, because such companies are necessary to facilitate the creation and distribution of music. They provide vital services and deserve their fair share in revenue. The problem I’m addressing here is therefore not the presence of middlemen in the music industry, but the lack of options to support talented artists.

I am totally okay with the idea of paying for music, and I’m sure many more people would be, if a bigger share would go directly to the artist. After all, now that music is no longer a physical product and freely available on the web, the only reason for me to buy music is to support artists I like. However, because of aforementioned reasons, purchasing music feels more like funding corporate wallets than supporting my favorite artists. I’d have to buy three albums before an artist could buy a simple coffee with my money. That doesn’t seem right, does it?

To persuade people like me into buying music, services like iTunes should provide options that focus on supporting artists directly. One possible feature that would certainly make me purchase music more often, would be the ability to tip artists. I made an iTunes mockup (above) to illustrate how this could work. I could be wrong, but this solution seems like a reasonable win-win for all parties involved. 

I think this is a cool idea, but I really don’t think more people would be happier for paying for their music, or more than they already do for their music, if they knew more of it went directly to the artist. Of course, I’m talking in a broad sense, but I think the main reason people illegally download is simply because it’s so easy to, just as easy as it is to pay for their music, without the annoying paying part. (Also the price of music, but I’m less familiar with the value of music in today’s culture—all I know is that it has passed the point of commodity and turned into something akin to a necessity, something people believe they have a right to). Piracy is pretty much irreversible at this point, and has been irreversible for many more years than the music industry is willing to admit. They STILL won’t really admit it. I really buy into the idea that streaming is the only real tool that has any hope of tackling the piracy problem, but a lot of musicians are the ones digging in their heels on that issue. 

Also, I don’t think most people are even aware that the labels get the lion’s share of record sales anyway. A big (and ignorant) excuse I see that people use to justify piracy is that “[insert artist here] is rich enough already.” Even for the more indie artists, a common assumption is that if you’ve made it somewhat big with a record deal and a moderately popular single or album in some circles, you’re living the high life, when that’s often not the case, but it’s common perception, so I’m not sure if “tipping” an artist would catch on unless there was more common knowledge about how these things actually work, and these deals and industry structures are rapidly sinking as it is. I’m not necessarily trying to advocate throwing more money at labels because they’re dead in the ground anyway and the executives at the top of the food chain get disproportionately huge salaries and bonuses, but at least some of the money that goes to a label also goes towards paying the salaries of the hundreds of people at the label that heavily rely on their jobs (which are unfortunately pretty doomed regardless, but at least it supports the ones that are left while the industry still clings onto the antiquated structure of yesterday). I’m mostly talking in terms of the major labels, for clarification.

There was a really great Lefsetz post about the over/under pricing/valuing of music on places like iTunes and Amazon as well, but of course I can’t find it. 

(PS: the chart linked to is from April of last year and kind of outdated, and doesn’t include performance or publishing royalties, which are a HUGE part of the picture as well—a friend pointed this out to me about that specific chart a few months ago. This is the full version of that chart, with the footnotes)