Hasn’t this “debate” been going on for over a decade now? What am I talking about? Online music. News out of the UK is that Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Kaiser Chiefs and The Verve have started a pressure group called Featured Artists' Coalition, the aim of which is to keep the rights to their music and get more of a say in how their music is sold….“online… cough”.
More and more artists have been dipping their toes in the digital pond, with great success, which has caused them to ask questions of their record labels and music publishers. Some of the biggest pro-online bands include the likes of Radiohead, while we all know where our heavy metal pals Metallica stood until recently. There are obviously other objectives of the Coalition, namely to get more money for artists and performers, but it’s a big sign of things to come from the music industry.
MyTake – Funnily enough, I think that the music industry, i.e. the record labels and music publishers, are actually in a good position here. They have so much marketing experience, global reach and most likely huge databases of consumers at their finger tips. The model of yesterday isn’t going to work anymore and the industry needs to look at new revenue models as the artists and performers will increasingly want more of the revenue from direct sales and consumers want to pay less for music – so where is the sweet-spot for the industry? Sell, sell and resell your content and make it easily available to your intended audience, look at new opportunities to expose your artists to new groups and offer them a wide variety of content. The making of an album could spawn several pieces of content that could be sold either to the consumer or funded through advertising – the hi-def song, the low-def song, the making of, the lyrics, album design…the list goes on.
I'll leave you with this snippet from Sky News UK about Radiohead's "bold" online move. Were they first of many?....Probably
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