Looking toward the future

It doesn’t take an expert to see that the music industry is struggling. Well comparatively speaking of course. Artists are still becoming millionaires, but record sales are way, way down. Slate.com reported that music sales were down 20% in the first three months of 2007, and the top selling albums were moving 60,000-65,000 copies per week. Those sales would not have even cracked the top 30 in 2005. (Other industries were bitten by the internet bug as well)

It remains to be seen whether the industry will remain, or if musicians will soon have to all be part of the growing population of starving artists.

The debate on whether music downloading is good or bad for the music industry will go on probably forever, but that issue is not the important one. The key will be how artists and labels utilize the internet to it’s advantage. The internet holds many possibilities in a market that has been taken over by iPods and mp3s.

Already experts and artists have begun to discuss and experiment with business plans that utilize what the internet has to offer. Several albums have been released on a tip jar model within the past year. As I have previously mentioned in this blog before, the most notable example is Radiohead’s In Rainbows that was released last fall. They released their album online and offered it for whatever price the person downloading it wanted to pay. So you could pay $20 or nothing and still get the music. Of course they also released the album in stores later on to get sales, but Radiohead tried something new and it was a popular story with media outlets and well received by listeners (though, who doesn’t like good free music?). Rolling Stone went on to call it The Future According to Radiohead in a recent cover story.

It was also a hit with other artists as well, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (see the snazzy photo above) along with recent Nike commercial soundtrack contributor and hip-hop poet Saul Williams followed suit.
Both Reznor and Williams talked with New York Magazine to talk about the decision. I found what Reznor said to be a very interesting take on the situation:

“I think it’s just an awkward time right now to be a musician. The reality is that people think it’s okay to steal music. There’s a whole generation of people, that’s all they’ve known. I used to buy vinyl. Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks — if not two months — before it comes out. There’s no real way around that. I’m truly saddened because I think music has been devalued, so that it’s just a file on your computer, and it’s usually free. But we can’t change that. What we can do is try to offer people the best experience that we can provide them. Will it work? I don’t know. But I think it’s a great way to get music out to people who are interested. At the end of the day, all I care about is the integrity of the music, and that the feeling of those who experience it is as untainted as possible.”

So far the model hasn’t proved to be a success or a failure. No one has released numbers, but the music is getting to a lot of people over the internet legally.

Rick Karr did a story for NPR outlining three other business models that artists are currently using to make money out of their music via the internet. Two are currently viable: searching the internet for a sponsor and using micro-payments from listeners. Neither are hugely profitable, but they are substitutes for major label support. The third is taxing the internet, which may soon be the norm, but right now is not viable because Internet service providers don’t feel they are responsible for the acts of their users. To suggest ISPs should pay for user downloaded music is preposterous to them. However, all three of these ideas are good starts to a solution.

The internet is also forcing bands and labels to think outside of the system of releasing records, in an attempt to minimize the leaks (mentioned by Reznor above). The Raconteurs and Gnarls Barkley released their new albums as a surprise. The Raconteurs released theirs a week after it was announced they had a new album. They did so without the traditional promotional and radio build up. Gnarls Barkley announced they were releasing their album “Now,” a couple weeks before it was originally scheduled.

Blogs are also becoming very popular among musicians, this week Velvet Revolver are on the verge of breaking up over blog posts (Drummer Matt Sorum and Singer Scott Weiland). It’s great when the rock and roll drama finally moves from the stage to the blog-o-sphere, it makes the job of finding out much easier. British musician Lilly Allen established her blog, that is now on her official website, on Myspace way before she had a hit single. Among others artists that have blogs are Rivers Cuomo, Radiohead and multitudes of popular independent musicians (a list of some can be found at fingertips).

Artists and labels are definitely beginning to get out of their traditional box, and are attempting to use their supposed “Kryptonite” to boost sales or just to get the music to the people. It remains to be seen whether these experiments will actually work for the actual business, but at this point it is definitely the thought that counts.