Thursday, February 24, 2011

Green is for the Money, Gold is for the...MP3? (Blog Prompt #4)

Ahh...the music industry, the biggest pimp game since...well...the pimp game.  Selling sound, fricken genius!  It couldn't last forever, could it?  It can if these big time execs are willing to adapt to this new age.  Execs look at the Internet as a threat, but it could be a gold mine.  I believe it will, but it will be a slow process and be done by genre.  I think hip-hop/urban music has already adapted to the change, even before the Internet explosion.  With mainstream labels initially shying away from signing hip-hop acts, a lot of artists had to learn how to cut out the middle man and market themselves without the backing of a major label, Russell Simmons' Def Jam Records, Eric "Eazy E" Wright's Ruthless Records, or Marion "Suge" Knight's Death Row Records for example. 

The music industry is just going to have to learn how to skim money from their artists without the guise of packaging and marketing costs.  Executives think the Internet is bad because it will cost them old money, when in actuality they could make new money without the burden of the before mentioned costs.  You look at the Justin Beiber craze, that just snuck up on us it seemed and initially with virtually no corporate backing.  I actually read an article about how Percy "Romeo" Miller Jr. is converting his father's, Percy "Master P" Miller Sr., No Limit Record label into a fully digital label, releasing only music in the digital format, no hard copy.  I think that is refreshing to watch someone turn with the curve instead of against it.  The possibilities are endless.  There are even websites (Kickstarter and Sellaband) that allows fans to donate money on line to help their favorite artists produce albums, Public Enemy brought one of these sites notoriety when they produced an album through them a couple years ago.  How cool is that?  You can figure out the exact demand for your product down to the penny.

1 comment:

  1. I didn't realize Public Enemy had used Sellaband to produce an album. Very cool. When bands can turn to their fans to directly fund their music-- and issue digital only albums without the intermediary of the Sony's and Warner Brother's of the world--you know the music industry's pimping days are numbered.

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