elarson’s posterous

I just read this blog from Tim Bray. Let me start by saying Tim is a smart guy that deserves to be listened to. With that in mind, I think TIm's view of the music industry is a little stuck in the mainstream, which I believe has an impact on his perspective. The thing that I've been seeing from the standpoint of a band that is trying to make things happen, is the focus on licensing. People have essentially given up on selling music for profit and instead have turned to those select few who need music for advertising. The money is much better and the amount of work required is an order of magnitude smaller in comparison to what is needed to be successful selling a CD.

When you think of most larger bands, they have a label, management, booking agent and quite possibly press person. This is important because this reflects the amount of work it takes for a record to be anywhere close to profitable. Breaking a band is such a great concept because it suggest that they are selling their music to the masses. The reality is that they are selling their music at an extreme discount in hopes that they will be noticed and in turn considered for other opportunities that pay exceptionally well. When Apple says they want to use a band for their commercials, the respective band realizes that they have just hit the jackpot. The band represents something "cool" and Apple is responsible for paying for that credential. Apple will have to pay something serious not only because the precieved publishing value is high, but b/c Apple does a good job marketing and will garner a large audience.

The way these sorts of licensing deals usually work is that there is an amount of money up front for publishing. That is usually is money givent to the song writer and the artist performing the track. If you google a bit, you'll see the 200% concept where 100 goes to the writer and the other 100 going to the artist that performed the track. With this publishing side of thing wrapped up, the next thing to consider is the mechanical royalties. This measures the audience and pays according the number of people who heard the track. That is why a band that has a song in a super bowl commercial would get paid incredibly well. The audience is huge.

The whole point being is that the real money is in licensing. Sure, bands make money on the road, but that is negligible compared to a great placement with the new hot HBO series or commercial. A band can get 40k right out of the gate for something like the title track of a show. This easily dwarfs the profits and cost of selling a record. This means that the focus for fans may be noble and respectable, but doesn't translate into making a living. To make a real living in writing and performing rock music, you have consider how your music could be used to advertise a product or represent something.

This is not to say that bands should simply become jingle writers. Honestly, there is a huge amount of content, so making an effort to rack up on licensing doesn't make financial sense when there are legitimate (albeit less profitable) means of selling music.The problem is that people working with artists are realizing that there is less money using traditional means and they hope licensing can make up the difference. This leads to labels and bands alike considering how they can write music that no only reflects themselves artistically, but also might be a good track for a movie.

Personally, I hope some concept of selling music returns in one way or another. Pop music has become truly commercial in the jingle sense and indie music is not far behind. There are some great bands making great music of course and many of them are commercially viable. My concern is the bands that wouldn't sound good selling something getting overlooked where in the past they had an excellent chance of being successful. There is also many cases of artists that have tapped into the web in a way that maximizes thier profit and cuts out the middleman. Currently, that feels like a niche group, but hopefully the patterns they use can become more standardized and people more knowledgible. For the moment, the style of those artists making money from audiences on the internet is not clashing or at ends with each other. For many artists, it just isn't the case where heavy direct communication and song writing contests work within their artistic vision.