The music industry is in a long and drawn-out transition phase. The traditional way of doing things: mega marketing budgets, CD sales in the millions, huge non-recoupable advances and thousands of Euro spent on “flowers” backstage is coming to an end and rightly so.
While tried and tested methods of unleashing pop music onto the world will remain, there are less and less global opportunities for new bands out there. Bands know that they can’t wait around for someone to sign them up. That’s why we are seeing so many new methods of PR, funding and sales techniques pop up (Radiohead’s In Rainbows or Josh Freese’s fan packages to name two examples) .
One such band that is aware of the current situation is Irish rock band Audio Fiction. The New York-based band were among the first 100 bands to be included in the Rock Band Network music store which has just launched. The store allows artists to author and submit songs specifically for Rock Band 2. Bassist Darren Korb is apparently a Rock Band expert so he put the song together in a game-compatible format. The song, Racing The Hourglass is available to download alongside artists like The Shins, The Hold Steady, Floggying Molly and Steve Vai for use in the game.
This is a great way for a band to get their music into the ears of new fans but what about the mechanisms of how we buy music these days? Is there anything that can be done to encourage consumers to buy more music?
A recent panel by MusicTank in the UK discussed an interesting idea. It proposed that singles should be released to download stores at the same time that they are made available for radio play.
It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense. Why tease potential customers of your single by allowing radio play of a song for four to six weeks before release date? So an artist can have one week near the top of the charts? This kind of process pushes people towards downloading a leaked version as there is no legal alternative when a person really desires that track. Industry newsletter Record Of The Day cited Dizzee Rascal’s Bonkers as an example. The song was hugely popular before it was released last summer, meaning that if someone wanted to own it before the release date a few weeks later, there were many, many places it could be acquired and none of them were legal.
For this idea to work properly, the industry would have to agree to abandoning the pre-release window across the board. Newspapers, music sites, radio and magazines would also have to change the way they operate. At the very least, it would be some acknowledgement that the way people consume music has changed and it might potentially reduce illegal downloading in the process.
Features
Fri, Mar 19, 2010