I often been asked what is the problem with the music industry. There is a lot of factors but the key point is the fact that it is not a music industry crisis but a support crisis. Why should i pay for a format that i dont like ? The only music that i am still buying is Vinyl.
Interesting to know also that artists never had a bigger part of the pie when CD and digital formats took over the Vinyl.
Manufacturing cost for a vinyl is around 4 to 8 $. In comparaison the CD has a manufacturing cost of 0.4 to 0.8 cents and digital files aprox 0 … let you do the math …
Vinyl is an object of desire, it is non dublicable and a perfect collectible object. It is so far the best way to consume artwork around a music object
In 1996 i started a vinyl distribution company called Chronowax. This company was selling close to a million vinyl per year. I remember when Chronowax did for example campain reissues for Dej Jam and sold more than half a million LPs …
Back then the promotion and viral aspect of the vinyl was key to enter the club scene and the dj’s playlists. Digital happened to be way more effective and a less expensive way of promoting music.
Modern music marketing is about the artist-fan relationship
In the mid 90’s i had been lucky to be involved with some major rap band releases.
As radios were very slow to react, we use to manufacture few hundred thousands of promo CDs, stickers etc for street marketing campaigns. Means that we used to pay almost half a million dollarto be able to give away music, just to get our new band heard by the kids ….
Things done changed, new digital ecosystem is offering services for free that used to be so expensive …
Make sure you are getting the best out of it:
- Get out the traditional album marketing path. Release yourself, Release more music than a traditional label can handle. Remember the mixtape era ?
- Give away music for free, donations, feedbacks, email addresses …Download is the new radio !
- Host your music in one single place and publish it across the internet. Tracking streams and download is the new soundscan.
- Release Objects, Clothes, art, picture discs, books, connected devices, handcraft records… whatever will match your brand and please your fans. CD era might be over but music will never be … digital only …
What can the future do for you? Just came back from one great week in Korea. Main reason for my trip was the Lift Asia Conference which happened on Jeju Island. The conference explored how entertainment technologies are now reaching far beyond simple leisure, offering solutions to fields like education, health or entertainment.
We definitly have to look up for those oriental markets when it comes to understand the near future of our own markets. As china is already in a post piracy mode, we can discover great ways to publish and monetize cultural contents totaly out of the loop of the old media industry models.
Nice presentation from Bernie Cho explaining the Korean music ecosytem. Itunes is almost M.I.A. Main digital music players are Cyworld, Melon and bugs. Both LG and Samsung are about to operate they own digital stores before “allowing” Apple to launch their own local operation. Keep in mind that Itunes would mean Iphones sales and therefore free wifi access to tons of servicesin a pretty much closed market …
For the record, Bernie is also manager of Tablo who has an awesome new album out now.
Korean Geek scene.
Giant Hi-top in front of an ABC-MART store in Seoul
And i even found time to surf also this cool korean local spot that ended up to be pretty fun.
Big shout out at Asiance team (Olivier, Marie, Bosun) Fred @ mixin,Didier @ alpict, The great Ms J, Laurent Haug and Lift team, Benjamin Jeffe, Gold Dragon …
Been playing brazilian music this week at the Fairtilizer Thursdays in Geneva. Made me want to do a tape so here it is: a samba and bossa mixtape. A bit of classics blend with some rare germs. hope you will enjoy it.
Week at the office was intense. Traffic is going up and Fairtilizer.com had some down time. Working on scalability and its already better.
We recently had one clic twitter and facebook integration on track pages and more and more artists are using those services with public or private URLs including links to download, to buy etc .... Quite a fast and easy way to deliver music to medias, fans and friends.
I dont know that much about this track but it is banging for real. Rough while funky, its a strange mix of gangsta rap, dancehall and carioca funk. if any one has more info please drop a line !
Another perfect example of why intellectual property law needs to be updated in order to be relevant in today’s new music ecosytem. Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman, is scoring more than a million view with this collage/mashup of youtube amateurs musician videos. Copying ? derrivative ? def not. Wired magazine is running a great interview of Kutiman Here. Worth reading.
Been working as a music executive since 15 years. Focusing on A&R and new media strategies, i am currently launching fairtilizer.com, a new music service company. I ride BMX and Snowboard when i have time. Currently living in Geneva, Switzerland.
