A True Story - Presented as a Fairy Tale: The State of the Music Industry

Once upon a time, there was a dense forest that opened up into a huge maze called The Music Industry. This industry created a machine so vast and finely tuned, that when leveraged, it controlled well over 70% of the music market. It created huge profits for the major record labels and their stakeholders. They ruled the land and airwaves for decades.

Then one day, a new type of machine appeared. It was comprised of a network of computers across the globe that connected people to each other and to a world full of information. It was called the internet, and it had grown up in the shadows of the once vibrant music industry. This internet incidentally, had itself given birth to a number of babies called new technologies. These new technologies when partnered with the internet allowed the masses to interact with each other. These new tools allowed users to share their joy, their goodwill, their aspirations and their talents with each other.

The first set of birth children inspired by that union was Napster, and a successive host of similar other siblings. Then a generation later, even newer technologies were born that threatened to unseat the behemoth machines that the labels had now become. It was a new world order - filled with MP3 players, virtual interfaces and social networking pimp-stations. Then one day, came the newest baby of the family and its brightest star. The baby was called the iPod and its interface was known as iTunes. And together they changed the way things were done in the music business industry forever… and ever.

~The End~

(...but, as you all know, this is real life and the story doesn't end...

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Hello friends,

My name is Mimi Jones (all my friends call me BB) and I am one of the principals of Blaqberri Entertainment (d/b/a/ Blaqberri Management & Consulting). The above "fairy tale" is very obviously my own oversimplification of the state of the music industry at the moment. I do believe, however, that the story clearly underscores the power of new technologies and their symbiotic relationship with the vast digital landscape that is the internet. The possibilities are limitless for those who tap into these new resources and learn how to leverage them to grow their music careers and their music related businesses.

Artists who’ve never had a deal with a major record label are appearing in relatively significant numbers these days in coveted spots on a number of music industry charts. New music (indie/independent music) is popping up on terrestrial, internet, and satellite radio - again, in significant numbers while others cruise the digital underground through podcasts and You Tube appearances. But at the end of the day artists are getting their aural and visual fare "fed" directly to the consumer by doing it themselves. These days, this is referred to as D-I-Y – "Do It Yourself".

Today, there are many resources available to the bourgeoning artists that were previously only available to the major players in the music industry. With these new resources, come a growing number of entrepreneurs who are creating new businesses to help artists navigate a terrain that was once the stronghold of the mighty record label machine.

I am one of those entrepreneurs and I know there are many others like me out here who are at varied stages of achievement. Many of them armed with the know-how to assist new artists in charting their own course for a successful career in the industry, or just simply pointing them in the right direction.

Since I am a sucker for a good ending, I will be keeping you posted about continuing changes in the industry, while turning you on to hot new music from artists you probably never heard of in your life.

Stay Chill!
Mimi Jones

THE NEW PARADIGM IN MUSIC: IT'S CALLED THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

The following is an article that I shared on my Blaqberri MySpace page with my readers back in August of 2007. I added it here simply because there is still relevance.

The Full Text Of Banned LA Times "Free Music" Column

A few days ago The LA Times killed a column by Patrick Goldstein advocating more free music giveaways like Prince’s recent UK newspaper deal. The move was apparently to avoid music industry backlash. Here is the full text of the banned column:

"How would you like to pick up this newspaper one day and get a free CD or an MP3 file of new music from one of your favorite musicians? Earlier this month England’s Mail on Sunday and Prince — two symbols of two embattled businesses — stuck their big toes into the future, a future that has looked increasingly bleak for both the record industry and the newspaper business. In a move that sent shock waves across the British music business, the country’s leading tabloid distributed 2.9 million free copies of Prince’s new "Planet Earth" CD with its Sunday paper, reaping a publicity bonanza and a big bump in advertising as well."

"But the real winner was Prince. In an era where record sales are plummeting, Prince got his new music into the hands of millions of fans while pocketing a reported $500,000 payment from the paper. Most record store owners in England have protested by refusing to carry the artist’s new CD while his record company, Sony, has suspended its release in England. But Prince, who seems to have as much brilliance as an entrepreneur as an artist, is laughing all the way to the bank.

Like most artists his age, Prince, 49, doesn’t top the charts anymore. His last album, "3121," sold roughly 80,000 copies in the UK. He makes most of his money through touring — his last major tour, in 2004, sold $87.4 million in tickets, dwarfing anything he could make from CD sales. For him, giving away his record free — as he is for anyone who buys a ticket to one of his UK concerts, most of which have already sold out — is a way of creating exposure and excitement. That transfers into concert sales, which is how most artists, outside of a few pop stars, make the vast majority of their money these days. What older artists need today is a marketing partner, not a record company. The Eagles have Wal-Mart, Paul McCartney has Starbucks and now Prince has the Mail on Sunday.

Amazingly, much of the media coverage of the giveaway treated the event as a PR stunt. After all, the anti-gay, anti-immigration Mail is hardly natural Prince territory — in Harry Potter, the paper is favorite reading material for Vernon Dursley. But the strange alliance offers a striking example of how two struggling businesses could reinvent themselves. In fact, I have to admit that my professional assessment of the giveaway quickly gave way to a much more personal reaction.

Why couldn’t my newspaper do that?

Newspapers, as you may have heard, are in deep doo-doo. While the Times still is a profitable business, our revenue was down 10% in the second quarter while our cash flow was down, as our publisher put it the other day, a "whopping 27%, making it one of the worst quarters ever experienced." Times are so hard at the Times that the publisher has proposed putting ads on the front page to generate new revenue.

So far we’ve made little headway developing imaginative strategies to bring back lost readers — or compete for younger readers who get their information from the Internet. The record business has been just as slow to provide fans online with new, convenient ways to hear music — the only visionary idea, Steve Jobs’ iTunes store, came from outside the business. Unless you are a mainstream pop artist, it’s hard to see how the old-fashioned record company model benefits your career anymore. If you’re a respected older performer — known in industry parlance as a heritage artist — your biggest challenge is finding a way to get your music heard.

That’s where the newspaper comes in. As the Mail on Sunday has shown, newspapers remain a formidable distribution machine. My paper has roughly 1.1 million Sunday subscribers and generates 65 million page views each month. If you’re a heritage artist looking for exposure with an audience that might appreciate your work and has proven by reading a newspaper that it’s curious about the outside world, what could be a better starting point than the Times?

Here’s how it might work. The Times would start a free-music series, offering music (either on a CD or via downloads) from respected artists willing to think outside the box — meaning anyone from Elvis Costello, Beck and Ryan Addams to Ry Cooder, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. Instead of paying the artist a fat fee, we’d recruit advertising sponsors who’d be delighted to be associated with classy artists and the imprint of the Times.

If you haven’t noticed, music has a powerful mojo for advertisers. TV commercials have used pop songs to sell product for years. Lexus currently has a series of TV ads featuring Costello and John Legend seated in a Lexus, simply talking about their favorite music (Elvis sings the praises of Beethoven). But what they’re really selling is coolness by association. The same association could apply to us via a giveaway series. It would encourage readers to see the paper in a new light, as not just a news-gathering organization but a cultural engine. If we surrounded the music with news, reviews and features from our staff, it could also expose new visitors to our formidable music critics and reporters.

Could this really work? For a reality check, I called Jim Guerinot, an industry free-thinker who manages Nine Inch Nails, Gwen Stefani and Social Distortion. "Are you kidding — that’s a great idea," he says. "There are tons of these Hall-of-Fame quality heritage artists who don’t sell records anymore. It would be a real coup for them to reach their target demo through the newspaper and have the cachet of being an artist of the week or month."

Having the Times showcase new music would do more than attract advertising — it would help transform the image of the paper. "It could redefine the paper by making it a destination site for music fans," says Guerinot. "On the net, the big challenge is always about providing a filter for people. It would make the Times, with its critical voice, into a gatekeeper. People are looking for someone to show them the way — why shouldn’t it be the L.A. Times?"

Newspapers don’t just need new readers, we need new ways to serve them. So why shouldn’t we use one of our core strengths — our entertainment coverage — as a way to transform our web site’s pop music page into a place where you wouldn’t just find us writing about music, but find the music itself? It not only makes the paper feel more relevant, but it would create a new income stream that might be less intrusive than putting ads on the front page.

"What you’d be doing is turning the paper into a recommendation engine," says Fred Goldring, a leading industry attorney. "Everywhere you look, from car ads to the NBA, music is a big part of everything that sells. You wouldn’t just be giving away music, you’d be doing something no one else does better educating the consumer."

I can’t guarantee that my bosses will instantly embrace this idea — they don’t often look to columnists for business acumen. And there are plenty of naysayers. Retail outlets could punish artists that give away music by refusing to carry their new CDs, as they did in England with Prince. Cliff Burnstein, who manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, believes music giveaways work better in England where "pop music is a national sport and the audience is a lot less fragmented than in the U.S."

But Prince’s gambit won’t be a one-shot deal. The British ska group Madness is considering a similar newspaper giveaway for its next album. One of Burnstein’s bands, Snow Patrol, is touring Australia in September. Since few fans bought its first album there, the group is mailing the first album free to anyone who buys concert tickets, bumping up the ticket price to pay for it, figuring the fans will enjoy the concerts more if they’re more familiar with the band’s earlier music.

Giving music away doesn’t mean it has lost its value, just that its value is no longer moored to the price of a CD. Like it or not, the CD is dying, as is the culture of newsprint. People want their music — and their news — in new ways. It’s time we embraced change instead of always worrying if some brash new idea — like giving away music — would tarnish our sober minded image. When businesses are faced with radical change, they are usually forced to ask — is it a threat or an opportunity? Guess which choice is the right answer."

via Wired.com

Merging the Old with that New New

Well, after languishing over at my old virtual spot at MySpace for several years now, I thought I would give some of the articles from the old spot some new life by migrating them to this blog. However, since these are new digs, I plan to make I don't accumulate too much clutter in these here parts. So, you won't catch me hauling all of the old stuff over here. Instead, I will be focusing on checking out amazing new music by independent artists and posting my thoughts here...mostly...I think!

Please don't misunderstand my meaning though -- make a mental note that I will be still covering industry changes and other fodder while I'm here; but as I've said - it will be streamlined....leaner if you will. Check me out.

BB

Music

A friend emailed me the MSN piece that I've posted at the end of this article. I read it savoring every sentence, each paragraph with that "knowing" little cheese-eating grin on my face. There was even a moment when a spark lit up my eye as it revealed with certainty that I MUST be among a discerning group of savvy, behind-the-scenes, know-it-alls who saw this coming down the pike years ago. After all, doesn't everyone remember when the RIAA said they were going to move the prices of CDs closer to the $10 mark...then years passed and the prices never dropped?

The truth is, although I'd like to think that I've been ahead of the game for a long time, like most people in or out of this business, I had no idea that anything was seriously amiss - let alone that a music revolution was occurring and I was in the midst of it. Of course like every other bottom-line watcher, I paid special attention to the trends, and of course, the periodic telltale signs of a smaller profit line on the big boys' 10K reports.

I think the industry really began to take note though, when the losses started showing up as double-digit percentages. But nothing in any of that signaled there was a paradigm shift afoot.

What I did know however (and made damned sure everyone else around me knew too) was that CDs were too damned expensive for what I know they cost to make in the first place. I also knew that if you kept ramming a fair amount of inanity and garbage down people's throats as a part of their daily diet, they would eventually opt for a diet of something that better suited their appetites and tastes. Many consumers chose to do this - and are still doing it.

In fact, music, in my opinion, is as well as it's ever been...as well as I've ever seen it. It is as vibrant and beautiful as ever and even more prolific. There are more writers and artists sharing their musical creations with us than ever before; and there is even more music available to us than I'm sure any one of us ever thought was possible. Not to mention the many distinctive "flavors" making their way to us from different geographies and cultures of the world.

But my one burning question remains. If the entire music industry is in such disarray, then why is there still so much beautiful music blaring at me from every end of the spectrum - through every conceivable portal that there is (radio, internet, cellular devices, cable, portable music players, games, films, tv, etc.)? Through these portals I'm even hearing incredibly amazing music from places on our planet I never knew existed.

It's clear from everything I've illustrated here that fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the art of music - only the business of it. And the reality is that the business can and will recover. It can be as vibrant as it once was - of course, with some paying of dues for the years of abject avarice and excesses that were the hallmarks of the big six...the big four...and now the big three!

We may have to start by REALIGNING our thinking and approach to how we treat music; and we may have to ELIMINATE that dreaded "box" we've all been told to think outside of. But for all practical purposes, music lives and will continue to thrive and prosper as long as art is alive. I'm sure of it!

NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS!

This is the MSN Article I mentioned previously:


No More Virgins in New York

Soon there will be one less virgin in New York City. And it could be worse than that.

Next February, the Virgin Megastore in Times Square will definitely be shutting its doors. This means no more record store in a neighborhood that used to boast at least two Sam Goody stores, Colony (when it featured its beloved, now lamented back wall of 45 rpm singles) and numerous other chains.
But this isn't all: the Virgin Megastore in Union Square, which was considered the anchor attraction when it opened more than decade ago, is being marketed by real estate agents. That means it will likely hit the chopping block as soon as enough shoes and ice cream can be found to fill it up. (What we really need is another bank or drugstore — not!) No decision has been made about the remaining stores, but the writing is on the wall.

This is all a result of Virgin's billionaire balloon traveler Richard Branson quietly leasing the existing 12 megastores to Vornado Realty and Related Properties last year. Branson, who made his billions in the music business, obviously wanted someone else to do his dirty work as the business died. Now the two real estate concerns control the fate of what's left of the 'record' biz.
In Manhattan, the end of the Virgin stores is particularly bitter. Tower Records is gone, so is Sam Goody, Coconuts, FYE and HMV. There are few record stores left and they are specialty-driven: Bleecker Bob's, House of Oldies, the Golden Disc, Disco Rama, etc. Only J&R Music World down on Park Row still sells CDs and even vinyl, but who knows how long that will last.

According to the New York Times, 80 record stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn have closed since 2003. Soho's beloved Rocks in Your Head closed in 2006, two years shy of its 30th birthday.
Of course, I sound like an old curmudgeon when I lament the passing of the record store. Idling away hours at such a place must seem like a big waste of time to today's 20-year-olds. But it was one of the most pleasurable experiences I knew as a youth — a community experience of discovery. And there was nothing like being there to get a new recording as it was released. You'd rush home to play it, and nothing else mattered.

How life has become so much less rich in a short time! Waiting in front of a computer screen for a download is not quite the same thing. It's just another soulless experience. And maybe that's why 'kids today' don't care much about music, the artists or paying them for their work. The passion is gone. So are valued New York haunts like CBGB's, the Lion's Head, the Cedar Tavern, Chumley's and so on. At least we still have Starbucks!

On a more serious note: the remaining record labels should be concerned about this occurrence. So should the big-name recording acts. Frank DiLeo, Michael Jackson's former manager, recently suggested that the labels get together and open a 'state' store, one in each big city, to carry their catalogs and new releases. It's not a bad idea. Otherwise, the record industry will soon have no public face at all.