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defrogThe music industry is still dying. What can save it? Cable TV shows!
That’s the premise of this piece from Ted Gioia over at The Daily Beast, which suggests that the if the music industry wants to save itself, it should follow the example of the TV industry, which has gone from crap free TV shows to excellent TV shows (see: Game Of Thrones, True Detective, The Wire, The Walking Dead, etc and so on) that people are willing to pay for.
Specifically, the author names five things the TV industry did that music labels should do:
1. Target adults, not kids.
2. Embrace complexity.
3. Improve the technology.
4. Resist tired formulas.
5. Invest in talent and quality.
It’s an interesting idea, but a remarkably flawed one, in three (3) important respects:
1. Gioia doesn’t seem to have a grasp of the actual problem. He says the music industry is dying because major labels are telling artists they should give their music away for free and make their money from gigs, merch, etc.
I highly doubt any major label suit is telling their artists that. Some artists are certainly doing that voluntarily. But I can’t believe label bosses are telling artists to give their music away. Even if they were, free music is not the same thing as free TV. Free-to-air TV shows have a built-in business model (i.e. advertising). Free music doesn’t, except maybe as a “freemium” angle. Radio doesn’t count because music artists generally don’t make money from radio airplay unless they have songwriter credits.
2. The music industry isn’t actually dying. According to IFPI, it made $15 billion globally in 2013. Granted, that’s down almost 4% from 2012. But break it down by category, and the only thing really going down is CD sales. Vinyl, downloads, streaming and performance rights revenue all went up globally in 2013. In the US, the music industry has been hovering at around the $7 billion mark since 2009. You can say it’s an industry in transition, but I don’t think you could say it’s dying.
3. Gioia also seems to assume that cable TV shows are “saving” TV because they’re getting people to pay to watch TV shows. He doesn’t provide any numbers to back that up, but assuming that people are buying HBO subscriptions specifically to watch Game Of Thrones, that’s not really changing demand for free-to-air TV. Cable has arguably raised the quality bar for TV series, but people still watch the free-to-air stuff too. In fact, they still watch it more than the cable TV shows. So people may be willing to pay for quality, but there’s still demand for the “inferior” free stuff.
In fact, the comparison of making music albums to making cable TV shows doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either. They aren’t made the same way, they aren’t consumed the same way, and the business models are significantly different. So I have no idea why the success of Game Of Thrones could serve as a model for music labels.
Even if you skip the cable TV analogy and distill the to-do list to its bare essence – i.e. the ticket to growing the music business is to make better quality music – I’m not really convinced that’s true.
Okay, it probably wouldn’t hurt, either, particularly points 3 and 5. Point 4 might also help, depending on how much genres matter to audiences. Point 1 is interesting, because even the RIAA has found that the biggest demographic for music purchases is the 45+ group. Sure, they’re mostly buying older music, but I suppose since most new music bothering the charts is being marketed at 14-year-olds, there’s not much incentive for adults to listen to new stuff.
The problem I have with this argument is that it assumes there’s no new music out there that’s aimed at adults. In fact, there are hundreds and thousands of bands and music artists making “grown-up” music that also defies genre restrictions – they just don’t have major label deals.
So is the answer to sign them all to majors? Maybe, but then yr not arguing in favor of saving the music industry – yr arguing in favor of saving the Big Four Megalabels that currently dominate it. Why not save the music industry by using the web to promote smaller indie labels and help them grow bigger?
I also don’t think “more complexity” will help sell more records. I’m not even sure what that means, actually. Prog rock? Math rock? Noodly guitar solos? Tubular Bells? Lyrics that require a thesaurus and a college education to fully appreciate?
There's plenty of evidence that more complexity doesn't mean better music (see: Ramones), and it doesn’t mean more commercially successful music (ibid). People ultimately like music because it makes some kind of emotional connection with them, whether it’s the beat, the solos, the words or the overall sentiment. It can be one person with a guitar or piano and three chords, and have just as much resonance and meaning as something with multi-layered arrangements, five-part harmony, impossible virtuoso solos and a 6/4 time signature.
And whatever one means by “quality” – which is subjective anyway – honestly I think that only matters for people who actively listen to music. For lots of people, music is pleasant background noise. Plenty of others like music but aren’t very critical or demanding of it. Some people are very passive, and just listen to whatever happens to be playing on the radio or at a party or whatever – they enjoy it, but they rarely buy it. And then there are people who love music but base their opinions on whatever’s popular or whatever their cool friends like. Or how cute/sexy the singer is. In which case none of the above suggestions are going to make a difference.
So all in all, the article doesn’t read like “how to cure music business” so much as "stop giving Snooki money and give it to bands Ted Gioia likes”. And either way, the cable TV show comparison is way off base.
I will say it’s very effective flamebait. It must be, since I just spent the last few days pounding out a thousand words critiquing it.
TL;DR,
This is dF
That’s the premise of this piece from Ted Gioia over at The Daily Beast, which suggests that the if the music industry wants to save itself, it should follow the example of the TV industry, which has gone from crap free TV shows to excellent TV shows (see: Game Of Thrones, True Detective, The Wire, The Walking Dead, etc and so on) that people are willing to pay for.
Specifically, the author names five things the TV industry did that music labels should do:
1. Target adults, not kids.
2. Embrace complexity.
3. Improve the technology.
4. Resist tired formulas.
5. Invest in talent and quality.
It’s an interesting idea, but a remarkably flawed one, in three (3) important respects:
1. Gioia doesn’t seem to have a grasp of the actual problem. He says the music industry is dying because major labels are telling artists they should give their music away for free and make their money from gigs, merch, etc.
I highly doubt any major label suit is telling their artists that. Some artists are certainly doing that voluntarily. But I can’t believe label bosses are telling artists to give their music away. Even if they were, free music is not the same thing as free TV. Free-to-air TV shows have a built-in business model (i.e. advertising). Free music doesn’t, except maybe as a “freemium” angle. Radio doesn’t count because music artists generally don’t make money from radio airplay unless they have songwriter credits.
2. The music industry isn’t actually dying. According to IFPI, it made $15 billion globally in 2013. Granted, that’s down almost 4% from 2012. But break it down by category, and the only thing really going down is CD sales. Vinyl, downloads, streaming and performance rights revenue all went up globally in 2013. In the US, the music industry has been hovering at around the $7 billion mark since 2009. You can say it’s an industry in transition, but I don’t think you could say it’s dying.
3. Gioia also seems to assume that cable TV shows are “saving” TV because they’re getting people to pay to watch TV shows. He doesn’t provide any numbers to back that up, but assuming that people are buying HBO subscriptions specifically to watch Game Of Thrones, that’s not really changing demand for free-to-air TV. Cable has arguably raised the quality bar for TV series, but people still watch the free-to-air stuff too. In fact, they still watch it more than the cable TV shows. So people may be willing to pay for quality, but there’s still demand for the “inferior” free stuff.
In fact, the comparison of making music albums to making cable TV shows doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either. They aren’t made the same way, they aren’t consumed the same way, and the business models are significantly different. So I have no idea why the success of Game Of Thrones could serve as a model for music labels.
Even if you skip the cable TV analogy and distill the to-do list to its bare essence – i.e. the ticket to growing the music business is to make better quality music – I’m not really convinced that’s true.
Okay, it probably wouldn’t hurt, either, particularly points 3 and 5. Point 4 might also help, depending on how much genres matter to audiences. Point 1 is interesting, because even the RIAA has found that the biggest demographic for music purchases is the 45+ group. Sure, they’re mostly buying older music, but I suppose since most new music bothering the charts is being marketed at 14-year-olds, there’s not much incentive for adults to listen to new stuff.
The problem I have with this argument is that it assumes there’s no new music out there that’s aimed at adults. In fact, there are hundreds and thousands of bands and music artists making “grown-up” music that also defies genre restrictions – they just don’t have major label deals.
So is the answer to sign them all to majors? Maybe, but then yr not arguing in favor of saving the music industry – yr arguing in favor of saving the Big Four Megalabels that currently dominate it. Why not save the music industry by using the web to promote smaller indie labels and help them grow bigger?
I also don’t think “more complexity” will help sell more records. I’m not even sure what that means, actually. Prog rock? Math rock? Noodly guitar solos? Tubular Bells? Lyrics that require a thesaurus and a college education to fully appreciate?
There's plenty of evidence that more complexity doesn't mean better music (see: Ramones), and it doesn’t mean more commercially successful music (ibid). People ultimately like music because it makes some kind of emotional connection with them, whether it’s the beat, the solos, the words or the overall sentiment. It can be one person with a guitar or piano and three chords, and have just as much resonance and meaning as something with multi-layered arrangements, five-part harmony, impossible virtuoso solos and a 6/4 time signature.
And whatever one means by “quality” – which is subjective anyway – honestly I think that only matters for people who actively listen to music. For lots of people, music is pleasant background noise. Plenty of others like music but aren’t very critical or demanding of it. Some people are very passive, and just listen to whatever happens to be playing on the radio or at a party or whatever – they enjoy it, but they rarely buy it. And then there are people who love music but base their opinions on whatever’s popular or whatever their cool friends like. Or how cute/sexy the singer is. In which case none of the above suggestions are going to make a difference.
So all in all, the article doesn’t read like “how to cure music business” so much as "stop giving Snooki money and give it to bands Ted Gioia likes”. And either way, the cable TV show comparison is way off base.
I will say it’s very effective flamebait. It must be, since I just spent the last few days pounding out a thousand words critiquing it.
TL;DR,
This is dF
