ELLIOT PEARSON

“It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you, without a strong rhyme to step to…”

elliotpearson — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:16:07 +0000

So as many of you have noticed (a pleasingly high number of people as it goes), it’s been a while since I last wrote an article for this site. Things have been very busy for me recently, and coupled with moving house and the lack of internet that the situation brought about, life has gotten in the way of me continuing to write. Now things are settling down I’m hoping to start up again with regular features.

While, as before, I hope to cover many aspects and topics about the current music industry, I’m always keen to hear ideas from you guys as to what you’d like me to cover, or indeed what you’d like to start a dialogue about with other readers to garner opinion or hear their thoughts and ideas.

As always there are a number of ways to get in touch with me: you can either click the ‘Contact’ icon at the top right of the site to e-mail me, send me a message on Twitter (@elliotpearson) or simply leave a comment on one of the articles with your thoughts.

I look forward to writing more, hearing from you all and thanks for taking the time to check out the site.

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Foursquare & Fan Rewards

elliotpearson — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:28:09 +0000

Rewards and the element of friendly competition can be a great way to generate interaction between artists and the fan community, and utilising new technology can be a great way monitor and benefit from the information gathered.

The increase in adoption of geo-location services, such as Foursquare, present such an opportunity.

For those of you still unfamiliar with Foursquare, the general premise is that users can notify friends of the restaurants, bars and venues they are in when out. The point of which encourages you to find friends when you’re out and discover new locations and parts of your city you never knew existed. The inclusion of reward points and ‘badges’ that can be earnt add an extra element for users.

How could this be useful for independent artists?

Having an artist/band profile and checking in at venues for shows and appearances serves two purposes:

Increased exposure of the band on venue pages (user profile pages also offer links to Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles for people to give easier access for people initially discovering the band)
Fans checking in at the shows are rewarded and it is possible for the band to see which others users have checked in the most times with them

For a band, offering an ongoing promotion for the most die hard attendees of shows (in a similar way to how increasing numbers of venues are rewarding their Foursquare ‘Mayors’) in which they are rewarded with either an item of merch or special token from the band, or even just for those seen to be attending a number of gigs can help to fix a name to the face of audience members for relationship development.

While bands can often be snowed under with the number of different social media and interactive platforms, something like Foursquare is useful in that it can be updated in seconds from a large number of mobile devices, and allows an easy extra level of interaction with fans.

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The Importance Of Analytics For The Fifth Beatle

elliotpearson — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:56:02 +0000

A topic that starts to get scary for bands who want to focus on the musical and creative side of their work rather than get bogged down in the technical side of the business is that of web analytics. I can hear guitarists, singers and musicians of all sorts reaching for the mouse to close their browser window already, but bear with me! So much interaction happening online is wasted activity and therefore wasted time that could be better spent on music or interacting with your fans, and analytics tools can help to reduce this wasted energy.

While such tools require a certain amount of time to set up, they can really give fantastic feedback of not only how well your campaigns and promotions are working, but also how best to interact with your particular fan base. Why go to the bother of maintaining a specific music profile page when most of your fans want to interact with you via Twitter or Facebook? Tools such as Google Analytics will help monitor how and where your fans are finding their way to you, and even what they like when they find you. All of this can all help to optimise your presence online by customising your sites to make them easier to find on search engines, and help to give you an idea of what your fans want from you online. Are your fans spending most of their time watching videos you’ve posted? Analytics tools will highlight how popular your videos are so you know that by increasing the number or variety of the videos on your site, your fans will be more likely to keep returning to check out new videos, or re-watch their favourites.

There are a wealth of different levels of analysis you can use for your sites, from simple link-tracking using sites such as bit.ly which will help to highlight how many users click links posted on various sites (try using different short links on different social media sites to see which is most successful in sending users to the sites you post), through to more comprehensive systems, including Google Analytics, which will give a wealth of information from search engine terms, time spent on the site, most popular pages, and even locational hotspots based on IP address locations. Platforms such as Topspin and Bandcamp are built around giving great feedback to bands and artists to help promote their music, with embeddable widgets are gathering data that can really give clear indications as to social media successes, and even help with gathering mailing lists through to sale of music and other physical and digital products.

Why the Beatles reference in the title of this post I hear you ask? I am referring to Pandora’s Tim Westergren who wrote a fantastic article about how important or successful a dedicated online marketing assistant can be for a band. While analytics and general web presence maintenance and promotion are vital to a ban’s success in the current music business climate, much of what is entailed can be time-consuming and often needs someone particularly technically-minded, and can benefit from someone’s dedicated attention. If a band wants to be successful it is worth appointing someone to help out with this side of their music, leaving them freer to concentrate on their specialist skills – creating and playing music.

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Warner Music Decide Their Future In Free Streaming Services

elliotpearson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:56:40 +0000

With Warner Music Group’s CEO Edgar Bronfman’s comments this week about how free streaming music services are “clearly not positive for the industry”, and his stating that in the future Warner will not be embracing such deals, how does this affect WMG’s place in the future music market?

After releasing figures this week of WMG’s $17m loss in Q4 of 2009, Bronfman is obviously keen to lay blame somewhere, and in-keeping with his personality, wants to be seen making a stand against various parts of the current music business.

While Bronfman speaks of premium streaming services that require payment from subscribers that he feels will rival iTunes, I can’t help but picture a big swing-and-a-miss for WMG. One reason Spotify has become such a leading platform in music streaming is it’s far-reaching catalogue, and user uptake. The success iTunes has received is also largely down to similar elements – it’s market penetration and availability meant that it reached a large number of users quickly, lead the way and strongly maintained it’s position.

Any future service that hoped to take over from services such as Spotify or We7 would need to rely on the majors withdrawing their catalogues from those services and all coming together to sign deals to give the same catalogue to the new service. Who would choose a subscription service that you had to pay for which only had, for example, the Warner catalogue, when other services offer a wider range, with less stringent pricing options?

The bullish attitude of Bronfman only smacks to me of a company that are not getting their own way in the current music industry model, still relying too greatly on recorded music sales, and wanting to throw their toys out of the pram when their competitors are seeing streaming services as a potentially successful fraction of their future model. Would Bronfman have still made this weeks comments if Universal’s SVP Rob Wells hadn’t spoken in January in support of Spotify?

It still surprises me (but shouldn’t) when the majors are seen to be fighting against the tide of industry changes, rather than accepting the climate as is, while using their efforts to maximise potential income rather than casting negativity over what they cannot control.

In my opinion, were Warner to remove their catalogue from the streaming services, the lost promotion would have more of an adverse effect on recorded music sales than would be compensated for by dictating to consumers that they must buy through iTunes or the premium services of their choosing.

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Independent Artist Spotlight: Chris Bryant

elliotpearson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:03:22 +0000

With the empowerment of independent artists in the ‘new look’ music business, we are given a fantastic chance to not only discover talented musicians that we would otherwise never have found, but also get to learn about them as the people behind the music. When you find music that reaches out to you in different ways, and you see the personality of the artist behind the sound, it can be a fantastic experience for the audience too.

With this in mind, I have decided to start a (hopefully) regular feature in which I get to find out from the artists themselves how they are working with the new found musical and creative freedom they are currently enjoying, at the same time sharing with you some of the great music out there to be discovered.

The first artist I have the pleasure of featuring is North Carolina singer-songwriter, Chris Bryant. After reading an article featuring Chris and how he is capturing imaginations with his “de-mix” approach to covering other artists, along with his idea of being his own support act for live shows, I listened to his music via his website and Bandcamp pages, and he quickly became one of my most listened to artists of the last few months.

I have been fortunate enough to get in touch with Chris to get his views on his music, and how he approaches life as an independent musician.

EP: Hi Chris, firstly tell us a bit about your musical background and who the artists were that inspired you up to this point?

CB: When I was growing up, my parents had a rule that we (I have a younger brother and sister) all had to be doing something musical. I sang in the choir in church, took piano from age 6-12, played saxophone in middle school jazz band, and sang in choir for a year in high school. They sort of stopped enforcing the rule in high school, so things stopped for a bit. When I went to college at Duke University, I joined the Pitchforks, an all-male a cappella group. I didn’t pick up the guitar until June 2008, about a month after I graduated.

As far as artists that inspired me, it’s all over the place. My parents didn’t let me listen to the “real radio” growing up, so I only really knew gospel music, motown, oldies, and smooth jazz until about 6th grade. Then the floodgates opened and I’ve been listening to everything since then. At first it was Usher, NSYNC, Third Eye Blind (It was 1997, cut me a break), and whenever friends would mention people, I’d try to listen to as much as possible. By the time I went to college, the most played CD’s in my collection were Ben Harper, 2pac, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Mana (Revolucion de Amor). I’m always picking up little things from all over the place.

EP: You’ve only been performing as a solo artist for the last year or so; what prompted the change in focus for you?

CB: I fronted a funk/rock fusion band for a really short while (Fall of 2008), and had an epiphany – bands have a lot of moving parts and it’s really difficult to get everyone on the same wavelength if you’re not all invested in the vision or if there is no vision. All of the guys were great guys, but we here all coming in with a different goal – the drummer wanted to have fun and get paid, the bassist and guitarist wanted to “make it” but didn’t know what that meant, and I just wanted experience singing in a band with instruments. Knowing what I know now, we really had no idea what was going on wrt booking, online presence, engaging fans, anything. We never had a practice or a show where everyone was happy, and I realized it was because we were all moving in different directions. I started focusing more on my guitar, and decided to do the solo thing January 2009.

EP: How difficult has it been juggling a day job with moving forward with your music career?

CB: I teach middle school special education math and reading, and the teaching schedule is pretty nice when it comes to music – winter and spring break lend themselves to touring (working on my first one right now), and having a free summer is great because possibilities are almost endless. I have had a few days after shows/open mic networking where making it in to work at 7:00 hasn’t happened! It’s really not that different than someone working two jobs except you’re your own boss and the pay is not guaranteed.

EP: Where did the idea for the ‘de-mix’ album come from? Why did you choose to release this first as opposed to a full-length album of your own material along with the single tracks you’ve released?

CB: It was really a “happy coincidence” of a lot of moving parts. I’m an economics student by training, and spent the first half of 2009 researching independent artists, doing miniature case studies, and basically doing everything but getting better at guitar! I came up with the conclusion that combining touring with a really compelling album would be the way to go about things, but since I didn’t quite have the skills or the time to support a tour, I decided to release an album. I’ve got a few hours of original material, but I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted my sound to be or how I’d generate enough interest in my original stuff without touring or some other means of supporting a release.

Ben Harper is the reason why I started playing guitar, and I was really intrigued when I heard he’d quit playing with his old band, the Innocent Criminals, and was putting out a CD with the new one, Relentless7. His CD came out in May, I downloaded it from iTunes, and burned it to a CD for a 13 hour drive to my best friend’s wedding in Florida. I think I played that CD 12 times round trip. Since it was somewhat of a departure from the old stuff (a little heavier/more electric), I wondered what would happen if I did acoustic versions of some of the songs. I put a couple up on youtube and got a good response, so I decided to record a full length “de-mix” album of all of the songs from the album. I finished the project by August. It’s kind of a reverse concept of the re-mix combined with the mixtape that comes from hip hop. Instead of making it more danceable, I was making it “chill.” I got a good response from people on the now defunct benharper.com forum, and even had a nice guy translate my description of the project into french for the benharper.fr forum. I wouldn’t have been able to make the same connections with my own stuff, given limitations on my time/resources. I’ve made a bunch of new friends and send a couple of CD’s a week to France, and I think that’s great. I’m pushing for a full length original album by June, so we’ll see how round 2 goes.

EP: With such a proliferation of artists using the internet to promote their music the web is becoming saturated with independent music – how hard is it for you to get yourself heard?

CB: It’s really, really hard. Especially when there are 20 people as good or better doing something similar. It’s all about differentiation, product placement, and audience engagement. And luck. Good music floats to the top, but the best/more successful artists/bands have something more to offer – a story, a personal relationship, a gimmick, something memorable. The people who give my music more than a cursory listen stick around for something, even if they can’t say what it is. It’s all about the experience.

EP: What are the key things you feel are necessary to progress as an artist, either from a business or creative aspect?

CB: I have this conversation with my music friends all of the time, and half agree and half think I’m way off base. I strongly believe that good music alone isn’t enough for an artist to progress. With so much good music (and free music) on the internet, artists need a hook to get people to listen and keep them coming back for more. The hook doesn’t have to be a gimmick or even something an audience can easily define, but it needs to be there. This is the collection of best practices I collected from my observations last year:

Play good music. The definition changes by genre, but it needs to be there or nothing else works.
Clearly define your product/service. I’m a nice guy who plays good music, and that’s evident from the web presence to the live show and everywhere in between.
Identify your target demographics based on #2. It’s not the whole world, but it’s probably larger than you think.
Develop specialized ways to connect with those target demographics.
Repeat – music can always get better, and 2-4 aren’t static

If you’re trying to make money, #4 has a couple of subpoints, but that’s the basic idea. Anyone who thinks they’ll be fine just because they play good music is crazy or doesn’t realize they’re accidentally doing the other steps to generate their progress. I tell my friends who don’t want to do anything more than #1 to find someone who will help them do the rest. I’m still working on #1!

EP: How important has live performance been as part of your promotion to this point, and how much do you see it changing further into your career?

CB: I didn’t play that many live shows last year, and the ones I did were more for experience than exposure. I’ve made live performance a big part of my strategy this year, and expect it to stay that way in the future. I play open mics where I network with other musicians and venues owners/bookers (and occasionally pick up a fan or two), a monthly gig where I’m opening for myself (there’s more info and a video on hypebot.com), a few regularly paying bar gigs, short tours, and a decent number of benefit concerts with multiple bands. Although I’m not covering a ridiculous amount of square miles, there’s not too much over-saturation due to market segmentation and product differentiation – I told you I was an econ major! In the short-term future, live performance will continue to look like this. Long term, I think touring is the way to go, even if it’s just a regional circuit. I’m looking into that now for the summer, and, if all goes well, the fall and beyond. All that being said, I’d be crazy to ignore the Internet.

EP: What benefits or hindrance do you see being an independent artist versus being part of a label (major or independent)? If offered a label deal would you consider taking it, or have you already had the offer but turned it down?

CB: The upside to being an independent artist is freedom. I can do whatever I want, have full artistic license, and don’t have to ask anyone for permission or go through a chain of command to do last minute changes – freedom is awesome. I don’t know if I’d take a major label deal if I were offered one – I was pursuing one last year and things fell through. I’d like to have resources available to have better connections to press and make recordings better, but I don’t know if a label deal is the best route to that.

EP: What developments have happened in the way you can communicate with your audience that have excited you or made new opportunities possible for you that previously were not? Are there any other things on the horizon that will change the game or give you new options with how you want to develop your career?

CB: I’m all about developing personal relationships, and having a ton of ways for friends (I like that word better than fans) to interact with me and my music. I want to know how they found me, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they do, and all of the social networking tools make this possible. I did this a lot with YouTube before I “went pro,” and now I use facebook, twitter, thesixtyone.com, email, and to a lesser extent myspace to interact more than inform. One thing I am worried about is maintaining information on all those sites and the new ones that seem to pop up everyday. ArtistData.com is great for updating/maintaining everything, and I’m just getting started using it.

I think the biggest game changer is the ease and inexpensiveness with which artists can record (audio and video) high quality material. It allows for a lot of new, fresh material, but I don’t think anyone quite knows how to manage it yet. I envision a multimedia monthly magazine, of sorts – I’ll be putting out 10+ new tracks each month (not all originals), but neither the content creator nor the consumer know what to do with all that stuff.

EP: How would you measure your career as being a ’success’?

CB: Up until now, I’ve defined success by my ability to develop music that people want to consume. I think the past year and a half has been really successful – I went from not playing guitar to recording a couple of albums and playing live shows that people seem to enjoy a lot. I think that definition may grow as I grow, but for now, it’s still focused on making music people want to consume steadily increasing the number of people who know who I am and like what I do. Hopefully the rest will follow.

EP: Thanks for your time Chris.

For the latest information on Chris and his music, make sure you check out his official website, and listen to his sampler album below, or on his Bandcamp page.

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Traditional vs. Digital: Artist Management in 2010

elliotpearson — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:42:18 +0000

As an observer, something like the yearly MIDEM conference in Cannes is a great way to catch an insight into the current views of those inside the music industry about what is happening right now, and how they see things changing in the future. It is often supported by fantastic panels with often conflicting views. At the MIDEM Manager Summit, one such panel helped to highlight completely different views from two different managers. While the don’t necessarily conflict as they are personal opinions and not a clear case of right or wrong, it is interesting to the approaches of two successful artist managers.

Monday’s panel of Chris Morrison of CMO Management (Blur, Gorillaz) and Mark Wood of Radius Music (Imogen Heap) showed two managers working from different approaches – Morrison’s more traditional approach and Wood’s more tech-centred approach.

For me, the conversation was notable for a few different points. Morrison’s view of online digital retail was very concentrated:

“…there is only one retailer that counts on the net: iTunes… yet we spend an inordinate amount of time feeding the competition, rightfully so because we want there to be some competition”

There is no reference from Morrison to direct-to-fan techniques. I understand that for a number of reasons his point is correct; iTunes has by far the largest market share and is one of the largest music retailers, both online and offline, is a key access point for chart inclusion, and is an established brand for consumers with incredible tie-ins with the market-leading portable music devices. It is also true that competition must be maintained to keep the pressure on iTunes. Maybe it is the label involvement in the artists that chooses this path, but even EMI must be able to see the potential in direct-to-fan marketing and retail for such established acts – especially with EMI being on the virtual receiving end of the Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’ experiment. With platforms such as Topspin allowing many cost-cutting aspects to a release maximised for the established fanbase, and with the big name acts still more than capable of receiving media coverage even without chart placement, it is a better time than ever to shift to a new business model.

Morrison admits that he tries not to get overwhelmed by the online side of the music industry, distilling it in his mind to “a form of communication and a retailer”. While it is understandably a big shift for someone experienced in traditional record industry values to move into the digital world, a lack of understanding or neglect could prove costly – if I were an artist, I would want my manager doing their utmost to keep up with developments, should the time come that the band move away from the safety net of a major label deal.

When the topic of file-sharing was brought up, Morrison had a response to Pharrell Williams’ earlier comment about comparing file-sharing to “taste-testing” which has been widely reported:

“It’s not, it’s like giving them the whole bloody meal!”

While it is understandably frustrating to work so hard on a project over a period only for it to leak before release must be frustrating, his views about stopping piracy and “taking the gloves off” echo the lawsuits and clampdowns that have alienated music fans from major labels, by vilifying them after years of supporting the industry only seems to do itself further harm.

Mark Wood’s awareness of the internet and social media are far more in-line with how the industry seems to be developing, partially because his client, Imogen Heap, is so switched on to the idea of fan interaction. The information they receive from fans through the stars prolific Twitter-use amongst other things allows the management team to maximise and direct it’s avenues going forward, whether it be geographic pockets of information of fans requesting shows, or database cleansing and management. While such digital information is by no means exclusive, it can only be representative of a whole fanbase, it is vast information that would only be missed if these opportunities were neglected.

As I mentioned before, I am not saying that either approach is right or wrong – Morrison’s traditionalist approach is fine while the band are still operating under the major label record industry rules, albeit in a different climate – but as time passes, those in the industry who are more open to change and keeping up with the way consumers interact and source music will enjoy far more success than those who steadfastly cling to what has worked before now.

As Charles Darwin noted:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

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Twitter Follow Aside

elliotpearson — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:57:08 +0000

Follow Elliot on Twitter : @elliotpearson

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New look aside

elliotpearson — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:57:10 +0000

What do you think of the new look website? Leave a comment with your thoughts No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Simplicity As A Point Of Reference

elliotpearson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:37:17 +0000

So this post has come about as more of a spur-of-the-moment thought than a carefully constructed piece, but one which was based around a single notion; as life becomes faster and our possibilities in everyday life become more and more limitless, there is an increasing distance from the concept of simplicity, and within there is beauty.

The thought has been inspired by the core idea behind Apple’s use of multi-touch devices, and today’s much over-hyped launch of the iPad. While I’m sure many of you are rolling your eyes at the mere mention of the device, and anyone who knows me will be doing the same based on their knowledge of what a Mac fan I am, I reassure you this is not a tech post about the unit or intended to add to any of the hype.

Computers are increasingly more and more incredible at what they can do, and with the ability with which they can do such things. The thing that strikes me about the iPad, iPhone, or indeed the HP Touchsmart computers or other such devices is that the way with which we interact with them – the user interface - has been distilled to virtually it’s most simple and natural form. Touch.

Watching the promo video of the iPad on the Apple website brought home to me how astonishing and powerful this is as a concept. Seeing the person in the video fully interacting with the unit, performing every function on it with perfect ease using only their fingertips with no mice, scroll balls or stylus drives home how simple the notion is but at the same time how beautiful and right it is. As technology increases we are inevitably burdened down with the new accoutrements that are required to use them. Take the next step in TV which is almost certain to be 3D – we have travelled from radio which we could rely solely on our ears to enjoy, to television which included our eyes, next to 3D which will also require us to be wearing the tinted glasses. But with devices utilising touch technology, the input devices we have become accustomed to are removed – rarely has taking something away meant that we are taking a step forward.

As a child we learn touch before we can speak, and many of the things which follow require us to actively learn them. The videos on YouTube of babies ‘using’ iPhones indicates that the interaction with technology via touch interfaces is in fact far more natural an occurrence than writing words with a pen, or pointing and clicking with a mouse.

Sometimes, not purely in design terms, simplicity is beauty.

What business do these thoughts have on a music blog you say? With all the technology in the world being shaped to create, record, sell and interact with music, and the billions of dollars invested in trying to make billions of dollars from it – the latest technology we use to harness and synthesise the feelings we get from music, or the repeated concerns about how anyone will make money or a career from music in the future, it is easy to forget the beauty in simplicity; the distillation of everything that is concerned with music today – the song.

At it’s most base level the song has more importance than anyone seems to remember.

Before you worry about what you need to record or market or promote or sell the song, make sure you do the song justice in the first place.

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Meet the Industry twins: 'Record' & 'Music'

elliotpearson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:14:48 +0000

Okay, so you can’t turn anywhere online at the moment when looking at the music industry without tripping over coverage and opinion on yesterday’s IFPI Digital Music Report 2010 (I notice the irony in mentioning this as I introduce you to an article of me giving coverage and opinion to the very same topic). While everyone is focusing on the ‘piracy’ element, I wanted to zoom out slightly and look at the larger picture, much of which is unfortunately lacking in data to give perspective.

I seem to be making the point repeatedly recently, but it’s always worth pointing out the one-sided views presented of the current state of the music business and coverage of this report is no exception. The Guardian leads with the headline “Piracy continues to cripple music industry as sales fall 10%“, while TorrentFreak obviously reads the statistics from their perspective in the article titled “Pirates Are The Music Industry’s Most Valuable Customers“. Both of them are writing with the record industry in mind, whereas I am hopefully speaking with a view of the music industry.

Some people will be thinking it’s somewhat of a “tomayto/tomarto” situation (excuse the phonetics but I thought this would be more easily understood in comparison to a “tomato/tomato” situation…), but for me it is a clearer cut situation than that. When I refer to the traditional music business structure, it is the record industry which is essentially focused on shifting units, and has been built around major labels selling products to a mass market as we’ve known for the last fifty-plus years. The phrase music industry for me represents what is emerging from the power shift happening in the industry which is increasingly involving artist empowerment and direct-to-fan interaction, when music, in whatever form and whatever it represents, is the dominant cultural currency.

The record industry is suffering. Although the IFPI report shows progress regarding increasing digital revenue (up 12%), including digital album sales up 20%, the increase in digital is still lagging behind compensating for dropping physical sales and industry revenue (overall the record industry is down 30% on 2003). This however only covers label revenues, and doesn’t measure statistics of music outside of certain transactions. To quote Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin Media:

I’d like to challenge you to consider a different perspective, in my honest opinion, the only perspectives that matter, that of the artist and the fan. I see news about the health of the music industry as defined by the stock price of WMG, or quarterly earnings of UMG, Sony and EMI every day.

While I don’t suggest that direct-to-fan transactions account for the total amount of that 30% loss in revenue, the music industry is flourishing, with artists able to take their careers into their own hands, and deal with their work and fans outside of the traditional label structure. If it were possible to measure data of music transactions outside of the major label, IFPI-covered system, I think with time we would see an increase in this as it gradually becomes a large part of how the music world will develop going forward. While there will still be room for the record industry, albeit more streamlined as it finds it’s new methods of operating, consumers will be able to access and use music as they want to. Enjoy mainstream pop and hyper-colour Disney tie-ins? The majors will supply this to you. Prefer heartfelt, coffee-shop acoustic folk? You’ll be able to go straight to the artists you love.

This could cover artists of any level; someone who regularly plays in the pub in your town will be as accessible if you want to find their music as an established major label artist who is taking their career into their own hands. And they will receive greater revenue and control for their work that they deserve. The pop artists on the major labels will still benefit from the increased financial backing and marketing they need.

As I type this I have an image in my head of an embryo spawning two twins; both from the same genes but each displaying their own personalities and sustaining themselves independently. I will probably omit this image from my article, however, as I’m sure it is a weak metaphor at best, God forbid I even reference it in the title of the article…

I don’t want to dwell on the file-sharing/piracy aspects of the debate, as while it exists and shows little sign of relenting (or even the question of whether it should need to relent based on the positive elements of the culture) I’d like to end with a quote from Matt Churchill who sums the birth of the two twins emerging from the traditional record industry egg beautifully:

If it wasn’t for file-sharers we’d not be looking to develop better business models, better distribution platforms and innovative ways to make sure the artist gets the right amount of money for their work.

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