Research into the challenges for independent music entrepreneurs in the digital age

I’m in the midst of a very exciting piece of research – perhaps my most challenging yet. I’ve come to the final stage of my Masters at Birmingham City University in MA Media Enterprise which has provided some interesting opportunities to study and reflect on my own creative and media consultancy practice.

I’m now in dissertation mode, and my research is all about the opportunities and challenges of digital music for what I’m calling the ‘micro industry’ of music entrepreneurs. This includes independent artists, bands, promoters, non-major labels, independent retailers and those who create, produce and sell music that’s driven by aesthetics and passion rather than the ‘music-by-numbers’ approach of EMI et al.

My provocation: if the digital space is a ‘brave new world’ for independent artists, who are the winners and who are losers? Is one structure of the major label music industry just being replaced by another set of gatekeepers in the media conglomerate owned platforms like Last.fm and MySpace?  How do small producers exploit the ‘long tail’, niche markets and cut above the ‘noise’ of the digital space (where everyone is a ‘Pro-Am’ musician?).

I’m particularly interesting in this work in exploring two key areas:

1. 1. How intergenerational tastes in consuming and producing music are affecting young people versus their parent’s generation. Are younger musicians motivated by different drivers? Do younger music fans value music and invest in it in the same ways as my generation? What are the longer-term implications on music production and retail models on these new trends?
2. Music is the first-mover and first effected of all the digital content industries. It has borne the brunt and learnt the hard way how not to deal with the effect of bit-torrenting (see the Napster and RIAA fiascos, met by the decline of major retailers like Tower Records and Zavvi).  The existing industry has struggled to commercialise music as a product in the file-sharing age. What key lessons can other independnent digital industries – particularly film and computer games – learn from it’s failures and successes?

So far I’ve done a lot of reading and made a fascinating interview with Yinka Okewole from the band Sabatta. You can hear us rinsing about all things independent music and internet related here. I’ve also chatted to my old bandmate Roger Simian who now runs Shark Batter Records who waxed lyrical on the ‘devaluation’ of music by fans – a theme that’s recurring in more conversations.

I hope my research is going to I hope be a fascinating insight into the changing dynamics of what the music ‘business’ means here and now, and how grassroots, independent music entrepreneurs can adapt to the challenges in the future (if you’re interesting in this theme I’d also heartily recommended a mooch over to Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies website).

Wanted: music enterpreneurs to help this research

To bring in a wider range of views, I’m conducting a survey to questions on your current music enterprise, your use of digital tools and asks a set of ‘provocations’ to ask your opinion on online marketing and distribution like copyright, direct-to-fan marketing and bit-torrenting.

I’m looking for the following people to do it:

- Solo musicians
- People in bands
- Live music promoters
- Music retailers
- “Super music fans” (gig goer, journalist, blogger)

I will share the findings of the survey and research if you complete the survey.  I need completed surveys by March 31st 2009.

The survey takes 8-10 minutes to complete.  Here’s the survey:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/104564/the-future-of-online-music-for-independent-musicians

It’s still early days, but I will be using this blog to update on my findings and instill some provocations and I’d love to get readers thoughts. Email me (susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk) if you have any opinions on this subject – or better still complete the survey. I’m looking for more people to do formal (phone or in-person) interviews with.  I’m particularly interested in interviewing some teen music fans and bands, but being a bit of an ‘old rocker’ type myself I may struggle here so any recommendations of approachable bands much appreciated.

Onemedia unconference Nov 13-14, London

Onemedia logo

This week I headed down to innovation quango NESTA’s space age HQ (resplete with break-out rooms with circular board tables) to join in the first Onemedia ‘unconference‘.  This was basically an open space workshop where the 50 or so participants from a range of media industries – including web, digital, music, film, education and TV – gathered together to set our own agenda and form break-out groups to discuss the hot topics of the day and form our own solutions.  The attendees were a jolly nice bunch, mainly indie producers and consultants with a few biggers orgs like ITV represented.

I’ve been to several open space conferences, particularly during my days in Bristol developing projects with Watershed Media Centre.  Although you don’t always feel like you get the ‘top down’ knowledge you would from a speaker-led symposium conference, it really allows you to contribute and benefit from the wealth of knowledge of others – paticularly those working in parallel or complimentary fields, and it’s a cheaper and more accessible ways of organising an industry event – particularly in a smaller town or city.

And the best thing about open space is that it works on the ‘law of two feet’:  it’s OK to walk away from a session if you’ve said enough or just want to move on.  It’s a great way to get live feedback to test the waters with radical ideas.  But I forgot how tiring it is – so much talking and even more listening!

We self-secretariat-ed all our session – Mel @ Media Sauce has the un-enviably task of gathering and sorting through all our disparate notes – but some of the key thoughts and ideas I heard in the sessions I attended:

Branded and advertiser-funded content
There was much discussion from the indie production community on the return, 1950s soap-style, to the advertiser leading the production of quality content, from interactive drama through to James Bond heavy rotation product placement.  Many discussed the difficult of getting air-time with the major brands; without the gatekeepers that were broadcasting commissioners, the environment to get commissioned direct is impossible to navigate for the micro-indie, and in the case of the telecos, we need them more than they need us.  Another example of the ‘flatter’ media landscape being easier to cross the terrain for big players than the many small, yet Magic Lantern played upon the creative vanity and budget crunches of brand managers to deliver interactive content direct to online audiences, cutting out the perplexing range of ‘middle men’ in the current advertising market including buyers, ad agencies and producers.   Those established in the ‘old media world’, like Buffy creator Joss Wheedon’s Doctor Horrible or Radiohead’s In Rainbows, mean reaching existing fans with the benefit of years of TV or major record label investment is that much easier to profit from digital-only distribution and to acquire the investment in the first place.

Taste makers
Conversely, there is a key role for ‘taste makers’ like Last.fm and Hype Machine to help users connect with the influencers – be it Nike bribing cool kids to wear their trainers in the playground, or user recommendation and aggreation technologies.

Narrative
Understanding narrative was a key theme in several sessions – web producers need to understand narrative in the user experience journey as much as the many types of narrative forms which can be applicable to everything from a traditional storytellers to a console game.  The digital world has much it can learn from those from the film and TV industries – be it how to tell compelling stories on a budget or lighting design.

Universities may be churning out graduates with interactive productions skills ten-to-the-dozen, but those with the intelligence to be trained in the ‘art’ of media production, or the work training to do it, are lacking, yet a lot of the old training from the film schools isn’t needed in the YouTube and digi-camera age where accessibility and story are more important than framing each shot.  Budding film-makers can just learn by doing, and start to engage with an audience from day 1.

New skills
Training and skills are paramount to allow people to compete in this shifting landscape – but the significant majority of freelancers in the industry don’t have access to professional development – or even know the question to ask they need the answers for.  The project I am working on with White Room for North West Vision is an interesting take – getting ‘traditional media’ freelancers and getting them placed into digital companies in a unique cross-industry experiment.

Writers, producers and directors still largely ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to creating the cross-platform worlds where audience expectations, aggregated by social media, are either enhanced or dumfounded by writers and the opportunities and limitations of each medium are best exploited.

Collaboration
Collaboration between different writers, producers and technical geeks is a necessity in the cross-platform world – and we just aren’t used to getting stuck in together or finding shared languages and commonalities.

Digital distribution
Overall, getting paid and finding the right business models from digital distribution is the crucial hurdle which inhibit development with the professional media community – although there is a necessity for new talent to ‘just f***ing do it’ – prototype your idea, get in online and start to build an audiences rather than chasing the golden commission.

I facilitated an interesting session on digital music distribution and what lessons other industries could learn from the bit-torrented collapse of the conventional music business.  Some key findings were that bands and artists have been successful when engaging with their audiences through making it very personal – using social media – like video, blogs and giving a bit of it away for free – were seen as winning tactics for musicians to build direct relationships and acquiring the data of fans which everyone from film-makers to indie games developer could benefit from.

We concluded the old structures – major labels, distributors and retailers – were largely redundant, but have been replaced with other corporate funded spaces like MySpace and Last.fm who act as gatekeepers and curators between content creators and audiences.

Overall, it was an enjoyable event if not a tad long – an intensive, bigger one-day event would I think have worked better.  It was a great way to meet people from different disciplines with granularity, but the wealth of indies/consultants compared to brand owners and major media players probably limited the impact of change the conference set out to make.  Sponsors NESTA and Pact are interested in the findings so let’s see what next.

Promoting your music as an independent artist using social media

I’m a musician by training – and occassional after-hours trade.  So I often meet up with muso-types and they are often bemused when I hand them my ‘digital consultant’ business card.  “So do you make websites?”. “Well”, I reply, “not exactly…”.

Lately a young chap called Yinka took me up on my strange business card and asked me for some advice on using social media to promote a new EP for his band Sabatta.  I love this challenge as:
a) It makes you really think about how to apply theory to a real situation – how is this stuff all useful to someone on a low/zero budget? and
b) I think a great skill in life is just to ask and ask again until you get a bit of what you want – and I’m all in for people taking up on advice and giving back when they’re up the ladder.

So here’s an extract of my advice:

“The biggest problem you have as a self-managed and unsigned act is that, if you pardon the pun, there’s a lot of ‘noise’ out there in independent music – and it’s not just about guitars and singers, there’s just a thick cloud of information everywhere in the music space.  All the ‘ear time’ at the major new media platforms (Bebo, Youtube, MySpace etc.) is taken over with the professional pluggers – so in this respect getting to the top of the channel and ‘recommended’ sections is still in the hands of the old-school music industry.  This has to be done through the old fashioned plugging virtues of hard sweat, with the hope that you can create something that’s either so good, or so quirky (strange, weird, funny, dark) that people recommend and share.  Short of becoming a serial killer notoriety is hard to achieve

First up – just about all the best advice that can be give comes from Mr Andrew Dubber and the excellent New Music Strategies website – sign up to his blog and be sure to download the free e-book.

And of course read Kevin Kelley’s excellent article “1000 true fans” about using the ‘long tail’ to be sustainable as an independent artist.

Take it with a pinch of salt though, some people think you can’t make any money of the ‘long tail’ in music – and all of us scraping about to make any money at all probably suggests this is true.

There’s just so much stuff out there that you can create some great content (a song, a video, animation, photo shoot, podcast) and it just sort of goes ‘out there’ into the ‘deja you’ land (not ‘deja vu’ in that you’ve seen it in a past life but you’ve seen it all before!). So the crucial thing is what marketers call “stickiness” – why you would stick around, come back – it’s the repeat visitors that become fans, then they buy – and there’s no shortcut round stickiness.  Stickiness is about creating the right ambiance and the right space – like creating a great cafe or bar where people are happy to hang out and chat or just check out the vibe.  That’s the philosophy behind a lot of the social networks like Bebo anyway.

Looking at what’s big…

I noticed recently that novelty videos on YouTube were getting frightening high viewing -  like Ninja cat, the whole Kersal Massive phenomena of loads of remixes from one naive teenager attempting to rap or the Cillit Bang techno remix.

This probably doesn’t help if you’re not into novelty and comedy music, but gives you an idea of how important humour is to make something viral - so maybe a collaboration with an upcoming comedian to make a video/viral could be an interesting idea.

Another lateral idea:

Seth Godin says go buy CDs wholesale of artists you sound like, then post them a CD of yours in the package.  A low-cost way of putting yourself in the centre of potential fans.

You’ve already identified what artists you think you sound like, and who likes your music -  you say: “Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, Thin Lizzy, fans of the quirky often like us also – someone told me the other day one of my songs sounds like Elvis Costello meets Metallica – which was cool.”

So this is interesting – but would EITHER Elvis Costello or Metallica fans like you?  Some will, some will not.  This is a kind of crazy idea in itself of two quite different kinds of music -  I could see you translating this into some kind of animation if you’re able to do this, or even something simple like a mash-up of Costello and metallica videos with your latest single as the soundtrack – coudl be big on YouTube and will show you’ve got a good sense of humour too!

You’ve got a great professional looking website – well done, you’re up on 90% of artists who struggle with an out of date site or just use MySpace.  It suits your image – which is strong.  Of course you’re a band who value your authenticity highly and have already established your musical style, so it’s not a case of jumping on the band wagon!  But there’s something here I think which connects with social media – it’s more about engaging with people directly, so they get an insight into your world and see things from your angle.

Social media let’s you engage manageably with literally thousands if not tens of thousands of people – but what people want today is a ‘piece of the action’ – I don’t just want to hear about the artist or know when they’re playing in my town, I want to understand what they are writing about, their motivations – even what they had for dinner is interesting to the real trainspotters!  So a micro-blogging platform like Twitter is really great for updates, particularly when you’re on the road, or to announce what you’re doing with the band.    what are you listening to?  What other gigs have you seen?  Fashion, even hair tips (?).  Social media is all about conversations.

I notice you have a blog too – well done on this front.  BUT it’s rarely updated and seem to focus on what your’e releasing and is, if I may say, a rather ‘hard sell’ approach focused on what releases you want people to buy rather than a sustained relationship, i.e. getting people to know what you’re doing and to want to commetn on it and feel a part of it, and feel part of a conversation with you.  That doesn’t mean you have to spend your life posting stuff, but a once a week update is nice – or even a bit of a ‘tour diary’ – There’s plenty of tools to make it really easy to upload photos or video from your phone etc. It shouldn’t just be about text!

Play around with stuff too – like you could do a series of short posts on a different theme or set yourself a mission – do reviews of all your favourite record shops, talk about what happened when you got in there, who you met, what you bought.  Them a shameless plug for your new EP…then people may find your post who are into the same music and bingo…the association of your ideas with your music starts to set.  But it takes a long time for these things to work!  So you have to enjoy the process.

Some artists use the whole idea of ‘crowd sourcing‘ to get people to buy into (literally and metaphorically) what they’re doing. Elbow did it years ago when they got the names of everyone at their show to put on the sleeve of their concert DVD.  Of course, a lot of people who weren’t even at the show put their name on the list for the craic (me included ) but it was a way of getting more people to pre-order the DVD – and Elbow seem to have been doing OK lately…

It’s basically an extension of the ‘fan club’ idea – people like Richard Cheese go heavy on it as it’s the primary way by creating ‘exclusive’ content (even getting Richard to sing your voicemail message) he can make money, particularly as an artist doing exclusively cover versions.

It’s so easy to set up polls, forums etc to start getting the ‘fans’ to contribute and help you filter your ideas a bit – maybe do your A&R for you – after all, they are the people who are going to be buying it, so give them what they want! MySpace is a great way to start out.

I notice you’re on all the big platforms – facebook, Last Fm, Myspace, Youtube etc. which is all good – you’re doing all the right things.  You may want to think a little strategically about how these spaces interact rather than duplicate one another – it can be a lot of work doing the ‘copy and paste’ from one to another.  Maybe each space may have a specific objective (like one is the ‘green room’ for lateral stuff to do with band, YouTube obviously for videos, MySpace may be exclusively focused on recordings and music) – but cross promotion is good too – like linking to your ‘proper blog’ from the MySpace blog.

In short, I don’t think there’s any real shortcuts – and it would take someone far more creative and imaginative than I to tell you what would work – and even then it’s still a bit of a lottery.  The crucial thing is to be hanging out in the places where your online users are – that’s probably email, Facebook and MySpace primarily.  Anywhere else is a plus, but that’s where your focus should be.

You need to engage and create a volume of ’stuff’ and content that reflects what Sabatta are about, but remember : ‘no one shits a masterpiece’.  In today’s environment, people have voracious appetites and want a lot of new ’stuff’ and you need to feed them with it  – titbits and hors d’oevre – remixes, exclusvie tracks, blog posts, videos, photos – not necessarily always the highest quality but the mass of it will give you presence – after a while people will be aware of you from a link here or there and that’s how you start building notoriety!

The offline stuff, flyers, flyposting, press reviews all works in pretty much the same way. But importantly – dont spend your life being an administrator of MySpace/Facebook - spend more of your time on the art than the message – decide how much time it is worth spending on social media to meet your creative and business goals, and stick to a rigid timetable otherwise it can get too time-consuming and demoralising.

The live video on your MySpace looks good, you’re a great live band – so more of this!  If you can get the gear together to film all your shows or get a film-maker in your entourage, you’d be suprised how much great content fodder you can produce from just one camera and a few cut-aways.

Good luck!”

I’d be interested in any more worldly advice you have for Yinka and Sabatta, and if you want some advice yourself why not drop me a line.

71% of Facebook users prefer their music digital

I was shocked to click on the ‘poll of the day’ link from my Facebook profile to the question: ‘How do you hear most of your music?‘

A stagering 37% gave iPod as their preference, and 31% computer. Adding a further 3% specifying satellite (digital) radio, this is a total of 71% of those polled prefering digitally distributed formats, against 30% prefering physical formats (radio 20%, CDs 10%).

Of the oldest age category (35 – 49), only 43% prefered digital to physical formats.
Of the youngest category (13-17), 77% prefered digital formats, and equally 77% of 17 – 24 years olds. However, their digital format preferences were converse, with 13-17 years (‘digital natives’) prefering iPods (48%) over computers (28%). They have little time for CDs (5%), but radio (19%) is more enduring than you’d think. Whereas 18-24 year olds equally like iPods (34%) and computers (34%), CDs were still more enduring (12%) but radio less so (17%).

I must be old – vinyl was not an option of the poll

Of the 1000 respondants, 81% were under 25, with a male bias, fitting Facebook’s typical demographic, and are naturally techno-savvy users.

This clearly shows that the next generation of workers, employers and voracious media consumers will abandon physical products in favour of the volume and convenience of digital distribution. The music industry must create models to promote talent and incentivise sales, licensing, and experiences with music and artists which take into account high volume, low value distribution. This may potentially include advertising-funded digital downloads.

Check out Andrew Dubber’s excellent New Music Strategies Manifesto for tips to survive as a music business in the digitally-distributed music age. Andrew warns:

“At present many music businesses are attempting to dry their hair with a toaster, which kind of works — but it’s not ideal. What they really should be doing is collaborating with technologists to invent the hairdryer.”