Part 2: Seth Godin On Music’s Messy Future
Part 2: Today, marketing guru, blogger, and author of the new book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. Seth Godin, talks about the old music business, it’s messy future, the economic downtugn and what’s on his iPod. (Read Part 1: Tribes Heretics & Music)
Q. Is it too late for the old music industry and what should new music industry tribes and their leaders focus on?
GODIN: It’s not too late for music, no doubt about it. It’s probably too late for the music ‘industry’. Most of the religion of this industry is about paying for people who add precious little value to what’s actually valued by the listeners. Once you remove radio, record stores and duplication from the equation, it’s not clear to me what 80% of the people in the music industry actually do to add value.
Q. You caution, “Don’t panic when the new business model isn’t as clean as the old one.” Can you elaborate, perhaps by using artists and the music industry as examples?
GODIN: Well, it took twenty or more years before the record business got perfect, but it was perfect. Free promotion (radio), dedicated stores (Tower)…
non-copyable, degenerating medium (LPs) and most important, a
cultural touchstone and souvenir rolled into one (wow! a Seals &
Crofts LP from high school!).
The new business is messy in comparison. Free downloads. No friction
in the spread of riffs. Money made from t-shirts and concerts and tv
commercials. What do I do now? It’s not clear what to do now. That’s
messy.
Q: Is the econmic downturn changing how you run your own business?
GODIN: This is the best time in history to start a new gig.
If you keep your costs insanely low, you have the advantage of being
too small to fail, of having little in the way of competition and
having access to the best people to help you.
Q. You obviously love music. What’s on Seth Godin’s iPod?
GODIN: I have bought one or two CDs every week for the last
twenty years. It adds up. My Sonos has thousands of titles on it,
ranging from Jen Chapin to Christian McBride, from Sauce (an album I
produced and published in SACD) to Rickie Lee Jones live stuff…
- Read Part 1: Tribes Heretics & Music
- The Tribes lense on Squidoo.
What about graphicdesign? We add value, people tell me so!
I don’t think the new business model is a total mess. Yes, you don’t have a single object (CD) that you will purchase in this new era, but you also don’t have the mess of people and companies involved taking most of the profit from the musicians.
I believe the new model will work something like this:
Music will eventually have to be free because its digital, can be recorded, and can be moved around the web too easily. The idea of free streaming music being a loss leader on sites such as MySpace Music (which has to make $10.00 per 1000 ad impressions to break even from paying the labels) will disappear as labels themselves disappear and all music is uploaded to, filtered through, and distributed by the internet for all to hear.
The most popular songs will filter to the top through music bookmarking sites and artist will make money by redirecting people to their web presence (website = ads, sponsors, fan-gear) and live shows.
The most popular music sites will be the ones who can best filter all the new music for the listners…something like Digg Music.
Labels will turn into nothing more than Web 2.0 promotional companies to help musicians get the best web presence. Then those musicians’ music will have to do the rest
From my blog post: The Last Days of the Label
http://www.startmysong.com/blog
everyone on this blog (being webheads)imagines a 100% digital world — we’re a loong way from it, and there’s no real proof that this will ever happen