Major Label Control Of New Music Services Is Stunting Growth, Says Merlin’s Caldas
While some digital music services appear to be catching on, few are profitable and others already show signs of fading. The blame, according to Charles Caldas, the head of indie label licensing powerhouse Merlin, lies with the continuing influence that major labels have over many new music services.
Major label power may have diminished from the days of buying their way onto limited shelf-space, but their working to reassert it. "By its very nature, the Web can offer music fans a vast array of opportunities to discover new music," Caldas said in a GigaOm op-ed piece "However, new digital services often construct their services based on physical market shares. Major labels, who are actively trying to reconstruct their old-world advantage in a new digital economy, are undoubtedly influencing these startups."
Both fans and the startups end up being the losers, according to Caldas: "Instead of providing what listeners want to hear, music services end up building their consumer offering around what the majors force upon them as a cost of getting to market."
The answer?
"If you are a startup music service looking to attract the digitally active, early adopters (the key demographic you need to build hype so that you may ultimately reach a broader market), you need to recognize that Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear and the National are more likely to be at the top of the search lists, not Gaga or Maroon 5."
it’s an awkward time for sure, but this stranglehold is creating a long tail of exclusive content for creative commons and indie music and journalists.
Artists generally have no clue. They’re not a part of the development of any of these tools that they will ultimately use to distribute their own music. Program or be programmed. We are too reliant on technology companies that don’t even care about us nor the music. It’s all about $’s. The use of technology should be a compliment to something founded in the real world. The internet is an illusion and artist are delusional. With no goal and plan and no quality music, for get about it. Artists need to ask themselves if there is no net tomorrow how will you survive. Especially seeing that you’re barely doing anything but busy work while on the net anyway.
Caldas is spot on here. The majors biggest concern today is not pirates but indies eating into their market share. Hence they try protecting it by buying into the indies preferred promotion and distribution channels – and probably music tech advisors, too. I mean it’s of utmost importance for a self-releasing musician to have a physical product of the music for sale at shows (for people to buy right there and to maybe get an autograph at least). Then why are all the advisors saying digital was the only thing that sells over the web when it has the staying power of computer main boards of approximately 5 years only? How can you ever become a cult favourite (like the Velvet Underground did in the old days) when your music is gone in 5 years and because you, the self-releasing artist, or your bank do not deem your 5 year old music commercially viable anymore, it gets out of print and there is no way for the fan to get a high resolution lossless version (be it download or CD) anymore.
If advisors tell independent musicians physical releases would make no sense, that is simply not true because in the long run, they do, if released in the right quantities at a time. (That’s when the pressing plants come into play who are also dominated by the majors. Major labels waste money on pressing up too many more CDs of an album than the number they would be selling. That is different for indies who press less product but sell more of the amount of CDs they press. The future for the pressing plants clearly lies in pressing smaller numbers of a title and when supply has run out, pressing them again. )
Anyway, if a self-releasing musician has got a physical product on sale at shows, then they should also make it available for sale through their website because there are always people who crave for lossless sound and physical CDs (such as me). And it really is a pain if I must have an album in lossless to hunt down an email adress of the self-releasing musician and / or indie label to ask them if I can buy a burn. Luckily for me, I have had lots of positive replies doing this so far but also, some people I wrote to couldn’t even be bothered to reply. And that’s not so nice. So please, dear independent musicians, put out some physical product. Files just don’t last long enough so you could ever become a cult favorite over the course of time.