Can the Fragmented Online Music World Create New Mainstream Artists?

At this time, it is difficult to effectively promote a new artist on the Internet because there are so many music sites that need to be serviced. At best, marketing campaigns can enhance the sales profile of almost any artist's album and allow smaller artists to gain enough traction to make a decent living without major label or major indie label involvement. Due to this fragmentation and diversity of music web sites, it is virtually impossible for a new artist to break into what will become the new mainstream however big it still may be. The Internet has definitely enhanced the success and enlarged the profiles of a number of artists. Unless someone knows something I don’t, major genre core artists (i.e., Rock, Urban or Country) have yet to be discovered and broken entirely through the Internet.

Major labels, independent labels and unsigned artists must realize that for anyone to breakout out nationally into whatever will be left of the mainstream, everyone must show up to one place to compete. Artists must have access to and the ability to promote to the same large pool of unique monthly visitors on one website in order to influence a critical mass of its users to emotionally own and break a particular artist nationally. I intend to bring choice and control back to the music selection process and the sooner the industry stops its vicious cycle of greed and stupidity and accepts that they need to find a platform where they can all compete together, the music business of the future can get on to a new track that may not produce the mega platinum stars of the past but will certainly produce a new generation of increasingly larger core mainstream artists.

Unfortunately, discovering the next generation of major mainstream artists, under normal circumstances, is a daunting task. At present, the following key factors listed below taken together with the clueless nature of those playing in the digital music space has made the discovery of any new mainstream artists of significance extremely difficult and ripe for a creative new business model to show the way:

1. The collapse of the major label A&R system and the corresponding demise of its marketing and promotion apparatus.
2. The lack of independent labels to pick up this slack or to provide artists with a fair and reasonable value proposition that allows for their growth and profit.
3. There are no daring new music discovery business models with serious value propositions for both artists and fans that have generated any real mainstream success stories.
4. The consolidation of mainstream terrestrial radio and its radical reduction of not only new songs on its play lists but also its lack of positioning new artists for success as well.
5. The mass defection of the 14-24 demographic away from terrestrial radio and cable TV towards P2P and BitTorrent music file sharing, video games and iPods.
6. The difficulty of wading through the millions of songs on the Internet and finding unknown artists that are new and exciting and capable of triggering emotional ownership by the Internet mainstream.

Except for industry heads and their dwindling troops of sycophants, most people with a brain and knowledge of the music business have long ago conceded that the music world as we once knew it is over. There is a new day out there and no one or no company has seized it. Most industry watchers and pundits agree that somehow the Internet and its digital environment will eventually play a role in the discovery of new mainstream music. So far this is a virgin territory that has barely been explored.

Additionally, there are those who look at the total fragmentation of the music space and say there is no longer a mainstream within which to break a major artist. Realistically, one can probably argue that the promotable popular music mainstream has shrunk perhaps to 50% of what it was 5 years ago. Even so, at a minimum, that still leaves about 150 million Americans that are still part of that music mainstream. American Idol, You Tube, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo Music and AOL Music tell us there is still a huge potential mainstream. More people than ever are listening to music in larger amounts than ever. Radio is still the place where most Americans discover their new music regardless of how homogenous the music in that system has become.

In what will eventually evolve into the Web 3.0 music environment, 14-34 year olds will most certainly be looking for more “choice and control” over their music discovery process. Almost every music website of any consequence has fashioned some scenario that involves major label content and obviously believes that without that content they can not have success and profitability in the music space. Recommendation engines like Pandora, last.fm, iLike and Peter Gabriel’s soon to be launched thefilter play into the user’s tastes and are very likely unable to build critical mass and momentum enough for any new or unknown artist to be discovered by the mainstream. iLike, the most used app currently on Facebook, has met with dismal failure in trying to force feed its antiquated music discovery site Garageband.com to its iLike users.

Artist hosting sites like MySpace and what’s left of Purevolume, originally built a first to market presence. However, it is clear they both lack a real value proposition for artists that makes them money or builds them a fan base large enough to emotionally own the artist and buy lots of their music. With the ever increasing fragmentation of the rock music marketplace, a non existent marketplace for all but a few hip-hop artists, the complete demise of terrestrial rock radio and with hip-hop radio dolling out only 20 slots to its artists, a 10,000% increase in the number of indie labels, the incredible rise in the number of music blogs touting their recommendations, the hundreds of sites which will sell an artist’s music, and the millions of artists on the Internet vying for some sort of attention, it is no wonder that only a few artists are able to gain any traction.

Neither MySpace nor any other music site on the Internet has ever created a truly viral apparatus within themselves that allows an artist to enter one day and within a reasonable period of time rise up and conquer a compelling percentage of the mainstream and sell a hundred thousand downloads. Up until now, MySpace has created an apparatus for bands willing to spend an enormous amount of time and energy on its site to enhance their presence and profile. There are more artists today selling from 1,000 to 5,000 CD’s than there ever has been. However, the new MySpace music with its cozy major label relationship and insulting presence to independents could change this whole scenario.