Music Biz Reality Check

MPTrax Beta Signup

2008-07-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

We will soon be launching our music discovery site I described in my previous post. Please feel free to sign-up below to receive a beta invite in the upcoming weeks.

The New Face of Music Discovery: MPTrax.Com

2008-07-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

In my 30 plus years in the music business, I have managed funk bands, rock bands, singer-songwriters and rappers. All of them put out their own records and most of them received decent record deals. Everything Bruce has described in this piece, as well as most of those who have commented on it, has described me at some time in my mode as an artist manager. For the past two years, I have spent time and a great deal of money building a new music discovery website that reflects my 30 years of experience in the music industry and which will go live sometime over the next 30-60 days. Its web address is www.mptrax.com. I have seen the music business from the inside out. I have been part of major label hit making machines and I have seen the ever increasing failure of most of them to embrace the new digital age. My website has compelling value propositions for both artists and users. For artists I have built a filtering process to enhance their discovery prospects and the means for them to make substantial dollars in areas in addition to the download sales and merch models. If you have a moderate to substantial base, my site will help you find sponsors and advertisers to increase your bottom line and develop your brand. All bands and artists are looking to increase their exposure and their gigs. MPTrax will provide a unique original music booking platform to generate gigs for any artist willing to participate and work my new system. On the flip side, MPTrax will make it easy for anyone to book a band or artist for a house party, frat party, dorm party or venue date and probably for much cheaper then they ever thought was possible. Users will be able to build power to influence the musical tastes of others. If enough users and artists come to participate, my site will create a new promotable world where an artist can make a lot of money and break into whatever is left of the mainstream and users can find and emotionally invest themselves in new artists and play a major role in breaking their careers. There will be no need for record deals because the label system is not developing artists any more. It is my hope and belief that my new website, MPTrax.Com, after its launch, will help to reinvent the way we do music business, creating a new, exciting and relevant business model evolving out of the old not just for artists but for their fans as well. It is also my hope that MPTrax will become a breeding ground for a new kind of digital savvy artist manger willing to work a new and innovative digital music discovery system.

One Size and Place Fits All

2008-05-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

Regardless of the record companies’ ever increasing efforts to stop it, their existing business model is in an ongoing state of decline. To regain some of their former financial stature and growth, record companies, majors and independents alike, along with unsigned artists, too, must cultivate and create, as quickly as possible, a new digital marketplace where competition can flourish and where some semblance of control over music discovery and distribution can be exercised. In this brave new world, record companies must immediately combine their forces together and move quickly to consolidate as much of their depleting customer base into a single digital location where decisions can be made about new music. This new DRM and royalty free, digital location must be organized into a new business model that allows anybody trying to build a career as a successful musical artist to be discovered, exposed, branded and monetized. Additionally, record companies must take advantage of the clout their remaining legacy artists have, while they still have control over them, to help them get a foothold in this new digital world.

In the old business model, all of a record company’s distribution, marketing and promotion efforts were centered terrestrially and, up until recently, these channels of distribution were strictly controlled by the record companies and their close friends at radio. Now with the Internet and the advent of digital music distribution, this axiom is no longer true. In the digital world, record companies can no longer exercise the level of control over the marketplace they once had. Unfortunately, there are a multitude of Internet sites that use music as some part of their mix of activities. This limits the ability of record companies and independent musical artists to easily promote their music in any kind of truly effective or meaningful way. However, if artists and labels were to consolidate their support and efforts into one digital environment on the Internet with a global reach, they could foster the development of a much more promotable community than they now have and thereby have a great deal more control over the exposure and financial fate of their music.

Just think how much more effective it would be for record companies and artists in general to have one destination on the Internet where people went to find their new mainstream music and where people could influence and be influenced to make decisions about that music. Both the cost effectiveness and efficiency of new music discovery could be scaled down and become more manageable for record companies, independent labels and unsigned artists. Artist development and branding could be focused into one place. By developing an array of special tools to promote and consolidate a base in this major new digital music world, record companies, artists and managers could much better maintain and retain the attention and interest of the average music consumer. Think about it. This is not just a sensible and practical decision for record companies, artist managers and artists to make and emotionally own, but it is a sound business decision that can potentially solve many of their current problems dealing with music discovery and financial scale.

Can the Fragmented Online Music World Create New Mainstream Artists?

2008-04-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

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:

The collapse of the major label A&R system and the corresponding demise of its marketing and promotion apparatus.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.