Digital Brand Media and Marketing Group Inc (DBMM)

[davidam]

JustcallmeDD:
Dom sent a reply regarding my request for a comment on your post

"As the last decade has abundantly proved, freeing music from discs also drives down the price of recorded music, often to zero, dematerializing what used to be an income for musicians and recording companies. Royalties generated from sales of MP3 files and by online subscription services are unlikely to ever make recorded music as profitable as it was in disc form."

Dom, this is your wheelhouse here. Can you reverse the sentiment in that last sentence there?

I don't think anyone can make music as profitable as it was when the labels re-issued everything on CD and we all had to buy our existing music collections all over again! But, the issue as far as I see it isn't necessarily trying to recapture the past to support the industry, but creating more efficient tools that help artists and their labels maximise revenues into the future. I am very, very doubtful about the attractiveness of any subscription service that exists because they are buying blanket licenses and I can't see how even with a reported $150m price tag on one of the new locker service's all label license it can be good for the industry either. Last year, global revenues were down $1.5Bn. You need a lot of big companies to make up that kind of decline.

We're focusing on the live output to start with because that's a hugely under-utilized area of exploitation for most rights holders. Our vision connects fans and artists (and thus their labels) in a way that hasn't been done before.

Can we single-handedly make recorded music as profitable as it was in disk form? No. Can we deliver on our promise to put total control monetization and distribution into the hands of the people that own creative works? Absolutely. That has to be a better solution than having your output aggregated by a third party and then getting paid according to an algorithm.


"Now everyone, not just a critic, can feel awash in music, with an infinitude of choices immediately at hand. But each of those choices is a diminished thing; attainable without effort, disposable without a second thought, just another icon in a folder on a pocket-size screen with pocket-sized sound. The tricky part, more now than ever, is to make any new release feel like an occasion: to give a song more impact than a single droplet out of the cloud."

Again, Dom understand this too. Dom knows that its about creating that connection between the fan and the artist, not just having each release be "just another song amongst billions". As he mentioned on his blog today, its about creating fans that are empowered to spread the good word about their favorite artists. Again, it comes down to how widespread this idea can become, and how many people adopt this mentality. And it is comforting to know that the person who understands this was the one who built CloudChannel and is now impressed by how intuitive it has become.

Awash with music... infinite choices... etc etc. The same can be said about TV, movies, in fact any media available today? Having said this, I agree. We are awash with music - it's everywhere. Is this a bad thing? Most people choose what they like and filter out the noise from elsewhere. I am not a great fan of electronica, so I just don't listen to it. There's plenty of it out there and it's low budget to produce, but it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment indie rock, or 50s blues, or 70s jazz.

What the "revolution" is about isn't just propping up the mega acts. It's about changing the fortunes of acts further down the food chain too by giving them more earning potential than they can get by being part of a blanket deal.

I do have faith, but I always find myself wondering how much RTG will be responsible for this revolution towards the "peoples republic of music". I feel like the service/site that empowers the fans the most will probably have had the most useful and effective tools (thus the fans choosing to use this site/service as the pivot in their revolution). And the service/site that empowers them the most (and is thus most responsible for this revolution) will find strong loyalty among fans who have now used that service as a catalyst for their revolution. This service that sparks this new empowerment and this new fan-artist relationship on a wide scale will have quite the advantage.

I don't disagree, but I don't think the People's Republic will need to end up being a dictatorship with just one company winning. There are so many sides to the media business that there will be many companies who do really well. Here are a few that I really rate: www.nextbigsound.com, www.headliner.fm, www.pledgemusic.com, www.sentricmedia.com, www.aderra.net. These are all part of the revolution.