Christian Marshall

Justin Giordano

Entertainent and Music Industry

Final Paper

Schemata of An Indie Artist

In today’s new day and age as an artists, no longer does an artist need to rely

on a record label in order for them to collect revenue from their music. As we begin

to approach a new digital age, the music industry has had a huge decline in revenue.

This can be seen in various examples, such as the debut of Napster and P2P sharing.

As we transcend the period of using mechanical services such as cassettes and

vinyls, we see a new era of distribution via Internet 2.0. For my paper, I will be using

two books to provide examples of such; to provide examples of how artists can

create revenue for themselves. These books are The Future Of The Music Business by

Steve Gordon and Music Law: How To Run Your Band’s Business by Rich Stimm.

We begin by observing section 106 of The Copyright Act of 1976, which gives

the ownership of the copyright of a body of work exclusive rights to reproduce,

distribute, display, transmit, and perform (Gordon, 6). This is especially important

in the music business to protect songs and masters by spelling out the precise rights

reserved to the copyright owner. Although this system has and continues to work

somewhat, it is showing to fail as well as lose revenue due to the fact that music is

no longer consumed through the means of a mechanical cassette or CD. Instead,

music is either streamed, illegally downloaded or peer shared through various

networks such as BitTorrent or Limewire. It was these sites alongside the

consumers ability to download music for free that allowed for the creation of digital

venues for music such as Napster and Itunes. By 2006 total sales from recorded

income dropped by 50%, or from 14.1 billion to 7 billion. (Gordon, 126) This was

precisely around the time of Napster’s debut as well as Itunes’ preceding it. This

seems to have cause a change of music economics’ dynamics, as people are no

longer the direct consumers of the music industry but rather products of tech

companies instead. Therefore, as people continued to use ISP’s for P2P downloading

or streaming, more data was used to supplement the providers with more revenue.

In a sense, this can be seen as pocketed change for ISP’s, but are huge losses in the

long run for major label companies. For this reason, many of todays artists tend to

shy away from the major labels, as such technologies make it easier for artists to

make a name for themselves. For this reason, sites such as iTunes have had great

success in offering artists the ability to put their own music online for only a

compensation of 30%. Of course, this matters greatly to a startup artist, but to an

individually established artist, this is significant. Jobs made a fortune from his

devices, not the music inputted within them (Gordon, 126).

This then presented artists the ability of reducing the price of their

recordings due to access to newer technologies, as well as distributing their music

nearly free of charge. The (DIY) process has become so inexpensive that it’s led to

the demise of many small studios across the country (Stim, 345). In today’s musical

era, you could have your own home studio for about 1,000$. This is including

speakers, headphones, a laptop, and mouse software. You could learn to mix,

produce and master your own material without the need of an expensive engineer,

producer, or mastering engineer. You have the ability to distribute using

distributors such as Tunecore, or CDBaby; Tunecore only charges $2.00 per store

and CDBaby charges 9% of its recipients. These online distributors will not only

distribute it to various online stores, but will also use Analytic software to show the

aggregated data of how those songs are doing in regards to revenue. In todays’ age,

music labels for the most part only market and promote. This generally includes

radio play, tour support, radio and TV interviews/performance, product advertising,

and Press Coverage. However, parent labels tend to have artists on blogs, Internet,

and radio. Also they work on an artists’ website development and maintenance,

online promotions, major website features, and better music store positioning.

However for this they are offered a 360 deal, which is basically 20-50% of

everything you make revenue from. This oftentimes is never a good deal for an artist

to sign, as it becomes binding on an artists career as well as ability to expand

himself.

Before using these distributors, however, it is important to have a UCC

barcode for two reasons. The first reason is because you wont be able to distribute

anything on any third party dispenser unless they’re a distributor source such as

CDBaby. The second reason is that SoundScan wouldn’t be able to monitor your

sales, which means you won’t be able to qualify for the Billboards charts. (Gordon,

177). Of course, this doesn’t count for every occasion your music is sold. In the event

that you are selling recordings at concerts and local stores, you don’t need a bar

code. This bar code only applies to other distributors, such as Amazon or iTunes.

(Stimm, 277)

Due to these various technologies, the new model has believed to shift into

that of a Polyphonic based management style. This idea was originally a joint

venture between Nettwerk Music Group and Radiohead management. With 20$

million dollars backing this, they were able to provide promotion, marketing, tour

support, and distribution for artists in return for a 50/50 split for all sources of

income. In a sense, an artist can hire a polyphonic company however the company

has the funds. However, the management companies’ work only with the songs they

receive, whether from an artist that has a label backing or not. Depending on the

artists’ goals, the management company is able to create a marketing plan that

would be complementary to the artist. (Gordon, 251-54)

As provided, there are many tools that can be used to an artist’s advantage in

todays digital era. No longer is it the case that an artist can be screwed over by the

industry, but only by a lack of knowledge of such online tools. As of today,

Soundcloud become very useful for the exposure of artists despite losing revenue

for the past few years. However, to truly distribute your music legally, it must

almost be that an artist understands the legal copyrights as well as proper

marketing strategies to promote himself efficiently. Whether it is the technologies’

of today or tomorrow that promote his/her independence, it must solely come from

them as well as the zeitgeist’s utilization of such services.

Citation

Gordon, Steve. The Future of The Music Business. 3rd ed. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard,

2011. Print.

Stim, Richard. Music Law: How to Run Your Band's Business. Berkeley, CA: Nolo,

2006. Print.