Jun
07

Music Business 101: Indie Music Site and Disillusioned With Digital

The following comes from Tyler Hayes, a music enthusiast and owner of indie-focused site Liisten.  He’s hit a digital wall. 

“I’d like to think I was optimistic rather than naive, but call it what you will.  Digital music, in its raw form of audio files, was supposed to liberate artists from the shackles of onerous label contracts and filler albums promoting one single.  Digital music, with the internet as the distribution channel and almost free reproduction, could’ve single-handedly changed the music industry, or so I thought.  I used to think bands didn’t need labels, that all the tools and resources were right in front of everyone and so all it would take was some good music to make it as a musician.  So far, that’s not really happening.”

In hindsight, seeing digital music as the independent artists’ savior was a little like writing down your escape plan on paper, never trying it in real life and then expecting everything to go as planned.  It makes sense in theory, but in practice there are still only a handful of artists, proportionally, that really make it.  Same as it ever was.

If there was ever someone who wanted the internet and digital music to be a gold rush for good bands and good music it was me.  I even started a site (Liisten.com) that promotes some of the best independent music out there.  But the success stories are few and far between.  And it gets tough trying to defend stories that show 99.9 percent of independent bands aren’t making minimum wage, or that in 2008 only something like 15 independent artists sold more than 10,000 albums.

That’s just the beginning.  There’s Lady Gaga earning $167 from one million Spotify plays.  The fact that every band you’ll talk to will tell you making money is still incredibly hard.  It started to get to my optimism.

I used to think that record labels were the problem. With their failing business model and poorly structured investment to profit framework, fully embracing digital music would fix their problems and save the industry.  Simple enough.  Crunching numbers shows that investing $20,000 in a small artist, and then selling digital-only albums for $7 would mean that you don’t even have to sell 3,000 [~2,875] copies to break even.  Sell an additional 3,000 copies and you’ve doubled your investment.

But ultimately, that’s assuming the stars line up with good promotion and good music.  It’s rare.

There are advantages, I suppose.  I love being able to buy a song on my phone when I’m out, have it automatically show up on my computer when I get home and move it around with ease.  But beyond a few magic tricks like that, digital music shouldn’t be fooling anyone. Distribution, reproduction and even low costs can’t make people pay for music, they can’t promote a quality song, and I’m finally starting to see that by themselves, they can’t save an entrenched industry. -Digital Music News

Jun
07

Braintraining 101: Brainstorming Doesn’t Work

…Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, has summarized the science: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”

This provides some interesting insight into the dynamics of group creativity. This further develops my earlier thesis describing changing social dynamics as the primary cause of “lame supergroup-itis”.

But there’s more nuance to this story than outright dismissal of brainstorming. One of the defining factors of brainstorming, according to its creator, is not allowing negativity as it supposedly stifles creativity. This is wrong.

According to Nemeth, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs.”

Sometimes blind positivity isn’t the best answer.

As the article continues, researcher Brian Uzzi studied Broadway musicals to develop a measure Q of how familiar different artists were with one another. The higher the Q, the more familiar the artists are with one another and vice versa. After running the data to analyze Q scores with relation to the success of these musicals, the results were stunning.

When the Q was low—less than 1.7 on Uzzi’s five-point scale—the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. “This wasn’t so surprising,” Uzzi says. “It takes time to develop a successful collaboration.” But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.

…The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy. The ideal level of Q—which Uzzi and his colleague Jarrett Spiro called the “bliss point”—emerged as being between 2.4 and 2.6. A show produced by a team whose Q was within this range was three times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced by a team with a score below 1.4 or above 3.2.

If these results were to hold true across the creative spectrum, they could explain countless musical phenomena.

  • Could this be why so many “legendary” acts tend to flame out after producing their masterpiece instead of producing two masterpieces many years apart?
  • Is this at fault for the sophomore slump?
  • Is there an optimal creative lifetime for a band?  I suspect yes.

Profound food for thought.

Is it time to reevaluate some of your band’s procedures?

-Music Think Tank

Jun
07

Artist 101: Mary J. Blige Interview [ROCK OF AGES]

Mary J. Blige, the Queen of R&B sits down with Jamaal Finkley to discuss her role in the upcoming musical of the century, Rock of Ages. In this interview, Mary discusses challenges posed in covering Journey’s Anyway you Want it, We also briefly discuss the controversy surrounding a commercial she decided to be a part of, and was the criticism fair.

Jun
07

Artist 101: The First American Idol Kelly Clarkson in Studio Q

Kelly Clarkson of American Idol has embarked on a successful career as a pop singer that has included album sales topping 23 million and 2 Grammy awards.

Jun
07

Producer 101: Platinum Producer Troy Taylor With iSitdown

Platinum Producer Troy Taylor as he discusses his past and new projects as well as some of the biggest trending topics in the music biz. For more interviews and vids of the biggest names in the game check out

http://istandardproducers.com