The royal 'we' realize writing this two-part article on the historical quality of popular music that the MSJ doesn't know what our peers define as 'good' music or how the group 'we' get that music. We don't know who your favorite artists are, or what you consider to make an artist a 'good'. How does one compare Rich Boy, Big & Rich, and the Big Bopper? Who's better: George Thoroughgood, Fugazi, or Ashley Tisdale? This week, we make a humble effort to help understand what is 'good' and give some idea of how audience members should expect to 'get' music in the next few years.
We are in the era of the audience. With innumerable sales channels, progressively lower cost for music players, and an active piracy market, the popular music market is more competitive; sales cycles are shorter and the supply of product is greater than ever; the sound must evolve quickly and still appeal to a core audience - OUCH! This competition could hypothetically lead to the greatest amount of musical innovation we've ever known; the flipside, however, is audience fatigue. How often do you listen to a song you downloaded a year ago? What is the shelf life of a song, or an album? If artists pour heart and soul into a song and you, the audience member, forget it within three months, what is the impetus to publish and sell an artists' work? Is the income enough to make up for the emotional rollercoaster?
In the past, musicianship and technical ability was the measurement of a good artist, and arguably, the most objective way to measure musical talent. This measure can still be used with some effectiveness when looking at jazz and classical music, notwithstanding the avant-garde turns of many young artists in both universes; programs sponsored by Harry Connick Jr and Wynton Marsalis in New Orleans, and VH-1's Save the Music. Generally, however, jazz and classical albums sell few copies; the fragmentation of popular music into many genres and sub-genres means the definition of 'good' isn't easily identified. With songs replacing albums and producers replacing artists as musical superstars, the concept of quality has to expand to fit the more diverse audience. The easy answer is simply that 'good' is what speaks to you, product marketers be damned. Sales managers, however, aren't likely to be satisfied with such a broad definition. They are likely to look for metrics, like CD sales, concert sales, artist MySpace site visits, or iTunes downloads. Radio play or MTV video play used to be a good measure, but who listens to radio anymore, and who watches MTV for music videos anymore? This lack of reliable measurement may be one reason why sex has become so prevalent in popular music today; in addition to spawning the oldest profession in the world, sex is a reliable sales driver for most consumer products (over 700 articles on the subject appear on Google Scholar).
If an artists isn't a video vixen with access to a significant sales budget then, how do they develop their careers and find new audience members? For established artists like Radiohead, they can explore a perverse economic idea: providing music at each customer's marginal cost of listening. Unconfirmed estimates (see the web article for hyperlink to WSJ article) from comScore suggest that Radiohead made nearly the same amount by putting their album online, as opposed to the traditional store-driven CD sales model (despite 62% of listeners choosing to pay NOTHING - see Rushad's review of the album below). Other services, such as www.amiestreet.com are trying similar sales models.
For new artists, however, the Radiohead brand loyalty experiment isn't realistic. While many, like MBA2 Chris Genteel, admit that $1 per song is unfair, no one really knows what 'fair' is - kind of like our question about 'good'. Each person has a different willingness to pay per song - the advent of iTunes changed that from a price per album. With the greater sales outlets and opportunities to grab music at its true marginal price - ZERO - the audience in Porter's Five Forces has significant power. Notwithstanding a keen focus by the Recording Industry Association of America to curtail piracy, it is a real phenomenon, and artists need to be aware of its impact on their art.
Everyone loves a rainmaker - a client who loves your work and loves telling their friends, colleagues, mistress, and bartender about it. In music, artists' prospectors and developers (A&R) used to serve this function; they brought the audience the cream of the crop. With fewer and fewer A&R folks around (some argue Clive Davis and P Diddy are the last of this breed), artists look for others to pick up the slack. In step the children of Napster.
If you make the plausible assumption the iPod and other non-Apple MP3s represent the future of music listening, then the iTunes and their competitors may well be the new rainmakers - Content Curators. A featured song/album on any of these services will likely sell better, and make the artist more $$$$. The question now becomes whether the audience - who we all happily agree/assume is driving market evolution - prefers buying or leasing their music. Buying it enables a great American pastime - namely, self-determination and control of our 'stuff'. As mentioned, however, much of what we buy becomes waste in little or not time at all - damn, I knew I'd get over Britney Spears! Now, we're stuck with the music; how many of us delete a $1 song we regrettably bought at iTunes? It's our nature to build up clutter and not get rid of it down the line. In steps the 'newspaper' and 'subscription' model of music content.
The New York Times offers basic content for free; editorials and special features are pay-per-view. In this model, a majority of revenue comes from selling personal information to advertisers. This is the model that music provider www.spiralfrog.com uses. When it comes to newspapers, it seems we've all comfortably slipped into the new readership model; is music any different? The public debate over the value of personal privacy in the new digital age is heated (see Google's deal with U-M libraries to publish copyrighted works, as an example of the battle), with good points made on both sides. The question seems to be around convenience and control - a common theme. So, what if artists provided incentives to purchase albums online - as Sean Penn & Eddie Vedder did for the soundtrack to the movie Into the Wild? Will the added features and convenience of downloading the album outweigh the nightmare of every pizza shop, credit card provider and sweepstakes shop having access to our personal shopping habits and mailing address?
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