Some interesting noises from the music industry over the weekend, and this morning's Guardian ties it in with Nokia's Comes With Music (Discord Over The Phone). In short, musical artists are worried that the labels will not pass on enough of the proceeds from online music back to them. To that end, they have launched the Featured Artists Coalition. But what does this mean to the digital music landscape? Read on for my thoughts...
In short, musical artists are worried that the labels will not pass on enough of the proceeds from online music back to them.
...which has been the case since the music industry started.
Look at virtually any period of music sales and you'll find artists getting conned out of royalties by their labels (and also sometimes conned by their fellow band members too, as Smiths fans may remember).
There will always be a tension between suppliers wanting to be well paid for their goods and the wholesalers/retailers wanting to take a larger cut and/or lower prices.
This goes beyond the music industry, look at how many farmers are upset by the low price they're paid for produce by large supermarkets. Farmers have long tackled this problem with schemes where independent markets sell fruit and veg straight to consumers cutting out the supermarket middleman completely.
It would be difficult to do that with indie music though for the reasons Ewan touches upon, a lot of people don't want to pay for each track any more, and ever-easier piracy is reinforcing this attitude. The other problem is that music isn't a commodity: tomatoes from a farmer's market are more or less like tomatoes from a supermarket, whereas music from indie labels is usually much less sought-after than big name artists on major labels. Indie music may get better reviews and have more loyal fans, but it's big label music that gets the vast majority of sales and always has done.
The other alternatives to direct sales (such as in-music adverts or spin-off merchandise etc) are probably not workable for the relatively small audiences that indie bands tend to get.
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