Category Archives: Business

What Artists Can Learn from Startups, Part 2

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Who Do You Promote?

Recently, I wrote a post entitled, “What Artists Can Learn from Startups” in which I began looking at a number of strategies which startup companies (mainly tech) use to generate leads and interest in their products and services.

The more I think about it, the more certain strategies really stick out as things that artists should be considering and implementing. One in particular is something which holds my attention.

In tech (startups, at least), there isn’t the same reticence to publicize and promote someone else’s product or service as there seems to be in music. Among artists, there seems to be this gospel-like belief that if you promote an artist or song you don’t love with all your soul, then you’re somehow being disingenuous. In all forms of art, and music especially, the concept of reputation is taken extremely seriously. Sometimes to a fault.

Whereas I see founders from all over the startup world promoting one another, I see more resignation in the music community to follow suit, and truthfully for no good reason.

I have no qualms about promoting a product or service that I don’t use, or don’t use regularly. Before you come down on me for having a hidden agenda, though, take a moment to think about all the things you can promote someone for that have little to nothing to do with their service or product.

So often, I find myself tweeting and posting about the people behind the product, either because they’re so magnetic, so innovative in their thought process, or so willing to help others. It has so much more to do with their character than anything else. And this is something artists could so easily cash in on and make their own.

When someone helps you set up a show, helps promote your band or music online, or introduces you to someone new, tweeting out a “thank you” and promoting them isn’t being disingenuous at all. Quiet the opposite. It actually solidifies you as someone who returns favors and good karma, and thus builds your own reputation, even if it’s in the service of others (for the moment).

Positive service of others is service to ourselves, if only indirectly. Artists would do well to begin to reexamine their practices in how they promote others, from the decision process to the execution. Starting to have more fluid strategies here could greatly expand their networks in relatively short amounts of time.

More to come on this soon.

Why Silicon Valley Is Rebuffing the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Andreessen Horowitz’ Piece

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Marc Andreessen (left) and Ben Horowitz (right); image courtesy of Forbes

Marc Andreessen (left) and Ben Horowitz (right); image courtesy of Forbes

First Serve

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (hereafter, ‘a16z’). The piece took a look at the firm’s raise-rounds and returns, and was critical of a16z’s placement among other “venture-capital elite” like Sequoia, Benchmark, and Founders Fund.

While the article is quick to throw around numbers and buzzwords like “elite” and “blockbuster [investments],” the main premise is that a16z hasn’t yet earned the “premier reputation” that it has amongst those in the tech community.

Second Serve — Response

The response from the tech world basically ate up the rest of yesterday afternoon and night.

It started with a response blog post from a16z managing partner Scott Kupor, which was posted not long after the original piece went up: When Is a “Mark” Not a Mark?

One thing Kupor points out immediately is that “marks” and “returns are two very different things in the realm of venture capital. Further, “[c]ash or stock actually realized and distributed to LPs is the only real, non-manipulable measure of a firm’s interim success.”

Kupor is articulating that the data which the WSJ published is somewhat misleading because it chose the metric of unrealized returns to match the title of the article. He further fleshed out this argument as the post went on.

Then the flood began.

Mark Suster wrote a great response of his own here: What to Make of Andreessen Horowitz’s Returns?

One of Suster’s most intriguing points is when he plots the line of thinking lot of VC’s have had about a16z over time, from “ ‘We love Ben and Marc’ and ‘they raised how much’ to ‘…they sure are hiring a ton of staff…’ and ‘How can we hire more staff to keep up with the services they offer?’. ”

More importantly, though, Suster puts into context a reason why a16z might already have the reputation that it does — that most entrepreneurs perceive it as a place of great connections and services, and that he himself has had positive experiences with the firm when they’ve done deals with Upfront Ventures (oh which Suster is a part).

Twitter Thoughts

All the while, I was intrigued to see the flow of responses over Twitter:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why the WSJ’s Focus on a16z’s “Rivals” Is Misplaced

Part of what I find so intriguing is the direct aversion to a dynamic that is perpetuated in the original piece. Whereas the WSJ article paints a broad picture of a16z in relation to its “top rivals,” here are numerous responses from VC’s who run other funds seemingly going to bat for Andreessen Horowitz. In my opinion, this is something exceedingly important which the article skates over.

Yes, these different funds and investors compete for the best deals and the best founders/companies to work with. But most don’t do in a way that makes it easy to label them as rivals.

The term “rival” has a finality to it, as if it’s a forgone conclusion that those two parties will always be on opposite sides of the table. Yet inasmuch as everyone in this business wants to “win” at deals, the metaphor I see is more of a music one than a sports one. In the latter, there’s one winner, one champion. The former, however, creates a paradigm where multiple winners can exist, and where there is a fluidity regarding partnerships and mutual benefits.

Funnily enough, the WSJ added this little blurb to the original article not long after, though really without restructuring its initial argument to account for Kupor’s points:

Screen Shot 2016-09-02 at 12.03.58 PM

So what’s the takeaway in all of this?

  • First and foremost, understand the numbers, terms, and dynamics you’re working with and writing about. That seems to be a point of disconnect between the original article and the response pieces.
  • Second, things are rarely ever as simple as they appear to be.
  • Third, there is a way to write hard-hitting journalism without [publically] making enemies; if you don’t know how to do this, you should alter your writing strategy.

While I wouldn’t call the response to the initial article “biblical” by any sense, it nonetheless provides a good window into the dynamics of venture capital thought and strategy. If nothing else, founders have now been given a good variety of response posts to read and understand, particularly with regard to VC fund calculation and long-term plays.

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

If you enjoyed this, find me on Twitter @adammarx13 and let’s talk music, tech, and business!

Playlists Will Not Save Your Music Business

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My media business will not be saved by video, bots, newsletters, or Slack integration. That’s what Joshua Topolsky told me yesterday. And he’s right.

A still from High Fidelity (2000); Captures the sentiments pretty will I think

A still from High Fidelity (2000); Captures the sentiments pretty well I think

The New Thing that so often arrives just in time as the savior of the whole machine is many times bullshit. It’s a desired escape from an already challenging (dire?) situation that is causing headaches upon ulcers upon headaches. That’s why it seems so magical in the first place; it seems to appear out of nowhere like some miracle from a higher power. You prayed to the media gods for deliverance, and so they delivered unto you newsletters, bots, and Slack.

But Topolsky is right about the misleading nature of these new things: they have the potential to help, but none has the power to deliver us, to part the seas of stubbornness and ego.

While it appears to me that he sought to write about media in general, Topolsky could easily have been talking about any of the media industries in particular. Music, for example, fits right into his sardonic diatribe in a way that must chafe for the megalithic powers who used to control the industry. In music, it goes: yay for playlists, analytics, offline access, curation, and exclusives—build those in, and then we’ll be saved. No, these won’t save your (music) media business. And that’s painful for a lot of people.

More and more, the posts on changing media dynamics which garner shit-tons of feedback are the ones that are the truest. They are radically brilliant—radically poetic in a way—because of their sheer shunning of “conventional wisdom.” Such is more or less an oxymoron nowadays anyway.

I saw an earlier example of this back in November with Chris Dixon’s post on independent gaming, and was similarly moved to write my response on independent music, something he was also referring to (knowingly or not). Now with Topolsky doubling down on a similar idea, it’s becoming an even starker point.

“Because that [former media] system was built on the concept of scarcity and locality—the limits of what was physically possible—it was very easy to keep the gates and fill the coffers.”

And here we come to the prickly point that so many music businesses have trouble with now: scarcity is obsolete; democratization wins. I underscored this in my Dixon-response piece, but now it seems all the more palpable. What used to serve as a power play by music companies—the scarcity squeeze by the major label—has lost most of its bite, if not its bark as well. Maybe it’ll work if we call it “windowing” and stagger the release on multiple services! Nope, we all know that you simply changed the name of what you were doing instead of trying to actually change the action. And it’ll end up free somewhere anyway. Live with reality.

Wait, I’ve got it! We’ll tell people that we have the best playlist-making feature around! Great, so does everyone else. And, by the way, the people who really matter for your music business don’t care. The general consumer/listener might care (and I stress might), but the artists who actually produce the content you rely on for your lifeblood won’t give a shit. Why? Because it ultimately does little for them.

Ah, then we will give them the deepest, best set of analytics they can have! Awesome, so will everyone else. You can join the swaths of sites telling them they have a couple thousand streams, have made essentially no money, and then tell them they owe you $4.99/month for that wonderful data. The reality that you don’t want to hear is that the vastly growing demographic of artists—independents—are smart enough to know this already, and all you’re really doing is giving them numbers with no context. You’re giving them the numbers, the locations, the graphs— but with no real way to actually affect change in those numbers.

Offline access and exclusives then! Right! Except not, because exclusivity doesn’t help these artists long-term, it only helps you in the short term. It’s why artists immediately understand the opportunities before them now while other people struggle to see the big picture. Because they have long-term vision, and patience. Because exclusives are not where the long-term strategy is, either for the artists, or the music business.

It’s in the community cultivation and the relationship bridging. Social and messaging then! No, stop, that won’t be an easy save either. The reality that so few people want to hear is that community cultivation is a long-term process. It’s about knowing things about your content producers—in this case the artists you work with—that your competition doesn’t bother taking time to find out. Don’t ask me how many registered users I had yesterday. Ask me how many conversations I had yesterday with ten artists in seven different countries with fanbases numbering in the tens of thousands. Ask me what comes out of that. And then remember that was only ten artists.

Over the last few years, we were asked who we thought would win the streaming wars, because streaming is obviously the future of music. Except that’s too simple a magic potion because it’s going to take a lot more than that to reach the new horizon. It’s not about fixing the faulty component in the engine. They’re all faulty, and have been for near 40 years.

You have to rebuild the engine completely. Bottom up. You need to construct a music company that does everything that will change the reality for a new artist; after all, there are so many more of them than anything else. And they never stop creating and producing. You need to take your time to do all the sexy things—the playlist functionality, the radio, the streaming, downloading, profiles, social, live—and all the un-sexy things you never thought about—the legal stuff, the business stuff (more than just analytics!), the financial, and the marketing. Fixing the broken paradigm is a losing proposition; building a whole new one is (ironically) cheaper, better, and much, much more powerful long-term. That’s the strategy I’m committed to.

Topolsky was dead-on:

We’ll have to learn a thousand hard lessons, most of them centered around the idea that if you want to make something really great, you can’t think about making is great for everyone. You have to make it great for someone. A lot of people, but not every person.

And that’s what’s missing from the music-business discussion right now. The “everyone” that most streaming services are targeting is already saturated with competition, high prices, and a lot of bad press (from artists and artist agencies like ASCAP and BMI). The “someone” that Topolsky refers to, though, is the independent demographic, clear as day. They’re underserved, undervalued, dismissed, marginalized, pissed off, and not tied to any major label contracts—just right to woo and capture with something as easy as a conversation and explanation of a better future.

I’m as shamelessly self-promotional as Topolsky admits he is because these are the people I love. I know they see what I see, and they’ll wait around as long as it takes to make it work. Because they’re not jaded or angry—they’re just waiting.

Waiting for something better to come along for them.

***

Find me on Twitter @adammarx13 and let’s talk music, tech, and business!

Takeaways from AngelList Radio’s Podcast with Tyler Willis and Jason Calacanis

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Yesterday I listened to Tyler Willis have Jason Calacanis on the AngelList Radio podcast. Despite the fact that the episode was recorded a couple of months ago, I couldn’t stop listening to it. In fact, I was about halfway through it the second time when it occurred to me that I should take a few notes on it to summarize the incredible amount of information that Tyler and Jason discussed (it is an hour and a half long, after all).

Jason Calacanis; image courtesy of the AngelList Radio podcast

Jason Calacanis; image courtesy of the AngelList Radio podcast

The sheer amount of important information covered makes summarizing all of it challenging, but I’ll give it a try. I should note, though, before delving in, that some of the most poignant things covered were in the form of life stories and philosophies from Jason, a summarized transcription of which does not do them justice. To really soak up the underlying meaning of what’s listed below, you really need to listen to it for yourself. Possibly multiple times.

Moving along though. The points which Tyler and Jason hit can most aptly be placed within a number of areas of thought and consideration.  

These are:

  • People
  • Mentalities
  • Entrepreneurs and Founders
  • (Angel) Investing
  • Democratization

I’ll do my best to tackle each one of these, but keep in mind that these are just a few of the points which struck me as the most powerful. I will discuss some in more depth than others, as a number of them are self-explanatory.

People

Jason’s view of people in my mind basically splits into three main veins: human calculation, relationships, and arguably the most important one, empathy.

Human Calculation

This goes to “Jason’s Law of Angel Investing,” which according to Jason is: “I don’t need to know if the idea’s going to win, I [just] need to know if the person’s a winner.”

Jason looks for and reads the things that other people might miss: body language, personality, and interactive cues. As he mentions, he will talk about the [founder’s] idea through the lens of trying to figure out if [s/he’s] a winner or not. This sort of human calculation sets Jason up for the long game, something which he discusses as being a part of his overall strategy.

Relationships

Jason is extremely bullish on his relationships, wanting to be the first call a founder makes when things are going wrong, when the situation looks dire, or just when founders are having a hard time. He discusses understanding that being a founder is lonely, and sometimes all one needs is an ear to vent to; someone to “shoot the shit” with. Perhaps this goes back to Jason’s major in psychology; certainly his ability to read people and situations benefits from such a thought process. 

Life is relationships, pure and simple. Everything else is secondary, and Jason aspires to (almost obsessively) cultivate his relationships. (That’s a good thing, by the way).

This however, leads into what I consider to be one of the central theses of the discussion: empathy.

Empathy

Startups are hard. Actually, that’s a lie; startups are fucking hard. And sometimes the best thing is when someone will just sit and listen while you vent and fume for a little while. Loneliness kills, and having a friendly ear can make all the difference on those tough nights.

One quote seems to capture what Jason’s mentality would be during those nights on the phone with a founder having a hard time: “When I invested in you, I knew the odds were against you, and I still believed in you.” That pretty much sums up all that needs to be said.

Jason’s philosophy of accomplishing close relationships simply by being a nice human being—“buying [the founder] a cup of coffee, buying them dinner, or just saying ‘I believe in you’”—is exactly how I see the world as well. Cultivating relationships means doing what you can for other people because you can do it, not because you see some reward at the end of the tunnel. In the long run, good relationships do tend to reward people in often unexpected ways, but that should never be the crux of the relationships. Relationships are empathy and positivity. It’s about being magnetic.

Mentalities

Within the context of mentalities, Jason hits on a number of notions, though the one that sticks out to me the most is his focus on the “journalistic mentality.” Clearly a holdover from his time as a journalist, Jason discusses how he looks for people who exhibit great journalistic skills: an inquisitive mind, good communication skills, and being able to read situations well. In many ways, this connects with a lot of his poker metaphors. (There are lots of poker metaphors).

As he points out: “What happens when you interview [people] for a long time is you start to understand when they’re full of shit and you start to tell…who’s full of greatness…” Bluntly put, this is very true. I experienced it a lot during my time as a music journalist, speaking with artists and other industry professionals. Being a journalist is one of the best ways you can get to know the industry you want to be in.

“[A journalist] equals an inquisitive person who can communicate well.”

Entrepreneurs and Founders

Jason spends a lot of time talking about how he identifies great founders and what anyone should be doing and/or thinking about if they want to be an entrepreneur.

Know “Why”

First and foremost, know “why.” Why are you doing this, what is the underlying reason?

For Jason, answers like “the market seems open” or “I wanted to try being a founder” don’t cut it. It speaks to the authenticity if a founder is doing it for a larger reason than just trying to take advantage of a particular market situation. There needs to be a certain inevitability to what they’re doing, and how they see the world (something which Chris Sacca has also touched on).

As Jason sees it, there needs to be a real sense of purpose in the founder(s), a mission: “The world needs to evolve in this way, and we have the solution, and we NEED to implement our solution to change the way the world works.”

Jason: “Really talented people tell you where the world is going, and then you get to be part of it. And then you get to help them launch the rocket.”

Don’t Screw Your Supporters

They need to have the integrity not to screw the people who supported them early on. This is exactly in line with a well-known adage in the music industry which I always quote: “For those who forget us on the way up, we’ll see you on the way down.” Don’t forget the people who made your rise possible.

Be a Punk

Founders need to be punks.

Ok so Jason didn’t actually use this word, but as I explained in my post here, that’s really the type of mentality he is describing when he articulates what he looks for in people.

Additionally founders need:

  • To have an armor; a relentless drive, and be relentlessly resourceful
  • Have maniacal execution skills
  • Unstoppable determination

(Angel) Investing

Jason relayed a lot of information about investing and investment strategy. He discussed a lot of his personal strategy as well as how new investors can get in the game and start to learn the ropes.

For the sake of time (and because a lot of this is fairly self-explanatory), here’s a rundown of what he discussed:

  • Tips (for Angel Investing)
    • Spread your bets
    • Start by making investments slowly over a year
    • Even if you lose money, you’ll learn something
    • Always try to learn before diving in head first
    • Join syndicates
    • Get in the game and start
    • Double and triple down on your best bets
    • Meet with founders as much as you possibly can
    • Play the cars of the best investor at the table if you’re new to investing
    • Do the work, be proactive
    • Play the long game
    • Be patient and learn
    • Financial performance will come; focus on a portfolio strategy
    • Investing is a fight/struggle
    • Don’t ever discount anybody
    • Make a 5-year plan
    • Pro-rata rights
    • You want the “difficult” people; these people “mix it up”
    • Focus on being the most valuable and helpful person to the founder
  • Need to Have
    • A comfort losing a lot of your money (which you invested)
    • A comfort with the “shitshow” realities of investing
  • Don’t Be an Investor If
    • You’re annoying
    • You’re a control freak/obsessive person
    • You can’t remain cool and calm
    • You can’t remain classy in the face of defeat
    • You can’t deal with bad news
    • You can’t be a mensch

As Jason articulated: “I have to be the most valuable [person] to the founders. [I ask myself,] ‘Am I doing the most for that person?’”

How did Jason get to this thought process? When he started investing he made a list of all the things he could do for founders to provide value to them. Then he did them.

Democratization

The last major point which Jason discusses is democratization. In this case, he’s referring to the democratization of knowledge and power, and how dynamics have totally shifted in the last 10 years, allowing for entrance into entrepreneurship for tons of people who previously had very little recourse.

Interestingly enough, as he’s discussing the democratization of knowledge which can be used for growth, development of new skills sets, and other such things, I’m just reminded of an article I wrote a few months ago on the democratization of music. True, Jason is describing a different type of democratization process, but the parallel works. In the same way that scarcity has become an obsolete mentality for music, so too has scarcity of startup and entrepreneurial knowledge become obsolete in the worlds of business and tech.

I said it once and I’ll say it again: scarcity is obsolete; democratization wins.

“[Entrepreneurship is] stumbling around in the dark room, fumbling around, until your hand hits the wall, and flicks on the light switch.” – Jason 

Jason also briefly touched on the differences he sees between his LAUNCH incubator and Y Combinator, but that’s a whole other discussion for another time.

All in all, the podcast was intriguing enough for me to listen to it twice all the way through, and then take notes on it for a post. I give it up to Tyler Willis for conducting a great interview, and look forward to a hopeful follow-up with Jason again.

If you enjoyed this, follow me on Twitter, where I talk tech, music, and funny junk 😀

Or, ya know, on that new Snapchat thing 🙂

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Why Ignoring the Independents Means Thunderstorms for SoundCloud

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SoundCloud logo

TechCrunch published a post recently, the premise of which was SoundCloud’s recent tapdance with major labels. The post discussed SoundCloud’s $35M in debt funding, and newly signed deal with Universal Music Group. The fact that the aforementioned funding was actually finalized last May notwithstanding, the piece concluded that the upshot of the whole situation is that SC would end up being worth more than rival Spotify. Here’s why that’s not exactly the case.

The Background: Courting the Mainstream Players

While the TC piece makes some astute points, its most important argument—that SoundCloud has the opportunity to become the YouTube of audio—doesn’t exactly stand on its own. SoundCloud has a major issue in that it’s caught in between two completely different paradigms—that of the independent and that of the major label—and doesn’t seem to know how to resolve those differences. Up until now, the ill-fated balancing act it’s been trying has been somewhat workable, but going forward it will be tenuous at best. As such, the real story here is how SoundCloud is evolving, and not in a way that is wonderful for the independent artists who have historically been its core constituency.

As SoundCloud moves further into the major label fold, it simultaneously does two things:

1) It resolves (at least for the moment) the issues which the music service is having with some of the labels over licensing and royalties. The new deal with Universal clearly comes with it an agreement that the label will drop any pending legal action against the service, as music will now be licensed directly to SC. (It does, however, do nothing for the mass of pending litigation  between Sony and SoundCloud, as the former is that last major label holdout to strike a deal with the service).

2) It effectively continues the alienation of the independents upon which the service has historically built its core and more loyal following.

Leaving the Core Content Base

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with serving the mainstream. However, most every one of the major music companies already does that, leading to an already crowded crawlspace of competitors vying for mainstream supremacy. While the major music companies set their collective focus on mainstream material, the independent demographic is left languishing in the wind time after time. Initially, SoundCloud was an exception in this respect, cutting its teeth in the independent arena long before it signed deals with any of the major labels (starting with Warner Music Group last year). Since then, however, SC has been moving further and further away from the paradigm from whence it rose and closer towards the crowded party at the mainstream table.     

Screen Shot 2015-11-16 at 1.26.18 PM

The music pipeline

While SC battled other services for mainstream consumers, it had for a while been the favorite among independents and underground artists looking to cultivate their fanbases from the ground up. Even Alex Moazed in his guest TC piece acknowledged that this is what makes SC win: the fact that this is where the content stream starts for a lot of new artists (a rapidly growing demographic) and where they begin to build their initial fanbases and cultivate their followings. That SoundCloud is not only moving away from that, but seemingly shunning it in the long run, is a palpable kick in the face for a lot of independents.    

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Growth of independent music between 2003-2012; image courtesy of Techdirt

What Moazed doesn’t address in his piece is exactly what I discussed last spring: why independent artists should essentially kiss SoundCloud goodbye, why their subsequent deal with the NMPA was irrelevant for independents, and ultimately why the precarious high-wire balancing act was leading them down a difficult path. Independent artists, unlike major label performers, are not locked into any required loyalty as a result of record label contracts. They can come and go as they please on any variety of services, and thus are free to explore any new ( and better) opportunities that might arise.

SoundCloud’s error in judgement here is assuming that the independent demographic (arguably its only real unique demographic of content producers) will stick around when the winds change, and the focus of the platform shifts to mainstream desires. Already there were grumblings in the independent underground when SC premiered its new layout early last year. The simple reality is that SoundCloud fundamentally cannot serve two masters (the independents and the major labels) because each is moving in an opposite direction, with desires and mentalities divergent of one another. Now, with the Universal deal, I see only one way SC can continue to struggle towards profitability, and that is in the major label direction.

That, however, presents another can of worms.

Money and Equity

As some have already pointed out (or could simply guess), the Universal deal could not have been cheap by any means, particularly as it meant Universal dropping its legal action against the music service. Furthermore, as Warner gained around a 5% stake of the company when it licensed its own catalogue, one can calculate that Universal settled for nothing less than a similar deal (likely pushing for more equity in order to drop the legal suit).

That’s a huge premium to pay for Universal’s recording and publishing catalogues, and doesn’t yet take into account all the royalties SC will now have to cough up on the backend. The real hard hitting numbers come when one imagines what Sony, the last major holdout, will demand for its material. Seeing as it currently has legal qualms with SoundCloud, it’s conceivable that Sony could demand even more cash upfront and equity in order for access to its musical coffers. At a minimum, one could calculate the collective equity of the major labels to total somewhere around 15%—at a minimum.

Though not listed specifically, the chart below gives one a good idea of where SoundCloud will inevitably fit within the royalty paradigm, and just how much friction it will cause between both the service and artists, and the service and the labels. Two different (divergent) interests make for a massive headache in the long term for SoundCloud.

1276-music-streaming-services-compared_Sep152

Royalty rates, minimum wage, and reality; image courtesy of informationisbeautiful.net

This may seem like a paltry price of doing business until one considers the fact that the relationship dynamic is not an equal one: the major labels hold the keys to the material which SoundCloud wants (and desperately needs, in order to win the mainstream game), but are not equally in need of SoundCloud itself. They similarly license the same material to a variety of competing music services, and essentially can dole it out to the highest bidder, through contracts which then become renegotiable every few years. Thus, SoundCloud (and others) are beholden to the major labels for their lifeblood, but the opposite is not true. SoundCloud has entered into a paradigm that’s nearly impossible to backtrack from. They’re tying their own concrete shoes.

Operating in the Red

All of this firmly underscores the uncomfortable news recently that SoundCloud took a $44M hit in 2014, making their raise of the above-mentioned $35M almost irrelevant. That the raise of the $35M in debt financing will essentially have to go to cover SC’s 2014 losses must be a bitter pill for investors to swallow, particularly as much of their customer base uses the service for free. The simple truth, as it appears to be, is that SoundCloud is hemorrhaging money with no clear path to take to fix things, either quickly, or in the long term. That being the case, it’s fairly probable that SoundCloud will need to start raising another round of money somewhat soon, even if it’s just to weather its current storm.

Screenshot-2016-02-09-at-23.05.39

SoundCloud losses (in Euros); image courtesy of Music Business Worldwide

And then there’s this, the Reddit thread that must be the most painful thing for SC right now. Titled “SoundCloud could close after $44m losses,” the thread spent a few nights recently blowing up, and had an upvote-percentage of 96%. What does this mean in reality? It means a lot of people were reading this conversation, and the commenters are not wrong. In fact, many of them are quite astute and know exactly what’s going to happen:

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 2.36.30 PM

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 2.38.39 PM

These comments highlight the discussion going on regarding SoundCloud not only among its general consumers, but among the artists who create the content on which the service was built. It’s important to remember that before SC had any major label deals in place, it was doing quite well because of the huge influx of independent material coming in from independent artists and DJ’s. In moving further and further away from this core demographic, SoundCloud is quite aggressively biting the hand that feeds it. SoundCloud’s response to the Reddit thread was equally underwhelming and unpersuasive.

The loyalty of such independent artists is a complex thing; on the one hand, they aren’t tied to any one particular party, and thus their loyalty to any one service may be thought of as ephemeral. On the other hand, however, their loyalty has the potential to be ferocious and dogged if and when they find a service which works for them, in their favor. SoundCloud used to be that service, but it isn’t any longer. They’ve traded the long term loyalty of these smaller—but much more numerous—independent artists for the short term benefit of being able to peddle major label mainstream material. The same exact mainstream material which all their major competitors are already selling. They’ve traded the long term benefit of being unique for the short term “benefit” of being just like everyone else.

Short Term Gain, Long Term Loss

The big kicker though, is that SoundCloud didn’t start as Spotify of Apple Music did, with deals with the major labels. It doesn’t come from that part of town. It comes from the less expensive, more experimental street of independent artists, covers, and remixes. It blew up among independents long before mainstream listeners got wind of it, and now it’s moving away from those early adopters towards a more corporate clientele.

As far as I can see it, this is incredibly ironic: the independent music universe is just now starting to mature and expand rapidly, while the major label world is getting cramped and hideously expensive. Over the last decade, independent music has grown immensely while major label-signed content has actually decreased. Put simply, the number of expensive, mainstream artists which big music companies are fighting over is shrinking while the number of free and/or inexpensive independent artists is actually growing at an almost exponential rate. Insofar as the independent universe might not be as lucrative as the mainstream arena in the short term, it nonetheless is where the most growth is happening.

So where does all of this leave SoundCloud? In the short term, the Universal deal is a great breakthrough, and certainly will help them more aptly compete with Spotify and Apple. However, it’s clearly been overshadowed over the last few weeks by their financial woes and discussions of possible paths forward.

In the long term, though, they will end up dismissing the demographic and core base that made them special to begin with. Someone else will pick up that gauntlet and run with it, and that’s where the growing independent base will go.  

The Undeniable Hypocrisy of the Apple-Swift Saga

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Image courtesy of Mirror

Image courtesy of Mirror

The Background

With Taylor Swift’s cleanup at the Grammys this year and attention over her misleading “victory” over Apple—and her subsequent partnership with the company—having waned (if not faded) over the last half year, it seems to be the appropriate time now to dissect what the fuck really happened back in July of last summer. Prior to the past few months when things seemed to have boiled down to a low simmer (focused mostly on SoundCloud and Spotify), the music news arena was blowing up over Taylor Swift’s push-back against Apple. Her open letter criticizing Apple, and subsequent statement that she would be boycotting the new music service—as she had done with Spotify—made it easy for the media to paint her as a martyr for “artists’ rights.” But that’s not the whole story. Not nearly.

When Apple announced early in June of 2015 that its new music service, aptly titled Apple Music, would not be compensating artists with royalties during the first three months of a user’s free trial period, there was significant push-back before Swift even got her letter out the door. The announcement was panned by the general music community, as well as by both artists within the mainstream paradigm, and the broad base of independents. When Apple retracted the statement and replaced it with a “fine, we’ll pay artists for the three-month trial period,” artists felt that they had won a major victory against the tech giant. Many even felt that Swift spoke up for them and that they benefited from her desire to help the general music community. Here’s why that’s wrong.

A Misleading “Victory”

Numerous sources reported on Apple’s recanting and Swift’s “victory,” from TechCrunch to Forbes to Mashable. But it wasn’t that at all. The retraction by Apple was telling of a much larger trend at play (and frankly, a much larger problem for independent artists which they should be focusing on). Swift made the same stink that she did when she “broke up” with Spotify, drawing on arguments like “artists shouldn’t give anything away for free” and her favorite “art needs to be rare to be valuable.” Soon after, Apple caved and said artists would be paid, and everything ended happily ever after.

Not.

While I wholeheartedly agree with Swift that artists shouldn’t have to give away their music for free if they don’t want to (as opposed to Swift’s catch-all “no free music ever/free music devalues your art” blah blah blah), I don’t think her motives are as angelic and altruistic as they might initially appear. People should be asking why exactly Swift made such a big fuss over this. Why? Because it really cuts into her bottom line. A bottom line that many of the independents she somewhat claims to “speak for” don’t have. Their economics are a very different reality from hers. Swift lives in a completely different universe, and no, as Matt Atkins wrote in a great Medium post , she is not an “independent artist.” Her signing to Big Machine Records makes her seem more independent than she really is; make sure you remember that she owns a huge stake in Big Machine, and that it’s distributed by Universal Music Group. So no, Swift doesn’t see it from the same perspective as that of an indie band in the garage in Ohio just trying to scrape by.

If an Independent Tried to Strong-arm Apple…

This doesn’t make Swift a bad person; it simply makes her human in looking out for her own best interests. At the time, that aligned with the best interests of the general music community. But people should not confuse happenstance with correlation.

Swift was able to strong-arm Apple into changing its position on paying royalties for the free trial period, and I commend her for that. But I can pretty much offer a dead guarantee that if it had been an independent artist who took to Twitter to complain (and many did, mind you) or write to Apple, nothing would happen. I’m not even sure they would receive a response email addressing their grievances. The fact that their position changed as a result of Swift’s vocal stance was a sheer coincidental benefit for the independent music community.

Artists who are not on Swift’s level (that is to say, most artists in the world) should be asking what could and would happen if and when their best interests don’t line up with hers. (Never mind the fact that Apple completely screwed up an independent artist’s entire catalogue upon Apple Music’s release). The moniker of Swift as “the Apple-Slayer” was nice and poetic, but all the more misleading. It painted Swift as the David to Apple’s Goliath, but that’s on a whole incorrect. Swift is just as much a Goliath as Apple is, and that’s precisely the reason that Apple caved to her in the first place. Had she been the David-level artist she parades around as (and which most independents actually are), she most likely would have been roundly ignored, as most independents usually are. When Apple caved, it was a good week for all artists. But what happens when Swift decides that what’s best for her is to choke the radio market and keep out other artists who might be stepping on her musical toes? I can’t imagine that she wants to give up any of her power.

It’s All About the Power

And that’s exactly what it’s about: the power. Swift has the power to turn heads and make things happen the way she wants. But that could be very bad for other up-and-coming artists. Swift, ironically, has become yet another gatekeeper, akin to the ones she so readily criticizes. She’s signed to an “independent” label which is distributed by one of the Big Three labels (Universal), and she has the clout to mobilize legions of fans (when she’s not suing them, I suppose).

But what about her whole “anti-free” mentality? That’s directly at odds with a lot of the thinking within the independent music community, where artists increasingly see their music as a means of marketing, rather than an end commodity for sale. What happens when push comes to shove and she’s on the other side of the fence from the much broader—but much more unknown—independent music community? She will still have the power to push her agenda, and they will simply be more obstacles in her way.

The reality is that no artist, of any caliber or genre, should have the power to dictate changes like that. At the time, it worked out for the better, but next time will be another story.

Subsequent Partnership

All of this made the announcement of Swift’s subsequent partnership with Apple more confusing, and in some ways, harder to swallow. After all the stones that were thrown, and all the press that was garnered (a calculated effort, I’m sure), the end result was somewhat anticlimactic. We were all ready for a super showdown of a major mainstream artist (yes, that’s what she is, live with reality) bucking the system and sending a message for musicians everywhere. What we got was…well…predictable.

As soon as Apple caved, so did Swift. She caved to using the service when it turned out that her open letter would get her exactly what she wanted. That sounds logical, except for the fact that she pretty much abandoned the “Apple-Slayer” independent gauntlet when she stopped focusing on how the new service would be for non-mainstream artists, and just said “ok.” In so few words, it seems that Swift was content to “take the money and run,” so to speak. Her victory really wasn’t a victory for anyone who wasn’t seeing massive streaming or airplay already anyway, so let’s not treat it as one.

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words

Perhaps the most glaring result of Swift’s flirtatious battle with Apple, though, was the fallout over her own contracts. In the wake of her open letter, other types of creatives called her on her own hypocrisy, though this time, they weren’t musical artists: they were photographers. In an open letter of his own, professional photographer Jason Sheldon shined a light on Swift’s own hypocrisy in her company’s contracts with photographers at her shows. According to the Washington Post:

Swift’s management company, Firefly Entertainment, demands that photographers who shoot Swift’s concerts to do so on a “one-time-use” only basis and relinquish any rights to republish or sell their photos. Additionally, the contract states that Firefly has the “perpetual, worldwide right to use” the very same photographs in just about any way it sees fit, without compensating the photographer for their usage.

Wow, let’s just take a moment to let that sink in. Swift—the great “Apple-Slayer” and champion for artists’ rights and fair compensation—didn’t (doesn’t?) even feel that those same dynamics should apply when she’s the one who has to pay royalties. That’s pretty staggering.

As she wrote in her own Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” Considering just how much Swift seems to think that “valuable art should not be free,” it’s fairly amazing that she doesn’t go out of her way to create the best working opportunities for other creatives. In fact, the only thing it does is make her an undeniable hypocrite. If she wants to sit on top of the mainstream and act in a holier-than-thou way, that’s fine, but she should at least be honest about it. She shouldn’t be parading around as some “champion for the independent artist” when clearly her actions say otherwise. It essentially negates everything she’s done to “bring attention to artists’ rights.”

Perhaps the most upsetting thing of all is that many were lulled into thinking that Swift is something that she’s not, including other artists, and independents in particular. This was akin to telling someone that they now had a spokesperson they could trust and count on to speak up louder than they could for their general rights, only to find out that person wasn’t nearly as altruistic as they initially appeared. Most frustratingly, though, it has the power to negate arguments made by others who really are looking to campaign for artists’ rights. Swift’s hypocrisy has the power to undermine other voices (ones who might not be as loud as hers), and to take the focus off the matters that need to be addressed.

(Legal) Iceberg Ahead

Even as the fallout from the Apple-Swift roiling seems to have unfolded months ago, so too was there something else on the horizon for Apple which spelled a different kind of trouble: monopoly. As the FTC subsequently sent out subpoenas to competing music services following its initial probe of Apple Music, attention began to focus again on the tech giant in a way that is less than flattering. The “war” which Spotify started last July with Apple seemed to spread to other areas of the collective music business conscience. Apple Music may not have been “doomed” as Tidal was (or seemed to be) upon its initial release, but it does have new things to take care of that other services don’t need to account for.

Perhaps the irony of the whole situation is that Apple’s legal issues regarding Apple Music really only surfaced after the service was announced and released. Inasmuch as Apple would like to pretend that it has enough money to push its way through to any opinion and finding that would benefit it, it still must contend with U.S. legal code, not to mention its own Terms of Service. Power and money notwithstanding, the outcome of the said legal issues won’t resolve super quickly.

In the End

In the end, the whole Apple-Swift saga that encompassed the end of last summer really wasn’t what people reported it to be. It won’t (and hasn’t) really resulted in a super-massive victory for independents beyond some news attention, and it actually served to highlight some dirty little secrets in Swift’s own business affairs. I don’t know if the saga is concluding or just in a lull itself, but I don’t think this “picture-royalty” thing is going to go away anytime soon. Now that the dam has broken, I bet we’re going to see many more creatives (photographers for sure) speaking up over the next year or so about their business experiences with Swift, and I don’t think they will all be positive.

As for Apple, it continues to chug ahead after the release of Apple Music, albeit in the shadow of the new FTC probes. Though the service boasts a few interesting features, few of them can really be described as “new” or “earthshaking.” While ex-BBC host and DJ  Zane Lowe likely made U.K. listeners happy on the new Beats 1 radio program, for us in the States he was a somewhat irrelevant “exclusive” for Apple to tout (simply because most Americans didn’t know who he was). If Apple really wants to set itself apart in the long term (10+ years), it’s really going to need to do better than a few exclusive names. I suppose we’ll see, but for the time being, the Apple-Swift saga has left a sour taste in my mouth that won’t be going away any time soon.

Empathy, and Creating Value for Others Before Yourself

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Screen Shot 2016-01-17 at 7.31.46 PM

Speaking with Chris Sacca and Erik Torenberg on Product Hunt LIVE

Empathy and Humility Are Disarming

Earlier this weekend, there was a great Medium post on Chris Sacca, and how he asks questions in a particular way. Phrasing it as “people-hacking,” a term which I found as quirky as it was vague, the post described the Q&A session which Sacca held following his most recent appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank, and which was moderated by Matt Mazzeo.

What I found most intriguing about the whole post was the ease with which it captured Sacca’s approach to not only answering questions, but asking them. The post itself seemed modeled on Sacca’s “ask vague, unloaded questions” approach, getting right to the heart of how and why someone in Sacca’s shoes (as a well-known investor) still seems approachable and down to earth. Humility is disarming and positivity is magnetic, whether you’re a founder, VC, employee, or customer.

Empathy—for other founders and everyone around you—seems to be a key trait which Sacca looks for. The focus on empathy falls directly in line with the thesis of Sacca’s earlier posts and Periscopes: karma, and creating value for others before asking for value for yourself. Last summer, I examined this focus on empathy and creating value for others within the greater context of relationships.

Creating Value for Others Before Yourself

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with Sacca on these concepts a few months ago during a Product Hunt LIVE discussion he did. During the course of our short back-and-forth, he mentioned as an example how Mazzeo appeared on his radar simply because he created value for what Sacca was doing.

It was this initial value-for-nothing that then coalesced into a working relationship between the two (sans any formal interview); an example that underscored (at last for me) how important it is to continue to be a positive force for others even if the benefit for yourself is not yet clear. Good karma begets more good karma.    

Asking intentionally open-ended questions like “What does success look like?” and “How do you envision success with this product?” (from the original post) enable Sacca to do two things:

  1. He is able to maneuver the conversation away from stock answers and see how the founders really relate to their products, and
  2. He allows an element of freedom to flow through the process which eases the pressure and arguably allows him to see how a founder thinks when not completely flustered.

Relationships → Communities → Identities

The real takeaway from both the Medium post and Sacca’s initial Periscopes and articles is a focus on, and underscoring of, people. Understanding how people think, and being able to relate to those thoughts and emotions are what build relationships, which then turn into communities, and then into identities. Great companies cannot be built without these things, no matter how well everything else might work. Life is relationships, and there’s no substitute for knowing how to relate to people in empathetic and positive ways. These emotions in turn inspire trust and loyalty.

As they continue to build great things, I would encourage other founders to take these things to heart. They ring true regardless of whichever industry or walk of life you come from.

Thanks to Chris Sacca for taking time to answer my question, and to Erik Torenberg from Product Hunt for making it possible to do so!

Continuing to Build with Product Hunt

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It’s 3:00 AM here on the east coast, and I would normally draft something like this a few times over the course of a week to get it just right. I’d rewrite it over numerous cups of coffee, but tonight it’s just one glass of seltzer water until the job is done. Tonight, it’s less important that it be a perfect piece than that it goes out by dawn.

I’ve written extensively on Product Hunt over the past few months. I’ve discussed why their main sale isn’t tech products at all, but rather community. I’ve discussed how their sophomore effort could be has been arguably their greatest triumph yet. I’ve argued that the team which has assembled under the Product Hunt banner, and the community it’s built around itself, is something special that should be recognized and emulated. Ryan Hoover’s post a few hours ago convinced me of why that’s true.

The Medium article to which Hoover’s first couple of sentences refer becomes almost completely irrelevant because of the way in which he opens his own piece: he’s not aggressive, defensive, or combative. He’s much more approachable than that. His verbal acknowledgment at his (and his team members’ hurt) over the post, and subsequent chin-up response of taking all feedback with a positive hand, might very well go unnoticed as readers try to figure out and/or find the post that stirred up this whole range of emotions. It shouldn’t.

Where so many might jump to a defensive tone, or a dismissive air, Hoover sets himself, his team members, and their company head and shoulders above by opening (and then closing) the piece with a dynamic of measured grace. It’s very easy to be graceful in your writing when you’re responding to praise. It’s very, very hard to do so when you’re responding to criticism, especially when that criticism is critical for criticism’s sake, with no discernable constructive overtures.

It’s been my pleasure to have numerous, daily interactions with numerous members of the Product Hunt team, and so I’m personally not surprised at such an honest, well-written piece. For those who are really paying attention, they know that this is precisely the reason why PH has shot up in popularity and virality. This is the reason why it’s growth and positive reputation seem to be stupidly big and expanding: because the community which they’ve built inspires people like me to come to their aid at 3:00 AM without batting an eye. It’s because they’ve engendered in their users a desire to see the most positive parts of the community grow, and to help work on the parts that need a little elbow-grease.

In the music business, there’s an adage I hear a lot: for those of you who forget us on the way up, we’ll see you on the way down. It means that for those artists who forget their early fans, and their initial community when they “get big,” there’s no guarantee that those same fans/early community members will be there when the lights come on; don’t take people for granted.

In writing this post (among others), the PH team has proved why it doesn’t take anyone for granted, and why they want to build a place where no one feels taken for granted or forgotten. If nothing else, this is why they win. The tech products, the guest chats, the games, the growth metrics…all of these stem from how they’ve constructed their community. It’s the reason why their community will continue to build with them, regardless of whatever critical responses they might receive in the future. If you want to emulate something, emulate that. I know that my team members and I are. Emulate how to build a damn good community with strong ties. Everything else can come after.

Be Stupidly Magnetic

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Just about a year ago, Satya Patel posted a piece which I recently reread about raising money. His thesis, namely that making your audience really believe, is the key dynamic in raising funds. Among his main points, Patel points to the fact that emotion is a major factor for investing VC’s, and that emotional connection to a product, service or team can many times be what attracts their attention. This “emotional resonance” as Patel puts it, is what creates the belief; not only in VC’s, but I would venture so far to say in customers as well.

Emotional resonance is a human calculation. Despite the fact that some people like to think that they can “program” and predict the emotions and reactions of others, this is rarely (if ever) true. Humans are the very definition of unpredictable, and to think that you can “game” someone’s reactions is pure hubris.

Community Is the Angel of Loyalty and Second Chances

Patel’s post examines the “emotional resonance” dynamic from three angles within the context of fundraising, particularly at the seed level. The first, and by far most important of these, is the people angle. People are what your company is made up of, and what you build your community around.

Belief in a company’s prospects in the end comes down to the people running it and building it. It comes down to how they see (or don’t see) themselves and their customers. Community is the angel of loyalty and second chances; when something goes wrong (and many, many things inevitably will), community is the thing that will keep your wheels turning long enough to get past the potholes.

Arguably the best investment any team and/or company can make is in the development of their communal dynamics. In people-based industries like music, media, social, messaging, and even news, if your community sucks, you’re dead (Ello seems to come to mind here). When you’ve built a community that rallies around your team and your product/service, people take note, and it’s a lot easier to make them believe. Dynamic, loyal communities of people are magnetic, and groups of disengaged, fly-by-night users are not, it’s that simple. Be magnetic. Be so magnetic that people can’t stand not to be around you.

Potential Is a Human Calculation

The second point which Patel brings up is potential. Potential is a little more intricate because it’s based so much on the people factor. As per Patel’s argument, make VC’s (or anybody) feel that they need to be a part of the problem you’re solving. This in effect is an extension of the first point, as it’s a similar human calculation, understanding what types of things the VC/person identifies with. How do they see themselves outside the office, and what excites them? Identify the VC’s who will look at your company and get that fire in their belly. In the case of music, for example, find those people who are true fans. The ones who go to concerts, make musical analogies, and wanted to be rock stars at some point in their lives. Find the people who speak your language, that’s the real potential. Some people call this “targeting” but I just think of it as “who do I want to go to a concert with and introduce to the band afterwards.”

Proof and Magnetism

Proof is the last thing Patel brings up. He notes that as an early stage company you won’t have it anyway, so just accept that and move on. Proof is demonstrated by belief. Belief is exhibited less by numbers and more by people and emotional resonance. It’s a calculation that even if the numbers don’t look good, that person or team can figure out a way out of the quagmire. Magnetism is the child of positivity, vision, and tenacity. It is so attractive precisely because it creates in people’s minds a sort of fabricated exclusivity; a feeling that if they’re not the ones to surround you then it will be someone else, and that in itself is an attractive trait. Be stupidly magnetic, the rest will follow.

Independent Music Is Big. Really, Really Big.

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PC Gaming Is Just Like Independent Music

Chris Dixon’s article yesterday discussed the trends that media is experiencing in the digital age. While his article focuses mostly on the gaming industry, it also heavily references the music industry, drawing numerous parallels and comparisons throughout the piece. Since I’m not much of a gamer, the music-related aspects of the post fascinate me because:

  1. They so closely mirror those in the gaming industry, which I find intriguing and even somewhat surprising, and
  2. Because Dixon is exactly on-point in his dissection of them.

Regarding the first point, it’s almost eerie how broad Dixon’s thesis could have been, were one to read the piece out of context. Of particular note are subtitles like “PC games are way bigger than you think[,]” which could easily say “independent music” instead of “PC games.” And it is way bigger. Way, way bigger.

Independent Music Is Way, Way Bigger Than You Think

Independent music, like PC gaming (it seems), is substantially bigger than many people initially realize, particularly if they’re only considering one part of “the music industry.” The “music industry” is a misnomer itself since it lends credence to the thought that there is a singular music industry in which to exist and do business. This is incorrect because there are in fact multiple paradigms that exist within the music universe, all of which operate according to very different rules. Independent music is a whole different world than major label music, and thus the opportunities that lie there do not necessarily mirror the opportunities that lie in the latter.

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Growth of independent music between 2003-2012; image courtesy of Techdirt

The stark reality is that independent music cannot be measured according to the traditional metrics. Unlike major label material, independent music cannot be measured and calculated metrically based on chart success, album copies sold (physical or digital), or video hits. Independent music extends to places major label music never touches: to the garage of the punk band in Chicago, the coffee house performance of the singer in London, the bedroom demo of the multi-instrumentalist in Melbourne, and the piano jazz bar in Amsterdam. As a result, the sheer number of artists that exist (and are popping up every day) is staggering.

The Problem with the “Walled-Garden”

As Dixon pointed out, where gaming wins is in providing endless choices for users, and relying on the dynamic of attention instead of scarcity. This is directly at odds with the current approach in most of the traditional music industry (in streaming especially) where the “walled-garden” approach is used as a means of obtaining exclusive rights to material on one service, and thus making it scarce or unavailable on all the other services. The notion here is that if you can garner enough scarce material, you’ll have something your competitors simply can’t lay their hands on.

The problem with this line of thinking is twofold:

  1. It doesn’t actually work, since material (major label or independent) inevitably finds it way off of solely one system and onto multiple systems; and
  2. It’s against the nature of music. Music is art, and the nature of art is to be seen, shared, engaged with, and shared again.

Music is freedom and expression, and to try and stifle that on one system is simultaneously useless and misguided. It’s misguided precisely because music is inherently social. Unlike movies or books, music has a unique live element which can be leveraged to the benefit of both the artists and their fans (both current and prospective). One of the fastest growing trends in independent music is for artists to alter their perspective of their own music: rather than looking at it solely as an end commodity for sale, now it’s becoming a mechanism for free marketing and advertising. It’s a means to an end, a way to get people to come out to shows, connect on a personal level in the live paradigm, and walk away feeling a direct identification with that artist.

What the major label industry really looks like; The Big Three

What the major label industry really looks like; The Big Three

Unfortunately, major labels have been less enthusiastic about this approach. As Dixon notes, they rely heavily on litigation and have effectively stayed focused on protecting their back catalog, looking backwards at the past with forlorn eyes rather than tasting the future.

Royalties Are the Emperor’s Clothes

The royalty system is a whole other monster, which I’ve tackled a number of times, and which I think is simply a chain to the past and nothing more. It doesn’t help artists the way they need to be helped, doesn’t make fans feel good about how artists are compensated, and just remains a massive headache for any music company, streaming or otherwise.

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Royalty Rates, Minimum Wage, and Reality; image courtesy of informationisbeautiful.net

Simply put, the royalty system is arguably the best example in media of the Emperor’s clothes: everyone keeps saying that we just need to find a way to make it work in the new age, when in reality there is no way to make it work in the new age. Arguably, it didn’t even work in previous decades; but it was the only real, scalable revenue system around, and thus became the industry standard.

In the post, Dixon quoted the post-mortem statement of Turntable.fm, which states that the Turntable team spent tons of cash on lawyers, tons of time trying to secure label deals, and ultimately that they didn’t heed the lessons of so many failed music startups. I’ll go so far as to argue that one of these mistakes (which founders continue to make) is buying into the old royalty-based system, and thus undercutting their own feet before even beginning the race.

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The music pipeline

The diagram above paints this picture, and if you look closely, you see that there are really only two entities who hold any significant amount of consistent power: the major labels and independent artists.

  • The former group essentially controls the lifeblood of dependent streaming services (like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and more recently SoundCloud), the payment to artists from the royalties collected, and the gatekeeping authority over the music to which the mainstream is exposed.
Major Label Percentage Ownerships of (some) Streaming Services

Major Label Percentage Ownerships of (some) Streaming Services; *(Beats has since been purchased and rolled into Apple Music)

  • Independent artists, however, control their own distribution, exposure, and revenues models. Because they’re not beholden to any one paradigm or other entity, they are free to explore a wide range of possibilities, and mix-and-match those that work best for them. In many cases, this is highly individualized; what works well for one artist doesn’t work at all for another, and vice versa.

Community. It’s All About Community.

Dixon nails it home in the latter paragraph on books, when he states:

From a legal perspective, some fanfiction could be seen as copyright or trademark infringement. From a business perspective, the book industry would be smart to learn from the PC gaming business. Instead of fighting over pieces of a shrinking pie, try to grow the pie by getting more people to read and write books.

This is exactly true for the music business too. Instead of looking to block remixes and free distribution models, music companies would be better off learning how to leverage those models for improved community building and engagement, particularly as music is so heavily impacted by live continuous interaction. Build the community around the artists, and fans will follow. From those core fans, new and more flexible revenue models arise. The future of music is democratization and community.

If you look at many of the companies that are winning in media/tech right now—companies like Medium, Twitch, Product Hunt (with Games, Books, and Podcasts), and BuzzFeed—you see that they have invested a substantial amount of time and energy in creating communities around their products and/or services. The Medium community writes about anything and everything, and communities on Product Hunt and Twitch are super sticky. And all of this is to say nothing of the Dixon’s crowdfunding point, which certainly has massive and positive implications for the music business moving forward.

Scarcity Is Obsolete, Democratization Wins

Dixon’s closing statement gives me chills:

The internet renders business models focused on scarcity and litigation obsolete. But as the PC gaming market shows, it also unlocks lucrative new business models, and lets creators connect with consumers in new and exciting ways.

It gives me chills because it’s so on-point with what’s happening in music. Dixon set out to write a post on gaming, but in the process he laid out precisely the dynamic that’s bubbling to the surface in the music universe. I can’t believe this is a coincidence. Art is art, its essence is sharing and engagement. Music and games are forms of art, and draw their life-force from the communal engagement that occurs between the creators and the consumers. It all comes back to community. Every time.