heute:pop:blog.  

This is a my recent contribution to the Music Think Tank where you can join the discussion:

Digital distribution as well as promotion has undoubtedly been the best thing that could have happened to music fans as well as musicians. Even bigger content owners are finally seeing the opportunities (instead of the threats) that come  with the technical change of delivering ‘media’ over the last ten years. It is now easier than ever for artists to connect to their fans and delivering the music to them, gatekeepers have been eliminated and (in theory) artists can reach out to millions of music fans out there through the internet. So far, so good.

picture by fabbriciuse

Everyone who works in music knows that there are various new challenges that have developed through new digital delivery methods and those challenges can make it difficult to monetize digital music. I won’t be going into the issue of file sharing (there are enough people out there who have something to say about that) but I want to explore a common misunderstanding about digital media: “digital distribution is free” (or at least very cheap). It is not at the moment.

Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’ discusses how we can monetize niche genres through very cheap distribution and how one can successfully make a business outside of the ‘blockbusters’ through scalable distribution methods as well as recommendations, which are enabled through digital technology. For the music industry this means that it should be easier for artists (or labels) outside the Top 100 to find their audience and sell products (downloads, CD, tickets, etc) to them by using those new technologies. This sounds all great on paper until you look at the actual cost of digital distribution. It is actually quite high.

Lets look at a simple example. I’m an artist and I want my album to be available through various download shops. My music has a niche audience but with my distinct sound and existing online following I should be able sell more music by having my album available at more retailers. If I want to do all the work myself I will have to go through the following steps:

• Identify online retailers I want my album to be available at. And there are plenty all over the world.
• Negotiate deals with those retailers.
• Deliver my album in the correct specification. Those will vary from retailer to retailer.
• Make sure I receive regular royalty reports.
• Check those and send invoices. This will have to be repeated every month or quarter, depending on the reporting period of the retailer, and of course it has to be done for each retailer.
• There might be some additional unexpected tasks when things go wrong: wrong meta data displayed, you never receive reports from certain retailers, some retailers might not perform well and I would like to withdraw my content, etc.

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