Building Bridges Connects Today’s Music Business

by Greg Nisbet

One thing I’m sure we can all agree on is that there is no shortage of opinions as to the current state of the music business. There have always been as many ways to make a living from music as there have been people trying to do it, so much so that the music business seems to have only one real constant – that it’s always changing. Some commentators paint today’s music landscape as one with two islands, in which the traditional major label fortress stares across turbulent straits at the increasingly large and organized indie nation, planning its defence by trying to counteract the enemy’s tactics without actually learning them.

From somewhere between these two islands, in my little boat, I’ve begun work on a bridge. The way I started was to construct a couple posts, of the digital kind, one about monetizing music and the other about what I found most divisive about the industry. Since then, a diverse little armada of feedback has formed around two open questions I put up across several music-related LinkedIn groups as companion pieces to these posts. All manner of music industry folks weighed in, including artists, indie and major label execs, production engineers, songwriters, bloggers, lawyers, professors, digital music entrepreneurs, publishers, consultants, art directors, students, and booking agents.

What follows is a selection of the most provocative answers to those two questions,from across the industry. Many of the lessons contained in these answers are not new, and not all of the comments were constructive, but I did detect an underlying tone of “bridge-building” in the discussion. To that end, I want to thank everyone who contributed, not just those whose comments I’ve included here.

Question 1 – Do you have any creative ideas for monetizing the new music business?

You wanna do anything in today’s world, then make sure your “band” can put bodies into venues and make sure they play as often and in as many places possible and you will build an audience that will ultimately shape other opportunities to “creatively monetize ” your music. – Floyd McFeely

Audiences love live music with live musicians, and will not only pay for the experience, but will pay for the available product being sold at the venue. It’s more work, but the rewards are direct, and more beneficial to the artist. – Peter Moore

Stop looking at it as the music business and see it as the “content” business, which is what it really is. So then just monetize music like every other type of content – advertising, affiliate sales, up sells, cross sells, back end sales, subscription sites sales, list building, community building, etc. – Dan O’Connor

My position is that the music industry is, always has been, and ALWAYS WILL BE about RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT. Always, forever, relationship management. Now, the venues and channels where this management occurs will be in flux. In fact, as everyone sees, the major label channel is now in decline, and other channels are in ascension. – David Wozmak

I don’t teach about the record business anymore. I teach about the recorded musical content business. That’s what it’s become, with the CD just one part of the product mix – Hank Bordowitz

One of many ways will be advicing of music listeners apart from traditional artist promoting. Advicing stands at the end of delivery chain. Music sites are already filled with too many performers and someone will be required to navigate consumers [so they can] make the right choice. - Tim Khassanov

Start putting people first. Include them, inspire them, invite them in. Make them part of the process and money becomes secondary. People will pay for the experience, rather than to be part of it. After all, who wants to be on the outside looking in? - Joanne St. Clair

Generally, money followed the most popular acts because the most people wanted to see / hear them more often because of the traditional promotion. It seems the vast majority of the new models are directed at music fans – the group that doesn’t need prompting to find music because they love and seek it out. How does the casual fan get involved? – Jade E. Freeman

Focus on connecting with your fans, and giving them new music regularly, and as long as you give them various ways to support you, the money will come. – Jarome Matthew

In a nutshell this industry is all about relationships and not so much about money. The money will come but it’s the relationships you forge with your band mates, their friends, the engineer at the studio who gives your mix a little more attention than the guy who had the huge ego, the DJ from the radio station who will remind folks that when her shift ends that she is making a bee line to your gig because you and your mates are an amazing group of talented guys and hot looking to boot. Sometimes it’s about the mechanic who fixes your gig van for a handshake and a CD and says “don’t worry about the bill my wife loves your music and this autographed CD will make my home life well you know” and he smiles that Mamas gonna be happy tonight this smile. - Peter A.J. Dugger

Question 2 – What is the music industry’s biggest cancer?

People in the privileged positions to ‘know what the kids want’ is the problem. – So Shush

Whatever happened to the days when those like Ed Sullivan or Johnny Carson just heard & loved the music, so gave them a shot? Now it’s just payola, clout & industry politics. – Caryn Moss

The biggest cancer is the sleazy companies trying to take money from aspiring artists offering empty promises. It’s no secret the music business has always been tough to break in to. However, companies taking money from struggling musicians with nothing legitimate to offer the artists is a cancer. – Joseph Scrocca

It is not as black and white as it seems [regarding the major labels]: no-one has to watch x-Factor, but could tune instead to a cultural channel and watch John Coltrane or Karajan conducting…Quality music has many outlets. In Europe this summer all the jazz festivals have been full, thousands of people every night going out to listen to quality music – not bad. – Wulf Mueller

Our industry is long overdue for the repeal of a safe harbor provisions to the DMCA and new federally mandated commerce layers added to the internet protocol in order to protect intellectual property rights. This industry and other IP industries do not need [people] trading on the legacies and property that many of us have labored our entitre lives to create. – Tony Gottlieb

The majors are multi-national companies with shareholders who expect a return on their investment – the infamous “ROI”. But developing talent – “artist development” – takes time and runs counter to business culture. That’s why so many labels are short-sighted – one of the biggest cancers. Most of the established artists of today (Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) would never have been allowed to develop naturally in the current label structure. The Grateful Dead would have been dropped after their first album. Ditto Bonnie Raitt and countless others. Thanks to the efforts of yesterday’s indie labels – Island, A&M, Atlantic, Motown, Hi, Stax, etc. – we have some legendary talents. Now – which indies are gonna adopt the long term view and become the ones who break the next wave of talent? – Tom Cartwright

The music industry’s biggest cancer is internet entrepreneurs who steal artists’ music (and give the artist back a pittance) because they have created a new distribution model. That is what is flooding the marketplace with crap as well as lowering the value of good music. Record companies used to be a firewall that kept quality control for the marketplace. – Ron James

We had relationships with writers and producers in ad agencies. Those folks would come and watch the session and give input on the final mix. It was a face-to-face experience. It was an enjoyable experience. Writers and Producers would agree to see you face to face and watch your showreel at their ad agency…then …the only way to get to see these guys was as if you booked a conference room and gave everyone lunch….kind of like a bribe….now it’s just “can you send me a link to your site?”…no longer a personal people business…just a bunch of folks beaming digital files, links, and notes back and forth…not a good way to do business…no longer fun… – David Steele

The loss of rhythmic diversity! I love a good break-beat as much as anyone. The fact is, however, fifty years ago Billboard’s top 40 included a global array of beats: bossa nova, mambo, cha-cha, polka, waltz. All of that variety is gone. A single rhythm – variations on the basic hip-hop shuffle – now characterize all commercial popular music — from the Dixie Chicks to your favorite car commercial. – John McCall

Love it or hate it, the one thing that technology allows us to do now is to broaden the variety of representation in these types of discussions. Where it used to be hard to find this kind of good information, now it’s hard to filter all of the good information that’s out there. That said, one common thread that seems to be running through this discussion is that, even as gatekeepers rearrange and musicians are both empowered and overwhelmed, building strong relationships is still a key driver of success, wherever in the music world you may find yourself. Good relationships are based on trust gained from shared experience and information, so I take from this that, by constructively engaging in these types of discussions across such a broad spectrum of backgrounds and current realities, we are helping to create the relationships that will take the music business forward into an era where the work we do tends more toward building bridges than burning them.

Greg Nisbet is a storyteller, music lover, and entrepreneur who has worked in jobs as varied as busker, actor, safari guide, private school principal, and mergers and acquisitions broker. He is the founder of an Internet media start-up called Mediazoic.

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