[FMC] Guiding Artists Through Tremendous Change

After finally getting to GW, only a few minutes late, there’s wireless here, and we’re on live from the Future of Music conference.
Guiiding Artists through tremendous change
Eric Brace Last Train Home and The Washington Post (moderator)
Charles Bissell The Wrens
Bertis Downs Advisor, R.E.M.
Michael Hausman President, Michael Hausman Artist Management
Peter Jenner Manager, Sincere Management/Secretary General, IMMF
Clyde Valentin Director, Hip Hop Theater Festival
Shoshana Zisk Management, George Clinton Enterprises
Bissell: Connections with audience (via ‘net, podcasting, email) makes it possible to go outside the traditional model
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Valentin: From a theater, rather than music, background, but still, it’s all about connecting with audiences.
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Zisk: “Let’s put George Clinton on myspace, get an independent distributor, go with the hwole DIY approach.”
[Aside– Major artists, like Clinton, can take advantage of the increased revenue from selling directly, owning the master, owning the publishing, but have already taken advantage of getting name recognition on major label marketing budgets.]
SZ: George has distribution, owns the master and owns the publishing for the first time.
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Hausman: Artists need to go out and build a fanbase.
College and AAA radio isn’t so much of an expense as getting on top 40. The indie promoters at this level are more like tastemakers than the gatekeepers who control access to stations.
After the crackdown on indie promotors, some stations won’t talk to any independent radio promoter.
A project only works if it’s going to ship enough records to make it worth my time.
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Jenner:
The internet and mobile phones are out there, and there will be money knocking around out there.
We’re in the era– we’re in the railroad business and the first 707s are just rolling off the production lines, and it’s very hard to work out how the train companies get into the airplane business.
The creative community wants to figure out how to get on the airplane and get fuel for the plane.
For the new media to work as an entertainment medium, it needs to have good music to make it worthwhile– the music that appeals to them, while the record companies (who still control must of that music) don’t want to give up what has worked.
How to get paid is the challenge, which is the problem that no single manager/artist/record company can resolve.
Suspect there has to be legislation, change in copyright laws.
It’s a new model– not a new way of selling records, a new way of getting music to the public.
Quite a lot of legislators will be very grateful if the creative community and consumers can get together on their own to figure out what work.
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SZ: Going direct makes a lot more work for the artists– entering info into iTunes, then Napster, then Rhapsody, etc. Of course, IODA helps. The distributors are trying to get into the digital distribution space, too.
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CV: Content flows from space to space, genre to genre
MH: The job of managers and support people is to find talent, nurture talent and support talent, but the angles have changed. Selling records is no longer the benchmark.
EB: You can make a lot of money selling 10,000 records.
CB: The “sympathetic, like-minded” scene is more important than the NJ local scene (except at Maxwells).
CB: There’s a lot less free time. The role of music is becoming relegated to a background for people’s lives. Listening to music as a goal isn’t so big anymore.
PJ: The legal services are very restrictive and limited. The challenge over the next few years is to get a sensitive, sensible collective licensing system, which means that the electronic distributors can provide the public with what they want. The unit cost is going to go down.
PJ: Music is becoming more of the soundtrack of your life, rather than something you sit down to have the maxell experience. Access, not ownership is what matters. Today’s legal models make access very complex legally and that needs to get sorted out. The plethora of media means that mass marketing has become ridiculously expensive. The majar labels are hooked on mass marketing. George Clinton (or Billy Bragg or Aimee Mann) can afford to put out records today b/c they already have a following, so they can afford to put out records. Breaking new artists will require communities working together (ala, indie rock, hip-hop, etc.) Capitalism is killing music.
PJ: Home taping illegal usage is not killing music. We just need to find ways of getting the revenue streams going. Live music is like that– it’s much more intense than just listening at home. The need to get together as human beings.
BD: There are problems with the current model, but what revenue when there is none from Kaaza or Grokster?
MH: compulsory fee on ISP subscriptions, mobile phones, which permits access to non-commercial services. In America, the problem is we don’t have a proper, sensible performance right.
BD: It seems like music has become less and less valluable.
MH: People are still happy to buy music– after all, there’s bottled water.
CV: What about the idea of selling music with concert tickets– didn’t Prince do that?
SZ: Yes, Prince included a copy of the CD with concert tickets and scanned those to count for Soundscan, Soundscan canged the rule because of Prince to exclude albums bundled with tickets.
Audience member (whose name I didn’t catch): WeedShare solves all these problems. We may not have critical mass yet.
MH: I can’t just throw my clients music out, because the internet isn’t geography limited because they have foreign distribution deals that take advantage of having people working for us ‘over there’
Weedshare would be great if we were building the industry from the ground up– we’re stuck in a model designed by Kafka with Rube Goldberg as his architect, and it’s very difficult to change the status quo.
PJ: We may be shifting to a bifurcated model– one copyright law for physical goods and then a new set of laws for the digital world.
MH: Be careful with what rights you give away.
PJ: Artists, never assign a copyright. License it, but never assign it. It’s always a bad idea, but now it’s suicidal.
[Audience member Tori Sparks]: How do indie artists take advantage of this when they are not yet at the level of a George Clinton, so that they can take advantage of the new environment.
PJ: think about genre sites and building with a community and build a crowd, a following. Do something which gets people talking about you and being your friends.
CB: There’s a trickling down of buzz to revenue. Pitchfork -> download -> go to show -> buy stuff -> money. Community is very important. you end up working with the people that you already know and get along with and have similar things with.
[Brian Calhoun, Label Managing Systems]: What percentage of artists’ revenue comes from the various streams?
SZ: George makes most money from touring than from anything else.
MH: A lot of artists have spikes from big licensing deals, but grossing from touring is high, though net isn’t high, because touring is expensive. Licensing is the best value. We’re trying to do as much in-house as possible.
SZ: A lot of P/funk members are int he band now, because they just kinda came up backstage or started hamming, thhen ended up in the band.
PJ: Artists should be much more open with their websites and getting fans to explore other music that the artists like.