THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS ONLINE

Jeannnie Novak

You’ve heard about it. (You may even be doing it yourself!)...

Independent musicians have been successfully selling their products online. Emerging artists have developed an Internet fan base through Internet promotion. But we’re now heading toward a whole new era in  Internet music that is single-handedly injecting a lot of fear into the traditional offline music industry.

Within the next few years, digital delivery will probably become the primary way of promoting and selling music -- particularly so for independents. (It follows that the primary place for promoting and selling music will be on the Internet.) The first stage of this process has been reached with the advent of the MP3 file format (see http://mp3.com and http://mp3-space.com for more info). Would-be fans roam the web looking for fresh new sounds to download onto their hard drives or Rio players (see Diamond Multimedia). “Digital delivery” means delivering music over a digital network (e.g., the Internet). Earlier music technologies allowed web surfers to download short clips of music with a quality well below that of a CD. In contrast, MP3 downloads are almost identical in quality to a CD. The secret is compression: a typical MP3 file downloads 12 times faster that an uncompressed CD track would.

You might be wondering why this is good for the artist – when people have the capacity to download entire tracks (often for free) and pass them around. The secret? This is a great promotional strategy that allows independents to get their material heard. I've heard artists boast to each other about how many downloads they've received – not sales! Other artists see a tradeoff between the loss of potential sales and marketing; by allowing their listening audience to pass around clips, they are in effect utilizing a free music promotion service!

Eventually, artists will tire of discussing downloads while they are still supporting themselves with day gigs. The ultimate goal still remains: steady revenue for independent artists and songwriters – allowing us to be truly independent. I believe that this goal can be met in two ways:

1     displaying only a few tracks in MP3 format (on Kspace, I've limited artists to only one MP3 track each) so that prospective customers must purchase the entire product to hear the rest of the CD

2      developing a fan base that will pay an annual subscription fee [e.g., fan club dues) to download whatever you have to offer them – whether they are works-in-progress, demo versions, remixes, or polished tracks

But what happened to the product? The notion of a finished product will ultimately disappear. This is ideal for songwriters who are more interested in marketing songs than complete products – and it’s great for artists who don’t want to wait to finish an album because the CD format demands it! Have you experienced the low-quality musical“filler” freqently inserted between the good stuff (some released as singles) on an album? Most of the time, these duds were quickly recorded to fill up space between the “real music” and make a full-length CD. This strategy (which alienates the buying public) will no longer be necessary.

In addition to developing new customers and fans, the Internet can help independent songwriters get their music to professionals in other industries. For example, film and television production companies, advertising agencies, and other web sites are scouring the web for great tracks that can be licensed for their projects. I started a licensing and supervision department over a year ago to take advantage of this demand.  Many of the artists on Kspace are better known in places like Denmark and Lithuania than they are in the US.

Since the Internet is like one big database, it’s a natural matchmaking service for musicians and songwriters seeking collaborators. The first step for any songwriter who is looking for performers is to use classifieds online to find their “match.” Once this step is taken care of, a track can be recorded and uploaded for promotional downloading or purchase.

Despite all this rapid progress, the Internet will not carry the majority of music produced and distributed in the US for several years to come. Is it essential, therefore, to get involved at an early stage in Internet music? The answer is yes – if you’re an independent musician. High-profile musicians will continue to dominate traditional radio and retail -- and the barriers to entry are becoming higher every year. In contrast, the Internet is wide open. Getting involved now is an investment in the future – and a chance to get in on the ground floor of the hottest thing in music since the advent of sound recording.