The State of the Industry

So I am just looking at the state of the industry and it seems harder and harder to make things happen.
In the old days getting a record deal was hard but those with a fair modicum of talent could usually find a deal and someone willing to throw a bit of marketing money at the artist.

Today the costs of marketing have gone out of the window, I saw a breakdown od DEF JAMS budget for Rhianna. The basic cost of marketing was $,1078,000 PER SINGLE. They allocated $300,000 just to get the track on Radio. Now you have to ask who at radio are they taking to lunch for $300K , Thats a lot of lunch.

Now lets wind that back to finding talent back home. I know artists who are on their 3rd or 4th albums having sold between 1000 and 5000 albums each per release. That's selling albums themselves marketing  themselves and shipping themselves. How do they step up? The first thing is to record a new album.

You cannot tour if you don't have a new album to "promote" the festivals just won't book you. You cannot get radio or press unless you have new product. In the old days you would do a demo and then get a deal with a record company (the clue used to be in the name), they would then market to press and radio and that would get the festivals ringing you!!. Nowadays the record companies expect you to create the product and the buzz.  This means you have to finance your own recording and as the competition is fierce you have to make it really good. So its either rich daddy, a bank loan or the newfangled crowd funding.

Crowd Funding is a great idea and the big players like Pledge and Kickstarter seem to do a good job and I do believe that they are very well intended, BUT I also think they may be doing artists a disservice, because now record companies use Pledge/kick starter as a barometer of talent / financial return. So now you only get a deal IF you have a successful Pledge / Kickstarter  campaign.

So if an artist you like does one of those campaigns and you want their record, please don't wait till the record is released. Pledge and pre-buy the record, that way it will get made and your artist will get another years work, with touring and selling the album. You will get the album early and the buzz of knowing that you helped a GOOD artist to make a good record. You may also have deprived the big uncommitted record companies of a bit of dosh and got more of the bucks that you paid direct to the artist. If the artists are forced into direct action at least they get direct payment and that's a good thing.

So now the Genie is out the bottle and the record companies are relying on crowd funding as a a barometer the onus is on the public to support their favourite talent at grass roots level. Please support your artists or there will be no new talent emerging, instead it will be flipping burgers and that's not good. :-(