Case study: Amanda Palmer and the power of the internet

By Charlotta Hedman

Amanda Palmer isn’t afraid of doing things differently. She started out performing as a living statue in her 20s and formed the Dresden Dolls in 2000. But her big breakthrough came in 2008 when she released her solo record Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Since then she’s become a bit like the Lady Gaga for smart internet kids (and grown-ups).

Why does all of this matter then? There are plenty of artists out there doing the same thing, catering to an audience of very devoted fans. But not all of them can sell $15 000 worth of music and merch in three minutes. How did Palmer do it? She teamed up with a start-up.

Palmer released her new album “Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele” through Bandcamp and sold out in a matter of minutes. Combined with the release was a clever whirlwind of internet activity and Palmer threw a launch party live on Ustream.

The next day the thousand limited-edition vinyl LPs had sold out, 450 vinyl LP/t-shirt/button bundles were gone, as were 100 packages that included a T-shirt and a hand-painted ukulele, writes billboard.biz.

Fans who wanted to buy a digital version of the album paid a minimum of 84 cents for the download, but were free to pay more if they wanted to. The 84 cents represent they royalty fees that will go to Radiohead (who’ve already adopted the same business model).

And Palmer did it all herself, with the help of a small team. No record label, no producers, no managers, according to Sean Francis who helps Palmer with her internet presence. Francis was interviewed by Bandcamp after the launch. According to him it’s all about listening to what the fans say and then meeting their demands.

“Each one of us – no matter what our individual role – cares a lot about what and how the fans consume…what they like, what they don’t buy, what they want to purchase, and how they want to purchase it… That’s one of the reasons, for example, that we skipped CDs for this release. Time and time again, we heard fans say “I don’t even use CDs, but I bought this to support you.” So we listened to that, and started talking with the fans about it not being a dirty thing to pay for digital music. There’s no shame in putting money into an artist’s pocket and not getting some sort of physical good for it.”

Palmer and Francis also decided not to use iTunes and preferred having more control over the process.

“We have nothing against iTunes, it’ll end up there eventually I’m sure, but it was important for us to do this in as close to a DIY manner as possible. If we were just using iTunes, we couldn’t be doing tie-ins with physical product, monitoring our stats (live), and helping people in real-time when they have a question regarding the service. Being able to do all of those things and having such a transparent format in which to do it has been a dream come true. We all buy stuff on the iTunes store – or AmazonMP3 or whatever – but it’s not THE way artists should be connecting to fans, and it’s certainly not the way someone is going to capture the most revenue on a new release.”

More of the interview with Sean Francis can be found on Bandcamp’s website.

Palmer has managed to get close to her fans in ways not many big contemporary artists can. She’s approachable, active on twitter, writes a blog that actually seems real and not overly edited by a PR. She has among other things used twitter to organise stealthy last-minute gigs when she’s touring. And in this blog post she explains how she randomly on a Friday night managed to sell $11 000 worth of t-shirts with the help of twitter.  Aspiring artists should take note.

2010
07/30
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Licensing: The Catch-22 for music start-ups

By Charlotta Hedman

It’s not easy setting up your own business. You might have a great idea, but to make it work you usually need to spend quite a lot of money. And if you’re a music start-up the situation can be even trickier.

Not only do you have to deal with all the usual costs involved in starting up a company, you also have to apply for the right to actually use your product.

According to Gregor Pryor, a partner at ReedSmith who’s specialised in Digital Media, obtaining music licences for a digital music service is an “extremely complex and time-consuming undertaking “.

“In a lot of cases, rights holders ask for relatively large sums of money in return for those licences. As a result, there is a high barrier to entry and cost to market for digital music start-ups. The effect of this is that only those that are very committed or blissfully ignorant enter the sector“, says Pryor.

Someone who’s been through the hoops of the licensing industry is Clive Gardiner of we7. According to him a licensing issue can make or break a start-up.

“Startups are not in the game until they have the required licenses in place. Rights holders are inundated with new propositions all the time and their resources are limited. Their queue is often prioritised by who has the deepest pockets.

Although this is short-sighted, we can all think of aggressive startups who paid large sums to rights holders for licenses and then quickly crashed”, says Gardiner.

In the last 3 years Gardiner’s licensed more than 6 million songs from all types of licensors; the 4 majors, indie labels of all shapes and sizes, aggregators, digital distributors, directly from artists plus publishers and collections societies.

According to Gardiner, “it’s been a slow, complex and challenging licensing journey – but I’ve worked in this industry for many years on both sides of the fence, and so I knew our expectations had to be realistic”.

Why then is licensing so tricky? Are the laws just too confusing?

According to Gregor Pryor “copyright law is inherently multi-faceted and the manner in which various copyrights and performers’ rights are divided across different owners, managers, territories and domains means that it can be very difficult to keep track of who is licensing what rights where.

Although according to him it’s not the laws that need changing.

“There is a lot of talk about copyright reform and a need for sweeping change. In fact, copyright law itself changed in 1996 in direct response to digital technologies. There are some areas of copyright law that could benefit from updating to make them fairer or more efficient, but for the most part, the law is fit for purpose. What isn’t fit for purpose is the cumbersome and fragmented structure of collective rights management bodies and, on a smaller level, even record labels. Digital technology chiefly drives efficiency. The “system” needs to become equally efficient.”

Pryor says that a lot of the perceived difficulties in the licensing process stem from piracy and he doesn’t think right-holders have done enough to combat illegal models by promoting new, legitimate businesses.

“I’m fortunate enough to advise several leading digital music businesses and I cannot think of one licensing negotiation with a major rights holders or collection society where I didn’t think that some of their terms were patently unreasonable or uncommercial”, says Pryor.

According to Clive Gardiner the rights holders should do more to understand the perspective of a start-up.

“Rights holders need to be more patient. Building a consumer proposition takes considerable time – and rights need to be granted for long enough to allow this eg 3 years.

Investors need to see stable, known costs for music in the same way that they can budget for overheads, supplies etc.  Better exposure of rights holders to how investors think would help this.

In digital licensing, costs often remain the same or even go up every year, the exact opposite of other business sectors where consistent growth brings economies of scale and extra margin to fund further growth. Rights holder should give ‘digital volume discounts’ based upon hitting mutually agreed targets.

Some startups can offer tremendous value in helping rights holder understand the ever-changing customer environment and behaviour. Data and insight can add value over and above the financial worth of a deal. This is often under-estimated by rights holders.”

Pryor on the other hand advices start-ups to “get a good lawyer and, if you can, get them cheaply” in order to tackle the licensing jungle. The system might change, slowly, but for the start-ups dealing with the reality of licensing now patience and a helping hand seems to be the way to go.

Check out the next  Music 4.5 event for more information, where Gregory Pryor will be talking about licensing, different jurisdictions and glocal routes to market. Get your early bird tickets now, before the 6th of August.

During the event brave music start-ups will also have the chance to pitch to a panel of industry players. For more information about how to pitch get in touch with Rassami Hok Ljungberg, rassami @ 2pears.com.

Get a good lawyer and, if you can, get them cheapllicensing, different jurisdictions, glocal routes to market

2010
07/28
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The power of the grey music pound

By Charlotta Hedman

What kind of mental picture do you get from the words “music consumer”? Is it a young kid downloading mp3s? Or an indie nerd leafing through vinyls in a record shop? You’re probably imagining someone under the age of 40 and that’s where you’re going wrong.

When the music industry complains about audiences not forking out for music anymore they’re ignoring one part of the demographic, the so called grey music pound. The population of Europe is ageing and the post war baby-boomers are just as keen to listen to music as everyone else. A lot of them don’t have the technical know how of how to use torrents or iPods, but they still want to enjoy music and they have the money to do it.

According to Jerome Taylor in The Independent retirees in the UK spend up to £100bn a year.

But more importantly, today there are more pensioners than children in the UK. According to the Office of National Statistics, the percentage of the population aged 65 and over has increased with 1.7 million people since 1984. If the trend continues that means 22 per cent of the UK population will be over 65 in 2034.

Not only is the country becoming greyer, there’s also a lot of spending power in the 65 to 74 age range. The amount spent by this group on consumer goods is projected to rise from an average of £4,379 a year in 2010 to £6,055 by 2017.

And there’s proof of this on the field. So called heritage acts are still doing amazingly well live. The Rod Stewarts and Rolling Stones of this world will always pull crowds and sell records. Maybe there’s still some life left in the way things used to be done in the music industry.  Although according to tech journalist Vic Keegan, the older generations are more tech savvy than we think.

“The Older generation – the post war baby boomers – need no help. Reared on the Sinclair Spectrum and the BBC B they are very techno savvy and heavily into nostalgia making them a sitting duck for exploitation of back catalogues. Really old people won’t have an MP3 player but there is, as always, plenty if free music on the radio.”

Keegan himself uses his “trusty iPod Touch, challenged by a recently arrived iPad, apart of course from the radio”. And radio, he says, “is a technology written off more times than I have changed my mobile phone but enjoying record popularity.”

More and more people are tuning into digital radio on their phones. According to Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) 31 percent of adults in the UK have listened to the radio online and 13 percent listen to the radio on their smart phones.

Traditional ways of consuming music are still going strong. The music industry might sometimes be looking too hard at the demographics they’re loosing and not focusing on the audiences that are still there.

2010
07/23
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Piracy: The Rise of the Artists

By Charlotta Hedman

According to the music industry piracy could cause a potential of 30 000 job losses in the UK this year and about 250 000 jobs by 2015. That sounds pretty dire. But maybe there wasn’t that much money to be made in the first place. Especially not if you’re an artist sticking to the industry standard business model of the last 60-years or so.

In an excellent article from the Root, the revenues are broken down into a pie chart. And it’s not happy reading for aspiring artists. There are a lot of people who need to get paid before the band sees any of the money. Unless you sell millions and millions of records, the future wont be full of bling.

But even bigger acts are struggling. American rockers 30 Seconds to Mars sold 2 million records and didn’t make any money at all. Which makes some argue that record deals are just an elaborate scam. Others go even further. Like Courtney Love, who in 2000 argued that the record labels are the real pirates out there.

According to the latest Nielsen research only two percent of all the records released in 2009 sold more than 5000 copies. And when it comes to actually breaking it down into cash the average musician gets about $25 for every $1000 sold. I doubt that that a world without piracy would have made much of a difference there.

But sadly the overall effect of piracy (or technological change) is having an impact on the industry. The artists are just the tip of the iceberg. They will keep going, because they’re artists after all. Sound engineers, studios and producers might not be as lucky or as resilient.

At least the music industry has someone to blame. The media industry is also suffering, newspapers are dying, new business models are failing, but the only scapegoat for them is simply the internet. Information is free. Music however isn’t.

Audio engineer Jon Sheldrick argues in a post for Music Think Tank that “many people just don’t value music in a meaningful way… they don’t value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song, thus helping the artist who made it continue to produce awesome music. If I’m going to convince you to buy your next record, it’s not going to happen by scaring you with abstract arguments about copyright law“.

Record labels and the regulatory industry could be alienating some fans by threatening legal action and lobbying for stricter laws against piracy. Kids who’ve grown up sharing music freely will start to resent this and feel even less inclined to give their money to what they see as greedy corporations. The musicians get lost somewhere on the battlefield.

Even major industry players have argued against stricter legislation. During the Westminster eForum Peter Jenner compared legislating against piracty to the prohibition in America in the 1930s.

In the end it’s up to the artists to take matters into their own hands. They’re the ones with the creative power, they’re the ones people want to hear. If they can find different ways of monetizing their product, they’ll grow stronger than ever. But it’s never been easy.

Andrew Dubber argues the point in a comment on Music Think Tank. According to him “History is littered with musicians who are disillusioned, embittered and broke. This was true before the internet just as it’s true now. The internet is neither your saviour, nor your enemy.

Let me make that bit clear: prior to the internet, most people spent NO money on music. If they bought a record in a year, it was a gift for a nephew (and it was usually rubbish). Some people spent a lot of money on music, because it was tied up with cultural things like identity that they were really invested in.

Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don’t have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity. If you make music speculatively—that is, you create it in the hopes of making money from it, then you are a music entrepreneur.  As such, entrepreneurship rules apply.”

Artists should in other words become entrepreneurs if they’re aiming for the jackpot, because the traditional way of making it big isn’t your ticket to a castle and a Ferrari. It seems like the way to make money as an artist is to focus on monetizing everything else than the product.

To find out more about entrepreneurship, licensing and the regulatory industry, check out the next Music 4.5 event.

2010
07/21
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Piracy: The music industry strikes back

By Charlotta Hedman

Last week we argued that piracy is out of control and that even some music execs are out of their depth when it comes to tackling these issues. But not everyone is sitting idly by.

In London music industry representatives and various experts met at the Westminister eForum to discuss piracy and what to do about it. Music Ally covered the event extensively and quoted PRS‘ Will Page who compared piracy to climate change.

PRS for music also revealed a paper proposing a levy on ISPs based on the amount of piracy occurring on their networks and compared the proposal to carbon-emissions trading. Page said the impact of faster broadband networks has had a polluting effect on the legal content market.

However the levy would require new legislation and according to a government spokesperson quoted in the Financial Times there are no plans to introduce laws that would back the proposal any time soon.

According to PRS’ paper (which can be found here) the industry lacks teeth. Since the launch of Napster in 1999, the only options for the industry have been control and enforcement and that clearly isn’t enough. Ben Rush of AudioLock.NET, which specializes in watermarking, agrees.

“The current situation is pretty grim with record labels and producers only able to protect their music by actually finding the links on download sites and requesting the hosting sites to take them down with the use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down procedure” says Rush.

Rush started out as a professional DJ and producer in the late 90s but quickly noticed the damage piracy was doing to many of his friends in the industry.

“Piracy has some very serious knock on effects. Firstly if producers don’t get paid for making great tracks then very quickly they will have to leave the industry and turn to another profession which will choke the diverse pool of quality music we are all so used to. Secondly it is the knock on effect whereby the record labels simply don’t have the budget to market and promote the tracks which means less money for other creative companies such as web agencies or video production companies” says Rush.

Watermarking and AudioLock.NET work by identifying every copy of a track. If a track promoted to DJs, radio pluggers and press ends up on download sites the software can identify which of the people it was sent to is responsible. According to Rush “this way the pirates can be removed quickly from the chain stopping the music leaking”.

However not everyone agrees that watermarking is the way to go. After all the technology has been around since the dark ages of 2001 and piracy is still rife. According to an article in Wired Magazine there are a lot of issues with watermarking, especially when it comes to privacy.

“Unique watermarks would allow labels to hunt down and sue alleged copyright infringers with vastly increased efficiency, even if the file was copied from their computer without their knowledge”, writes Eliot Van Buskirk for Wired.

Watermarking might work best when it’s aimed at stopping music from leaking in the first place. Which is what Ben Rush is trying to do with his software, but when a record is released to the public there is no stopping it from going online and that’s where the industry needs to come up with new strategies. Maybe trying to put pressure on ISPs will help, but  companies like BT have already contested the new legislation. And taxing ISPs is also just another way of enforcing control, wasn’t that what they were trying to get away from?

2010
07/15
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Where have all the festivals gone?

By Charlotta Hedman

For many years it was the musical happening in Sweden. And then it was gone. This summer Hultsfred, one of the largest festivals in Sweden, was cancelled because of poor ticket sales. Live music has been seen as a safe haven from pirates and the strange new ongoings in the industry. But what happens when the festivals start disappearing? And what’s going on? Are people just not that into music anymore?

Smaller festivals in the States are also suffering. Singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan’s touring Lilith Fair had to cancel gigs in ten cities because of poor ticket sales. At the main event in California only 7000 people showed up at the 22 000 capacity venue. Ticket prices had been dropped, but apparently not enough people wanted to see Sheryl Crow and Erykah Badu preform live.

Impact of the recession

Is the interest in live music dying down? Helienne Lindvall who writes a music blog for the Guardian doesn’t think so, but she says that audiences are more careful with their money today.

“Most people might choose one festival to go to and when there’s too much choice the smaller festivals will suffer”, says Helienne.

She still thinks the big brands will survive. Festivals like Glastonbury sell out in minutes, months before the line-up has been sketched up. But it’s becoming more and more difficult for smaller festivals to make it. And that’s having an impact on up-and-coming artists.

“A minor artist doesn’t earn much by doing festivals, sometimes they might even lose money, although bigger acts can earn and demand millions.” says Helienne.

But with less festivals to tour, it’ll be more difficult for minor artists to make it worth their while. And if only big festivals survive it might become more difficult for smaller acts to get heard.

Even fairly large bands, playing for audiences of thousands aren’t usually doing more than breaking even. Helienne remembers an acquaintance who was working for a UK band touring arenas and just barely making a profit.

“The shows can be very expensive. I went to see Lady Gaga a few weeks ago and her show must cost a fortune to put on”, says Helienne.

Not even Lady Gaga herself (with her one million Facebook fans) is immune to the slump. Last minute tickets for her shows in London were going for a lot less than the original sales price. Helienne thinks this is another potential trap for festivals.

“When audiences realize that they can get their tickets for a lot less if they wait until the last minute, that’s going to have an impact on tickets sales”.

Bleak summer for festivals

According to the San Fransisco Chronicle this has been one of the bleakest summers for live music in a long time. Several big artists have been forced to cancel gigs in the States. Tickets just aren’t selling. It all seems pretty gloomy for an industry that was hoping live music was going to keep it afloat.

But not only the audience (or the lack of an audience) is having an impact on smaller festivals. In the UK a shake-up of royalty payments could lead to higher ticket prices.

PRS for Music has taken a 3 percent levy on ticket sales since 1964. But the company is now proposing to change the royalty fee structure and extend the levy to the earnings from sponsorship, merchandising and guest passes. It’s a move aimed at helping songwriters, but the levy and an increase in VAT would add up to five pounds on top of a £60 Latitude day ticket, writes The Guardian.

If some acts can’t even flog last minute tickets successfully, then an increase in ticket prices wont do them any good. Maybe the recession has finally caught up with the festivals. But the timing couldn’t be worse for the music industry.

2010
07/08
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Music piracy and the end of culture

By Charlotta Hedman

The music industry seems to be bracing itself for peak-revenue in the same way the rest of the world is waiting for the oil to run out. Is it really true that piracy will turn some countries into a cultural wasteland? According to some reports it’s already happening. In Spain where downloading isn’t illegal album sales by local artists have dropped 65 percent in recent years. It’s gloomy news for an industry who’s become so dependent on what now seems like an archaic business model. IFPI isn’t happy and believes that global legislation is needed for the industry’s survival.

But will more legislation work? Prohibition is rarely successful and there are geeks out there who will fight tooth and nail to keep the downloads going. Recent reports at Torrentfreak also show that even though the RIAA sent out over  two million copyright infringement notices during the last two years, but the effects on file-sharing levels have been unnoticeable.

Legal downloads are stalling

What the industry needs is a new direction. Something that will work for those who’ve grown used to getting their music and movies for free. Streaming services have had an impact on illegal downloading in countries like the UK, but according to Business Week the percentage of legal downloads have now stalled.

Research by Nielsen SoundScan shows that downloads of songs to iPods, computers and other devices grew with just 0.3 percent during this year. And even worse, the downloading of ring-tones (which brought the industry $714 million in 2007) have fallen 24 percent.

It might be time for the industry to adopt a new digital strategy, but what? Maybe they can follow in the footsteps of the ailing newspapers and start selling clothes hangers (like The Telegraph in the UK).

New consumer habits

But there might be another way. Apparently audiences are more inclined to tune into intelligent streaming-services like Pandora. Too much choice leads to people wanting new ways of discovering good music. When every single song ever made seems to be available online, we might need some help finding what we like.

The question is if people even want to own music anymore. Do we really need all those CDs or mp3s taking up space on our shelves or on our hard-drives? Especially when we can just tune into a digital service and get access to any of the songs we like instantly.

Too late to fight piracy?

The downloads of pirated music are still growing. In countries like Spain and Sweden where piracy is rife a lot of people think it’s silly to pay for music, when it’s so easy to get it for free.

Even the music industry are realising it might be too late to fight piracy. Francis Keeling, the vice president for Universal Music, has said it isn’t possible to stop piracy, but that the industry needs to make it socially unacceptable. Is it a problem that will be tackled in the same way as smoking then? It’s been possible to ban smoking from public places and therefore reduce the incentive to pick up a cigarette. It’s not going to be as easy to control the internet. Smoking also costs people money, downloading songs doesn’t.

The music industry is trying to compete with a market that can provide their products for free. If audiences have had a taste of not paying, that’s what they’re going to keep looking for. The Money Saving Expert, Martin Lewis, told Torrentfreak that music companies need to wake up and embrace the price competition.

Piracy will hardly lead to a cultural apocalypse. There are already indie artists producing their own movies and music and sharing it for free. We’re not running out of culture, just the money to pay for it. But record labels and artists need to remember that there still are people consuming their products out there. And where there’s an audience there’s also a target market. Now we just need to figure out how to entice them to spend money again.

2010
07/06
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Jarvis thinks the indies will survive

Former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has joined Radiohead’s Thom Yorke in hailing the end of major record labels.

During the Association of Music’s annual meeting, Cocker was quoted saying.

“The only reason bands had ever signed to major labels was because they dangled huge amounts of money before their eyes. It was rather nice actually, but they haven’t got any money left.”

It’s no surprise that indie labels want to separate themselves from the major studios and make it seem like they’re holding the key to the industry’s survival. And who knows, maybe they do.

In the end it’s up to the artists to choose who they want representing them. And it’s up to the audience to decide where and how they pay for their music.

According to Alison Wenham, chief executive of the Association of Independent Music, major labels will have to become entertainment companies in order to survive.

“In this environment you need a smaller, agile, early adopter mentality and that does not go with the major label formula. This is a new market and they cannot change quickly enough”, says Wenham.

2010
07/04
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Music Sweden: From Pirates to the Vikings of streaming

By Charlotta Hedman

The Swedes haven’t made it easy for the international music industry. First came the Pirate Bay, then an actual Pirate Party. But not only have the Swedes managed to shake things up on the more shady side of the music business, they’re also pretty successful when it comes to producing and exporting music.

Electro-pop icon Robyn is all over the festivals this summer. But never-mind Abba and all the success-stories that followed. The name on everyone’s lips is still Spotify.

According to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet artists are now earning eight times more in royalties from Spotify than they were a year ago. It looks like the streaming service is doing well, even though there have been a lot of whispers about the company not breaking even and losing out to other business models.

The newspaper estimates that artists in Sweden received about 4 million SEK during the first financial quarter of 2010 from streaming their music through the service. That seems to be a lot more than last year, when a song that had been played a million times gave the right holders about 2300 SEK to split between them. That’s about 200 pounds.

According to Daniel Johansson, who’s researching Swedish music for among others Musiclink, companies like Spotify will probably be around for a while, but it’s still too early to tell if their business model will stick.

“There’s a shift from business models based on how many copies of the product that can be sold to how many times that product is being used. This new model based on usage is probably going to be around for a while, but it’s still difficult to tell how successful it’s going to become”, says Johansson.

According to him it’s still the big players that will succeed in the end.

“The companies with a large back catalogue of music are going to fare well in today’s climate, if they can make the handling of rights and licenses more effective. Collecting societies are earning more and more all over the world, so copyright itself doesn’t seem to be in any trouble. But something needs to change in how the money is transferred from the customer to the rights holder”, says Johansson.

Johansson believes that Swedish artists and labels have been internationally successful because they’re playing by the same rules as UK and US artists.

“Swedish music is mixed with English music culture, both when it comes to genre and sound. The lyrics are also often in English. It’s been easy for Swedish artists to focus on the international market. Not many other non-English-speaking countries put out the same quantity of lyrics in English.”

Johansson also adds that Sweden historically has been good at pushing its artists out onto the international playing field and closing international deals. Although he thinks that Sweden could do a lot more.

Swedish record labels have had a very difficult time financially during the last ten years, says Johansson. “They’ve had to struggle more than their counter-parts in the States and the UK. However thanks to among other things entrepreneurship the Swedes are still a force to count on when it comes to music.”

2010
07/01
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Are the fans abandoning their artists?

By Charlotta Hedman

Apparently not only music sales are going down, live music also seems to be struggling. At least if we’re to believe this Guardian article. Tickets for Paul McCartney’s gig in Hyde Park during the weekend were going for about £30, that’s £230 cheaper than the original price. Looks like Macca isn’t in such high demand anymore. Or maybe his fans aren’t willing to pay hundreds of pounds for a gig?

But not only Macca is suffering. Bon Jovi and even Lady Gaga have also struggled to sell all their tickets for the full asking price. You could blame the financial crisis for fans holding on to their money a bit tighter. Although the distraction of the World Cup probably also means a dip in ticket sales. And all of these gigs happened to take place when at least the UK seems to be pretty focused on football instead of music.

Acts with a very loyal fan base probably wont struggle. Indie acts with a trustworthy fans wont suffer when there are other distractions like the economy and football. But the McDonaldses of the pop world will. They’re possible to live without.

Tickets are also five times more expensive than they were in the 90s. There seems to be some sort of inflation going on in the music industry and it doesn’t always gel with reality.

Music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz tells the Guardian that  he thinks “we are going to have arena acts playing in theatres, theatre acts playing in clubs — and as a result there is just going to be a lot less money involved”.

Even though super stars like Gaga still sell out huge arenas, she hasn’t had the time to build a solid fan base. Sure, she’s got fans a-plenty, they might tattoo her name on their chests and faint when they see her. But they haven’t lived and breathed Gaga and spread the gospel for years and years.

And the question is if they ever will. According to this article, written by artist Esther O’Connor (whose dad played guitar for Wet Wet Wet) fans wont go into hysterics anymore. Esther thinks the crazy fan culture of The Beatles and The Backstreet Boys is dying out.

According to Esther we’re missing out on the anticipation.

“Now when you hear a band you even vaguely like you can instantly listen to the entire back catalogue and all current music on Spotify, view all their videos, even the crap ones, on YouTube, see them talking rubbish on Twitter, Google them, find them on MySpace, leave a comment on their page if you can be bothered, and just generally have complete and total access right away… We don’t have to do anything, go anywhere, or make any effort on behalf of the music we like.  So it is no wonder the crazy love affair of pop star and fan seems to be cooling. ”

What do you think? Are the fans less interested and if so, does it mean the artists are losing value?

2010
06/28
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