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Comment by bryans | Hacker News Reader

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any need for those traditional industry services. They deserve the credit for (most of) this, because they are working their asses off (including bringing new streaming users to the fold) and getting no recognition whatsoever from industry reporting.

Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already.

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Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently).

In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after many years of working extremely hard and even touring the US. Among many things, my primary advice to them was to start live streaming, particularly on Reddit. By the time 2021 arrived, they had more than tripled their social media presence and doubled their listener count. The continued to stream on Reddit throughout the year before recently switching to TikTok, and in the process garnered over 1 million new followers, 150k monthly listeners, sold out an entire US tour and their music is being licensed left and right.

That's just one example of countless many, and it's the way the entire industry is moving. If you're not on board with that, then you're behind the times, because you don't need a million dollar music video budget to become famous and you never did. Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."

How long does that work for though and for how many artists? If you get on a new platform early you can find success, but once the platform becomes swamped with content it's impossible to stand out without creativity, luck...and funding. Unless you're lucky enough to find the next platform.

Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot of outside help (or luck).

I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets which have been "saturated" for years -- some since the beginning of the platform.

And specifically to your emphasis on needing funding, that's just not the case anymore. Everything is cheap. You can live stream from your phone in 480p with a $20 ring light, and fans of the content will still throw money at you. It happens all day long on Twitch.

> Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot of outside help (or luck).

Again though, that was after almost a decade of gigs and touring and marketing. All it took was opening their eyes to those series of opportunities that platforms provide, and then applying all of their effort toward those instead of pursuing the traditionally prescribed music industry path.

> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets

This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.

This is only sort of true, basically music artists and other content creators can support themselves now. They don't have to go work at Wendy's or learn a different marketable skill now.

In the past the only way to do that was to get the backing of these massive capital pools, and dance when and where they say dance, all to get a little trickle down to that artist. Even if that fame resulted in fortune, it was still the smallest piece of the pie.

When someone has X subscribers paying $Y/month directly to them, with fairly low overhead costs of their content creation, they simply aren't going to be in other parts of the workforce and definitely aren't going to be begging labels, because its good enough for most for the time being.

So it doesn't really matter about the saturation in the same way you assumed.

Why would you need more than 100 new creators per year in a specific niche? How many tries to fill the niche doesn't matter, what matters is if the niche gets filled. And today more niches gets filled than ever before, at least from what I see. So the problem isn't that the modern system doesn't successfully make people able to support themselves with these things, but that it lowered the barrier to entry to much that many more people fight over the same pie so you have many more losers than before.

Ignoring that your hypothetical examples are using extremely unrealistic numbers, the overall point you're trying to make is actually right in line with the success rate of any startup, which makes perfect sense and is the entire point. There is not an infinite amount of societal bandwidth to allow for 100% of everyone to be successful at everything, but the startups who stay flexible enough to pivot and take advantage of new opportunities are typically the ones who find sustainable success.

Both can be true. The question wasn't if every artist can make it - it's not like small artists get rich off record labels.

The question was whether any artist can become a massive success without a record label. 10 years ago this didn't even make sense to ask. Today, I can almost believe it.

10 years ago Macklemore did exactly that. I'm not aware of anyone repeating the feat since

Russ

I think I get the point. Advertising has merits, so does being a first adopter. It's possible to make it without advertising or being a first adopter, it's also possible to get swept under the rug.

I think the goal from the artists perspective is to reach the most people while reducing advertising costs.

The goal for the consumer is to be able to easily get the music they like at low costs. This is getting met, but I'd like to see the costs lowered. (consumer bias)

Currently the environment is benefiting early entreprenuers of streaming platforms. The costs are lowering for artist which is also good.

I'd like to see the balance to continue to shift more to the artists, but not to the point where one artist can dominate over another.

Are you saying reddit is a new platform?

Is it possible this method was doable for them without the backing of bigger money because it's sort of novel?

If everyone starts live streaming reddit and tiktok, what will make certain groups stand out versus others? I would guess there would be an opportunity for paid promotion, maybe by Reddit or TikTok themselves.

That's an argument which could be made for any market or industry. There are obviously a finite amount of people in the world, and those people have a finite amount of time to find and listen to music, so there is always competition and certain artists are going to stand out among others -- that's the nature of human preference. But that doesn't automatically mean a few are successful and everyone else fails. It's a spectrum of success which, as it turns out, is directly proportional to the effort invested toward getting better and producing more attractive content.

I think it has more of an effect on markets where the marginal cost of an additional sale (or attention) is effectively zero, which results in very bimodal winner (or top few winners) take all type situations.

Not that there is anything wrong with considering success to be whatever you achieve without outside funds trying to promote you, it all simply depends on personal goals and what you are willing to give up to gain an edge.

If things in life were directly proportional to effort and similar things. We’d be living in a meritocracy. Society doesn’t work that way. There are most certainly people who failed while putting in more and better effort than others who succeeded.

No, there are people who put more effort toward the wrong things, and that's why they didn't find the same success. The best songwriter in the world could be incredibly unsuccessful if they don't have any concept of how to market themselves properly, so sitting in their studio practicing guitar all day is technically effort, but it isn't doing anything to progress their career. That's exactly why most musicians fail. They don't bother googling "how to be a band" or learning any of the necessary skills to be successful independently, and instead spend all of their time hoping that someone will "discover" them.

I've quite literally never once seen a musician expend effort toward learning marketing and business without finding success.

I have seen several real life examples who have.

Then I would question what material they were learning, or how much effort they actually expended. I've watched even the worst songwriters and performers find success by grinding away at the right stones, so "I know a guy who tried Facebook ads and it didn't work" doesn't mean anything.

I don’t know who you are or what your perspective is but I am a music industry professional in New York. I also don’t know how you are defining success.

I also don’t know all your marketing knowledge. Maybe you know a whole set of things I am completely unaware of.

What I do know is success as an artist seems to be a weird blend of savvy, talent, luck … and who knows what else.

I have a bad reaction when people make blanket statements like you are doing, because it has a hint of victim blaming.

It's somewhat disturbing that you would claim I'm "victim blaming" by asking for details on what these "unsuccessful marketing musicians" actually studied. "Victim" is a wholly inappropriate word to describe being unsuccessful at something.

You initially added nothing to the conversation, except for a very brief and vague claim about how you may know some people who contradict my own experiences. So, I'm not sure what kind of response you were hoping for, but a little snark never hurt anyone, and you're overreacting to it.

If you have an actual example of a musician who studied marketing and business but was unsuccessful, I'd love to hear about it, because I've simply never seen it happen.

I would never refer to a specific real life artist as an example of a failure!

I genuinely think you might have access to knowledge or perspective I lack, and I would be very curious whether there are specific materials or resources you would recommend.

On a more productive note, how would you suggest an artist best educate themselves about critically impactful marketing and related topics?

But the argument is valid for most hit-based markets/industries, isn't it?

It seems like many markets and industries are initially dominated by indie, creator-driven work, but then gradually as they mature and become more commodified, agencies and corporations start to dominate. Look at YouTube-style streaming, or digital game distribution.

Out of curiosity, did they book their own tour? What sort of rooms are they playing? And who is dealing with their music publishing?

All of my close musician friends generally have teams that deal with those sorts of things, but not necessarily from their label (although the more famous ones playing large rooms/stadiums definitely go through their labels).

They handle everything themselves. The recent tour was 200-300 cap rooms, with a couple of large clubs in the mix. Booking can definitely be a grind, but at the end of the day, the booking agencies are saving you about 5 hours of work in exchange for ~15% of gross, which they hope translates to at least $150 to make their own 2 hours of work worth it. But if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party, presuming somebody has the motivation to do it and they're not already making more at a day job.

Yeah for sure, the percentage take on these sorts of things adds up. But I do think there is a point where it starts making more sense to have a team as an artist gets larger.

Indie bands have always done this grind on their own -- I remember all the shows at Glasslands and the lofts and bars around Brooklyn 15 or so years ago, which were in that 150-300 cap range. Or my friends' college bands back in the early 2000s. Labels definitely weren't involved with any of that, it was just a bunch of musicians in a rented van driving to cities crashing on couches. Once you start playing 1000+ cap rooms (or stadiums, in the case of a few friends), the administrative part takes more time than the music part, and I don't really know any artists that care to deal with that. You need lawyers, tour managers, PR people, etc.

It definitely doesn't take a major label like it used to, but an indie label that can support you in that work is often necessary.

> if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party

These are massively different economies of scale than the labels deal with. Unless we see technological breakthroughs that make scaling easy for a DIY musician, the labels look well protected for the next generation.

> These are massively different economies of scale than the labels deal with.

You're mistaken and only thinking in terms of major labels and Beyonce. There are thousands of indie labels working at that small scale, along with countless major label "baby bands" (as they call them).

> Unless we see technological breakthroughs that make scaling easy for a DIY musician, the labels look well protected for the next generation.

The entire premise of my original comment was about how technology has made scaling easy for independent musicians. It's already happening. That's the whole conversation we're having here.

The way I see it, there is a small window of opportunity for organic growth on TikTok right now, but very soon it will become pay to play. That's the playbook for every social site out there: leave everything free during the growth days, after growth starts peaking, start charging for every valuable thing on the site.

I was mistakenly telling people the "small window" for TikTok was closing over a year ago, but it's still open wide enough to fit a 747 through it. TikTok's algorithm, in particular, is actually extremely friendly toward user content, and that means there will always be room for organic growth on the platform, as is still true for every platform (even the dead ones like Facebook).

TikTok is able to stretch the organic period because of the absurd funding environment right now. It's parent company has raised $8 billion and is valued at $400 billion while still private! When the music stops they will surely charge for virality somehow

Same with software, books and manga and video games I think. The only digitalized industry where indies still don't really have a place is tv/movies

There are loads of people making indie movies/docs out there, I think, it's more a question of exposure— there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is.

Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme— an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the numbers are, they'll buy it from you?

Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level stuff, isn’t a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc now? Curation and everything built in.

I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian / Russian border the day before the invasion talking to locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in 1080p60, 3+ million views.

Questionable character I don’t want to promote and some of the episodes I don’t want to be associated with, but that’s tvesque isn’t it?

Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children, educational, political commentary, informercials…

Sure kinda, but I'd say that's a new industry rather than an opening of the old one. It's kinda like saying tiktok replaced concerts and singles for musicians, kinda true but not what the parent guy is saying. Tiktok enhances the path to getting success on the traditional platforms rather than simply replacing it. That's not generally been the case for youtubers, though a strong argument could be made for podcast i think.

YouTubers are now bigger than TV stars by every conceivable metric

> Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."

This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.

Curious question, if streaming services reach the point where they enable indy artists to actually become super stars (using TikTok for marketing), doesn't that move the role, and power, from label to those streaming services and social media (for marketing)?

No, because the label never had that power to begin with. They were always at the whim of social media and other factors. The trick is to not dedicate yourself to one platform, because they should all be treated as separate venues with different types of audiences (because they are). Social media sites are tools, not goals.

Thanks for the answer!

150k streams p/month is absolutely nothing compared to the artists that the major labels are interested in.

Record labels that the likes of “Sub-Radio” are suited to have always be and will continue to act as taste makers and curators, and not large money making organisations (and for the better). Even the large indies like Sub Pop, Stones Throw, and K7 operate in completely different seperate financial and reach realms than Universal, Warner and the like.

If someone becomes “Tik Tok famous” overnight then they’re likely to seek management and guess who that manager is most likely to be aligned to? Major labels aren’t going anywhere.

> 150k streams p/month is absolutely nothing compared to the artists that the major labels are interested in.

I said 150k unique listeners, not streams. Also, you're entirely wrong about this. The 100k-250k range is a very distinct tier of band, and those bands are ubiquitously on record labels. So, your insistence that labels aren't even interested in them is the exact opposite of reality.

> Record labels that the likes of “Sub-Radio” are suited to have always be and will continue to act as taste makers and curators, and not large money making organisations (and for the better). Even the large indies like Sub Pop, Stones Throw, and K7 operate in completely different seperate financial and reach realms than Universal, Warner and the like.

They operate at different scales because of the overall size of the rosters and the major label's ability to literally throw away cash at every turn just to maintain superiority. That doesn't mean major labels don't manage projects that are operating at smaller scales, because they absolutely do. They're called "subsidiaries" and they fit directly in the category that you're pretending doesn't exist.

> Major labels aren’t going anywhere.

Nobody said they were, so your entire argument was made with a false premise. The point was that they aren't necessary anymore.

> If someone becomes “Tik Tok famous” overnight then they’re likely to seek management and guess who that manager is most likely to be aligned to? Major labels aren’t going anywhere.

This is the important thing for labels to focus on in the future. The actual logistics around the physical world is something you cannot handle if you are also seeking time to record new music and practice. On the web however things are getting easier for everyone and the value proposition of record labels vanishes.

marketing is not free and “it just went viral” is bullshit. yes, the internet is available to anyone. buying visibility is not though. that is the main problem for anyone who creates anything, and not something you can solve by working hard.

> It's never true.

It is, and increasingly, but not obviously.

Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form of gatekeeper. It used to be studio access. Nowadays that's increasingly a commodity. What is increasingly more expensive is attention, so the labels shifted towards being publishers, building their own channels of distribution, to provide ears and eyes to artists in need.

If an artist has already broken through the wall, and has the attention, labels are in a very awkward position, in terms of their value proposition.

> Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

Which bring us to this part: There is no viable career strategy for most artists, period.

Artists obviously don't wanna believe that, so they think of labels as the solution to their issues (they are not).

Labels on the other hand only need artists that they think do maybe have a viable career strategy. The bigger the label, the more able and willing they are to take high risk/high reward bets, but relatively a lot less so than they did years ago, simply because it's not necessary anymore because of the dramatic democratisation of access to music production quality.

Put simply: Labels want artist that don't need them, but also don't realise, that they don't need them. In 2022, if you are an artist, and labels are getting terribly interested, you are probably a lot closer to not needing them than you think.

I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo. Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make.

Your options have either been to fight and more than likely fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things like TikTok (yet).

> Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make.

You don't need a label to distribute your music on major music services. https://www.tunecore.com/

Yep. I'm a verified artist on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, Spotify, etc. and all it took was a $15/year Distrokid subscription.

That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. I'm not keen on the details of the Spotify algorithm, but I imagine labels do help with this, and being on the same label as a popular artist would increase your chances of showing up on that artists' song radio.

> That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists.

This mindset is unfortunately why most musicians fail to gain traction. Relying on an algorithm for success is fallacy, because all of these algorithms are based on input, not random chance. If you're not steadily supplying new listeners through your own direct efforts, then the algorithm isn't going to perceive value and you won't get any benefits from it. Playlisting represents approximately 1% of the independent music industry puzzle.

You're right that getting music onto DSPs has been commoditized.

Parent may have been referring to promotional deals (getting onto official Spotify playlists, Discover Weekly, etc) or special royalty rates. The major labels have tons of leverage, and they definitely cut deals that entry-level artists don't have access to.

You highlighted the difference though. Independent doesn't necessarily mean entry-level, and indie artists who do manage to develop large followings on Spotify are absolutely in a position to negotiate better rates. Regardless of recent controversies, the company doesn't actually want to lose any artist from the platform, because there is an actual tipping point when the availability of the total global music catalogue influences consumer purchasing decisions. Spotify took advantage of that tipping point and won the battle when Pandora and others failed to secure large enough catalogs.

Pretty sure indie artists get paid less by the streaming services, but the much bigger deal is getting onto the playlists. Spotify sells playlist/discover spots, and the only artists who can afford the fees are the ones who are backed by labels.

Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc.

First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are still fully independent and

On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go mainstream" vs just carving out a cozy and sufficiently monetized space to achieve financial stability and practice their craft.

> Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc.

I've not heard of the others, but Tessa is on a label, T∆G Music, which has a global distribution deal with a subsidiary of Sony. She launched her career on the Make Music label as well.

I stand corrected!

There's still great examples out there but I wonder if they're "exceptions that prove the rule". I think Chance The Rapper is still independent?

I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20 years and somehow they've managed to continue to make themselves relevant.

Check out how Frank Ocean released 2 albums at a time to A) get out of his Def Jam contract then B) release another album (same week?) in a deal with Apple Music. He was black-balled by the industry after. Not another Apple Music partnership since afaik

Chance the Rapper won 3 Grammys without ever working with a major label

Most artists don't have a career.

How many self sustained artists in the music industry are there, comparing against the self-claimed ones?

Idk, millions? You can be self sustained without being an international rock star. I lived off of my musicianship for just over 10 years.

I think labels are more relevant than ever. In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels.

Thing is that - in order to be relevant, and play that role - labels need to actually develop a style and expertise in the specific genre/type they want to operate in.

> In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels.

That's simply untrue. The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media personalities and not through labels, so I'm not sure where you got that from.

Who has access to those bloggers and social media personalities? Labels. Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.

That's a conspiratorial and untrue claim. The most popular curated playlists (i.e. ones that aren't algorithmically produced by Spotify under the guise of curation) don't actually have label influence. Anyone can contact those curators directly, and if presented with something palatable, they will most likely put it in rotation.

> Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.

What do you think the record label is doing when they contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a person, who makes a decision based on the content.

>> What do you think the record label is doing when they contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a person, who makes a decision based on the content.

It’s their job to have existing relationships with the bloggers, they aren’t just sending cold emails. And I’d they don’t have relationships they can built them thanks to the credibility they have naturally compared to Jim for some cool indie band sending random emails.

You're still inventing a scenario to fit your narrative without any actual knowledge of how it works. The overwhelming majority of curators do not care about record labels and will actually avoid them in favor of independent artists. There is not some magical ubiquitous collusion going on between the labels and curators of the world. So, what you're describing is nonsense.

> The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media

Not sure about this. Maybe for big music fans, but most casual listeners aren't reading music blogs. They're throwing on spotify playlists which allow artists to pay to get boosted. Guess what, it's the major label artists that can afford those payments. They're seeing that their favorite tiktoker made a video with some new band. Guess what, the tiktoker was paid by a label to use that music.

You have entirely misunderstood the conversation and how playlisting works. We were already literally discussing Spotify playlists. The curators (bloggers and social media personalities) use their platform to solicit submissions, which they filter and then add to their Spotify playlist. Nobody said anything about Spotify listeners reading blogs to find music.

You're also being very conspiratorial by pretending that all playlists and TikTok users are being paid to place music. It does exist, but is not even remotely as ubiquitous as you're pretending.

> curators (bloggers and social media personalities) use their platform to solicit submissions, which they filter and then add to their Spotify playlist

This is a solid but niche market. There is no conspiracy. But distribution is hard. Getting a few thousand listeners is different from serving hundreds of millions.

>They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed

Before this was the Napster era, then the MySpace era, then the SoundCloud era, and now the TikTok era. Somehow those damned labels keep figuring out.

We've lost Polygram, BMG and EMI in the last 30 years, that's three out of the six major labels that were current in the 90s. The remainder are slowly becoming dinosaurs.

You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.

What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors and creators of pirated content. They are not suing individual pirates much at all. You said “to this day…left and right” which indicates your average person as that was the most know thing they were doing before in the 00s.

That’s not true any more.[0]

0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-o...

They sue pirates where the LTV of the litigation is greater than the CAC.

So, they tend to go after businesses with predictable and large incomes, that are dependent on music, to varying degrees, for generating that income.

Peloton, for example, were sued into a royalty contract with the major labels [1]. It's a fun coincidence that their new CEO is the former Netflix and Spotify CFO.

Spotify wasn't sued, because their predecessors were sued into a merger [2][3]. Instead, they acquiesced [4]. The LTV:CAC ratio on this customer was super high.

[1]: https://exploration.io/exploration-weekly-peloton-and-nmpa-s...

[2]: https://www.wired.com/2000/04/riaa-wins-suit-against-mp3-com...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....

[4]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotif...

In what universe are the "distributors and creators of pirated content" not pirates? You are being pedantic to an extreme, while still being entirely wrong in the process.

This is the third time that you've responded to one of my comments with personal theories and ideologies, but with no apparent knowledge of the subject at hand, all in an attempt to "prove me wrong" about something that you can't actually articulate. You appear to desperately want to "win" an argument against me, and while maybe I should be flattered by that, I really just find it creepy and disturbing. Please stop.

I don’t read usernames. Now I will. I guess I’ll have to ignore all your posts since you’re speaking emotionally. If I responded with disagreement that was likely coincidence seeing repeated arguments.

Many people disagreed with you skimming the thread again. Seeing what I replied to from you. Your posts are fully personal ideologies. Your POV comes from you as one person and assume your pov is obviously correct.

> are the "distributors and creators of pirated content" not pirates? You are being pedantic to an extreme, while still being entirely wrong in the process.

I pointed all this out in my post. Your writing implied that. I specifically said there’s a way those words are thought of to the general person. You using it the way you did was deceptive and biased.

I'm less concerned with artists bypassing record labels because "artists already get enough promotional value out of social media" (and they actually might if they're full-time marketers and part-time artists). If I were a label, I'd be worried that the death of radio and rise of personalization kills the demand for professionally written, produced, and recorded tracks, eventually replacing them with ephemeral, low-value TikTok videos. How are you going to find out about that latest Dua Lipa single if you're not hearing it anywhere? And why would you care?

Labels sell polished, high-value tracks to listeners, marketing services to artists, and to pay for this, they need a large market, broad appeal, and residual revenue. That's just not a match for TikTok. It's not that they're being disintermediated, it's that there isn't any value left for a middleman with short-lived, low-value niche products.

Disagree hard - every major label I follow is embracing TikTok and encouraging their artists to leverage the platform for growth. Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. The need for this support doesn’t magically go away with new distribution channels. It just helps newer artists get signed quicker :p

I didn't say that labels don't use TikTok, so you're disagreeing with nothing. What I said, was that labels don't have any legitimate value in a TikTok era, because there's nothing that they can do which an independent artist can't do on their own.

> Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc.

No, they actually really, genuinely don't. They use the exact same channels that independent musicians do. Booking agencies, merch providers, publicists -- all of them are hirable by anyone, not just labels. Everything you think that labels do, they hire someone else to do that, and then tell you that they need to keep ownership of your music to recoup those costs. That is how the music industry has worked for a hundred years, and if you disagree with that, then go read literally any book on the subject.

The dark side to this is that artists are learning that the things labels did for them are things someone really does have to do, and some hate it. I've seen a couple artists talk about what a pain it is to maintain a social media presence (especially on platforms they hate) because the alternative is obscurity.

My prediction is that there's a pendulum back-swing in progress as people figure out how to offer brand-management-as-a-service without just becoming a label.

You're absolutely correct about the dark side, and I would never want to minimize the complexity or sheer effort required to self-manage a music project. Like any startup, it is not easy and you are wholly responsible for everything that happens -- including any mistakes, of which they will likely be many. This is far too daunting for some people, and understandably so, particularly when they just want to "make some rad music with my friends, man."

That said, all of those professional services are directly hirable by any musician, without the need for a label middleman. The best move a band can make, is hire someone to handle the thing they least want to do. As you mentioned, posting on social media is the most hated of all tasks for a lot of folks, and in that situation your first hire should be a publicist (aka social media manager). It gets the largest monkey off your back, and frees up that time for all of the other business stuff that still needs to get done.

That said, you could also hire a publicist for a day, and they could assemble a social media schedule for you, and provide a bunch of templates to use, and take all of the mystery out of what to post and when and how and why. And now instead of paying a retainer or sharing gross, you're paying someone in the band to do it, and all of the money stays with the group.

As for your prediction, you're correct about that, as well, because it's already starting to happen. Many people, like myself, offer a sort of label/manager on-demand service, where for a very small consultation fee, the band gets a monthly analysis of where they're at and what steps they need to be taking, along with all of the granular instructions on how to accomplish those tasks. If I had to guess, there are currently about 1,000 people doing this around the world, but that number is growing rapidly. There are also a lot of tools springing up to help simplify those tasks.

Would be interesting to get a breakdown of your work by genre and so on. It's super interesting. Have you considered writing content about this (that doesn't give away your business)? [Alternatively, how would I begin to start learning about this?]

I keep meaning to start writing or creating videos, but at the end of the day, there are already a bunch of people producing that content and doing it very well. I will write a longer piece eventually about some particular topics that I think are overlooked or not understood, but I'd much rather stick to the Zoom calls where I actually get to meet people and answers questions and offer advice specific to their situation -- it's a very rewarding experience to watch people go from being confused about a topic, to understanding it, and even being excited or motivated by it.

As for learning, YouTube is your best friend. There's a mountain of music business content on there, and most of it is very accurate to reality.

https://www.youtube.com/c/berkleemusic/videos

https://www.youtube.com/c/MusicBiz/videos

https://www.youtube.com/c/IndieMusicAcademy/videos

Thanks, appreciate it. I'll start with those videos. It's not so much for me, but rather friends who would need a push in the right direction. I might reach out to you again, if any of them are interested (as you said elsewhere, it really depends on how the individual responds to the realities of the music business...)

There’s lots of independent artists that are successful, you’re about 5 years late on the “…independent musicians will kill labels…” prediction which hasn’t been borne out. Musicians are actively choosing to sign to labels, even when they don’t have to… make of that what you will.

You're trying to twist this into a scenario of absolutes, as if there's an on/off switch at which point independent artists make 100% of the money and labels don't exist anymore. That's clearly not what I said, and it's rather inflammatory of you to suggest that it is.

You said "record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant" and "the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking". That's about as absolute as you can be. I contend that labels and independents will continue to co-exist, as they have done for many years, despite people proclaiming otherwise (to varying extremes).

"Irrelevant" and "non-existent" are two completely different concepts, and neither of those quoted phrases are even remotely absolutes. Unless you have an actual point to make based on actual knowledge of the subject at hand, please stop with your false pedantry. It's entirely unwelcome and not adding anything to the conversation.

Music labels are in the business of cultural relevancy, a label does not make money if they're not relevant, certainly Warner, UMG, Sony etc. wouldn't be generating multi-billions of revenue each year if they were not relevant.

I have a point, I am not being pedantic. The message of your post, or at least, the message I took away from your post, was that the tides are turning against labels and independent musicians are the future...

...but that's been the claim made for at least the last decade, and it's proven again and again to be untrue. Yes, independent artists can reach huge levels of success without a label, and certainly it's becoming easier and easier to achieve success without a label, however, that doesn't have any logical through line to music labels becoming irrelevant.

Artists like Macklemore are great examples of independent artists who reached great success but still chose to work with labels, because labels provide value. Likewise, there are many successful independent artists who sign with major labels, even some of the artists people pointed to as independent examples in this thread have gone on to sign with labels.

I will happily make a bet with you, and you can choose the metric: in 5 years, major record labels will be doing better than they are today. My metric of choice would be total revenue as measured by the IFPI, but I'm open to other metrics if you think total revenue as measured by the IFPI isn't a fair representation.

Although I don't work in the music industry, I have participated in this discussion many times over the years, including conversations with major label artists. Historically, record labels were gatekeepers and it's fantastic to see the shifts in consumer habits that have enabled independent artists to succeed, I would not dispute that for one second, and I will happily celebrate it alongside you, but the last decade has disproven the anti-label thesis again and again. Labels and independents will co-exist, they will grow together.

If your comment was focused entirely on the success of independents, I wouldn't have had anything to say. I would have just given an upvote, because I agree wholeheartedly.

> Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already.

We are almost there but not quite. Justin Bieber famously got his start on YouTube, which is a step up from A&R scouts haunting the clubs -- he was 14 and in Canada so probably would never have been found. But a label signed him and increased his exposure by several orders of magnitude. That wasn't even 15 years ago.

Moving from the opposite direction is live music revenues -- from the late 1980s The Grateful Dead made most of their money from touring, not albums, and were one of the top grossing acts for a few years despite a paucity of hit records (a phenomenon the music and financial press seemed to find incomprehensible). Like Bieber, they needed the labels to get there, but then again they started about 60 years ago. They were also pretty into investigating new technology and models despite playing somewhat "low tech" music.

And some breakout stars now control their own finances and corpus, which is also new and really of the same vintage as the Bieber example. I think Ke$ha was a pioneer in this regard, but she built on a prior precedent of some label-developed megastars (e.g. Bowie, Beatles, and famously Prince) who managed to get to the point where the labels needed them more than they needed the labels. Ke$sha pulled it off before getting to that point and she's not the only one (interestingly the only ones I've heard of doing this are all women, but it's not like I follow the music business).

The phase change I'm waiting for is when someone can really break out on their own without a Svengali like the labels. The influencer "infrastructure", such as it is, is too tenuous to pull this off today. But like you, I don't think it's far away, though next couple of years seems too soon. But within the decade.

The fascinating thing about this is the whole debate about how fair the streaming payments are will go away. Instead the stars will likely prefer that the music not be paid for at all (that will magically increase its frequency in the mix); instead it will function as a kind of free advertising for alternative revenue streams. In this, the example of the Dead is illustrative.

Until the Ticketmaster monopoly goes away I think independent music superstars are gonna be in for a hard time.

That is a fair point on the touring side of things, but every city still has theaters and large clubs which are not beholden to Ticketmaster. So, while an independent artist may not have access to a Beyonce-level stadium production, they can still be extremely successful in literally every other capacity.

There was an article recently I read that basically posited that was actually no longer the case - Ticketmaster has bought up the companies that own or have exclusive contracts with most venues and now most venues are fairly locked in. I am sure there are some in any big city that are not but not nearly enough.

Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels.

They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label.

Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it. Plus it's a great way to work with your less musical friends. Corporate isn't the only option.

From my experience going back to 1990 everything is actually MORE controlled by the majors than ever before. Its so easy for google to bury you, all the so called "discovery" platforms are a pay to play scheme. Once pay to play became the norm in southern california the music scene died and that was back in the early 90s even before the internet.

That's too bad. It's a big world. There are a lot of small-mid-sized artists making a living with smaller labels.

Not everybody needs to be the next Lizzo or else its abject failure.

> Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label.

It's a nice theory, but it doesn't really play out like that. For example, back in the 90s and 00s, indie record labels were all the rage, particularly in the metal world. You had all of these companies like Relapse, Metal Blade and Century Media operating "outside" of the major label system, and you'd think that would protect the artists from middlemen, but it didn't. Those companies absorbed massive amounts of money with relatively small staffs, and much to the detriment of the artists who would often go home with nothing after a tour. I watched it happen so many times that it became pointless to keep count. And don't even get me started on how little they actually supported the artists in any capacity -- they wouldn't even send singles to radio stations when the stations themselves were asking in order to put them into rotation.

There are certainly "good" independent labels, as well as good people working at "bad" major labels. I think almost everyone gets into the business because they love music and want to participate in finding and producing the best talent. However, much like every industry, once the revenue reaches some threshold and the employee counts grow, those altruistic motivations become much more difficult to maintain. Unless the person at the top of the company is wholly dedicated to music and that attitude is able to trickle down to every employee, then labels have a proven tendency to devolve into middlemanning and nickle/diming and worse.

> Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it.

That's an oversimplification and the last bit is definitely not true. A label is not actually a manager or booking agent or publicist. Labels pay people to do all of those things, in the same way that any musician can. In fact, the biggest function that an indie label provides these days beyond some physical distribution (which is also a third party service), is maintain a list of those managers and booking agents who may be willing to take a meeting with a no-name startup band just because the label vouches for them. That's about it.

More importantly, managers and booking agents still aren't going to do all of the work for you. One of the biggest shocks that bands face when getting signed, is just how much of the business and marketing work they need to do themselves. So at the end of the day, anyone is more than welcome to give away 80% of their gross to a label if they want, but they have to do so understanding that more than 50% of the effort is still going to fall on the band members' shoulders.

It’s not a theory. It is. The rest there are localized, not common, properties

> That's about it.

Speaking of oversimplifying… That comparison is like saying a friendship is just a temporary association of two chunks of matter. Technically accurate from one slice, but boy is that missing information and not descriptive of the entire context.

It sounds like you had some negative experiences. I have too. It’s important not to let them colour your future. Damn them. They are not the whole of possibility. Humans aren’t all scum for the existence of thieves, after all. There’s more out there.

I would be interested to hear your non-editorialized argument without the symbolism.

YouTube is a precursor to TikTok and for the most part offers the same functionality (organizing and distributing media to billions of people). YouTube has existed for 17 years and is not lacking in uploads by talented musicians, singers, and bands. Since the two companies are not that different and both serve billions of people, there's already 17 years of proof against your argument. Also, Justin Bieber would not exist without the record labels. He very likely would have faded out of the consciousness of the masses a few years after his e-fame.

>The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any need for those traditional industry services.

Uploading music to YouTube or TikTok is not "navigating" the industry. As easy as it is to upload content, it's just as easy to be forgotten. There's countless other people competing for eyeballs on those platforms.

The record labels provide administrative resources, recording/audio engineering, distribution/merchandise, legal, booking/touring, management, public relations, industry contacts, and probably more. Tackling that workload (if popular) without outside support does not seem possible.

Also, the record labels exist to serve the masses. They always have, and always will. I don't see a huge demand for the style of music independent artists create. If there was such a demand, the record labels would capture it. They exist to make a profit, and aren't dumb. They don't hold the little guy back, it's the little guy who doesn't understand they are competing in a (wrong) market that isn't interested in their product.

I grew up hating the RIAA. I used to spend time reading articles about how awful the RIAA was as a budding musician. Now that I'm older, I'm sad to see what they represent disappear. They were the foundation that the pinnacle of American culture was built off of in the 60s-90s. Their gate offered quality at the cost of quantity. What's happening now, IMO, is that the market is dividing more and more every year. More bands that fulfill the needs of fewer people. This trend is not sustainable in the long run, especially for the musicians.

There's great labels still, like Sargent House.

Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage.

And even if the stories about the struggling musicians becoming rock stars has always been embellished, it seems nowadays most of the current ones had financial security before pursuing their music career because of the low budgets available to develop new artists.

>There's great labels still, like Sargent House.

True, but the only OmarRodriguezLopez (for example) that I actually listen to is available on Apple Music. Every once in a while I'll pull up something on YouTube that isn't on Apple Music, but my 99% of the time music player is Apple Music, and if I buy something that's not on there it is a PITA to deal with and costs as much as a month sub to all the things on streaming.

The only reason that a label like Sargent House is relevant is as a discovery aid.

> Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage.

Except that is rapidly becoming untrue, which is the entire point. Self-management in the music industry is actually quite simple if you have the tools and knowledge, and both of those are now widely available to everyone.

[citation needed]

You’re not wrong, people can do more themselves now…but the labels can also do these things, while being globally networked. You sound like you know what you’re talking about, but probably worth spending more time knowing your enemy if you really want to destroy them.

On the flip side I want to say the fastest growing genre globally is kpop and it is extremely heavily label driven, with very long incubation periods.

Do you think this could have an effect on copyright in popular culture?

And 99.9% of artists still won’t get paid squat.

Macklemore did that already.

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