Comment by billpatrianakos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by billpatrianakos | Hacker News Reader

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billpatrianakos

Micro-labels are cool and online services like Rdio and Spotify are great but is there anyone out there doing anything in this space besides these players?

It seems like this industry is prime for disruption and I'm not talking about the kind of disruption the current startups are doing. I see a ton of startups focusing on getting music to the consumer but what about startups that focus on grooming new talent for the big time?

We've got YouTube, SoundCloud and the like that make getting heard easy but the onus is on the music maker to spread the word. No one will listen to your song on these sites unless they're being promoted. It would be cool to have a new kind of "major" label that gets you exposure in a way the majors do but without totally screwing over the artists. Most musical acts make burger-flipper salaries and do tons of exhausting work because the deals they sign are heavily favored toward the label.

Or maybe like a universal label like BankSimple (now Simple) but for music labels.

On second read, I think this sounds vague and kind of naive. Oh well. Is anyone doing anything like this that I don't know of or has it been thought of and found to be a bad idea?

I think you have some interesting ideas there. Majors see themselves nowadays only as some vehicle to bring local success towards a global stage. There is still A&R'ing going on, but it is far less long-term oriented. What the record industry should take as an example is in my view other brand-centric business, such as sportswear or luxury goods companies. But the main problem is going to be there is that the industry is too much fixed within their pricing strategies. The main problem started in my opinion already by selling all (CD) Albums for roughly the same amount of money. They try to break through this now by different premium strategies, but when prices are fixed by and large the market has very little dynamic and potential to change.

It's not a bad idea, but there are two major drawbacks: 1) it's not that profitable. Companies that have tried some variant of this include tunecore and rcrdlbl but both dropped the bits that weren't profitable. 2) imagine startups are like bands; the founders will always do a better job making noise than a hired PR agency. Labels introduce politics and want to see success line their pockets, not the artist's. They will always recommend charging for music, rather than giving it away to reach a larger audience.

The "startups are like bands" analogy actually implies a different, more interesting model: what about a startup incubator for bands?

Pick the most promising unsigned bands out of a set of applicants, and give them access to smart folks who have experience with being successful in the music industry along with other promising bands?

Bands don't IPO or get bought out, but a deal for percentage of revenue might still be viable, sort of like a manager/agent contract. I have no idea what the potential upside of a successful band is, so I don't have a clue whether the numbers add up to make the financial aspects of this work the way an incubator does, but it seems like it's worth exploring.

The band would still be in charge of their destiny, unlike with a major label or some more onerous types of management contracts. They would just have a access to a lot of insight and help toward achieving that destiny.

It's been tried. Hurley did this for a bit in Costa Mesa.

You've basically described talent shows (x-factor etc).

Earbits seems to be doing something along these lines, at least as far as putting radio promotion more into the artists hands.

I think http://bandcamp.com/ seems to be along those lines.

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