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Comment by daleharvey | Hacker News Reader

I fully agree, everyone talks about how disgusted they are by record labels, myself included, but we have been in this game a while now, artists have had the ability to sell directly the consumers, media services have been in the position to promote independent artists.

I remember some Steve Jobs quite about the scary truth about news organisations producing washed down trite because that is what people are asking for, is the same true of the music industry?

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Record companies are still relevant because they provide what is probably the most important element of a band/musician's success: marketing.

This is not something music fans are likely to admit, but their tastes are determined more by shrewd marketing than by some "objective" measure of talent or quality.

It reminds me of an article I read recently - a world-renowned violinist played in the DC Metro for a day. Not a single person recognized him, and very few people recognized the quality of his performances. Most just passed him by and some dropped quarters as if he's just a run of the mill subway performer.

IMO, people do not have the discerning taste they seem to attribute to themselves. This goes for movie buffs, music fans, video game connoisseurs. Everyone.

So, in an environment where people's perceptions of art and media is more determined by preconceptions and biases than any pseudo-objective measure of quality, the difference between winners and losers is who can shape their image the best. This takes a shitload of money, spent in a shrewd way - record labels are still very, very good at this.

The violinist you're thinking of is probably Joshua Bell. There was an article about his subway performance in the Washington Post several years ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...

You would be very well served by tracking down every other long-form Weingarten piece you can find as well. Amazing writer.

Logically, in order for Spotify to survive, it must develop a platform for artists to market themselves therefore bypassing the labels. During the height of MySpace there were countless stories of new artists being discovered on there. The iTunes music store also has that potential, but Apple doesn't seem interested in going down that road.

Spotify has a long way to go before that happens though. Its music discovery features are almost worthless. The What's New section lists nothing I care to listen to. It would also be nice to see tour dates and real social features.

The dirty little secret about "music discovery" is that most people don't spend time discovering music. Sure I do because I really like music a lot. I regularly read Pitchfork and Stereogum and listen to a lot of music. But I'm in the minority on this. 90% of society (America, for me) listen to the radio to learn about new music or occasionally get exposed to new stuff through their friend - but they're certainly not spending hours of their day playing song samples on Stereogum.

I think this is why Pandora is so popular. People can pick something they know, turn the station on and just treat it like the radio. The sad thing is that if they hear something they like on Pandora, all you can do is thumbs up it, which then can be retrieved later by finding a link buried deep in your profile...a place most Pandora users never go.

The artists must start to learn how to use social media and build their own communities, and then sell directly to their fans. Google Artist Hub is allowing them to do this:

http://music.google.com/artists/

One thing I've never understood about the music industry regarding the marketing argument - why don't the really big, successful artists just pay for their own marketing? Hire a team to do it for them and skip out the labels entirely. They would surely make more money and have total control of their music rights.

Marketing companies tend to specialise, think of the big labels as music marketing companies if you like, they have expertise and relationships (radio, physical and digital distributors) that a generic advertising firm doesn't.

The smarter people in the music industry know that their future is dependant on staying close to the artists. The tables are turning, in the past the artists served the labels, in the future the labels will serve the artists.

I guess I was more meaning the artists (or even group of artists) hiring their own marketing people, i.e. not contracting out to an agency, but actually having their own staff, probably people that have worked at labels before. No idea if that could ever work...

It's a chicken and egg thing. Only established artists could afford that, and you need marketing to get established.

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