Being that this is my first post I figured it would be smart to kick off Audio Junkie with a bang! This article will address where I think the Music and Entertainment Industries currently stand. What better place to start right?
By the end of this article you will understand 3 pretty cool things about the music industry, and you won't even have to pay NYU tuition for 4 years to gain this understanding!!!
By the end of this article you will understand:
-How these industries have changed in the past decade or so
-My theory of what the most successful Music and Entertainment Companies will look like in the future
-And, how all of this affects independent artists (musicians, directors, script-writers, journalists, etc.)
p.s. If the language in this article is a bit scary don't worry, as you read more of my posts the industry terms and media vocabulary will become more comfortable : )
Ok now to start...this is so exciting!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The invention of the Internet has forever changed media consumption (i.e. the way people watch film, TV programming, listen to music, etc.). Power and control, regarding media consumption behaviors, have been transferred from the large content creating organizations (like large record labels and television networks) to the content creators/consumers/users. This means that independent artists are increasingly taking more and more power away from these large media companies! But how? Don't worry I will get there.
The media industry (i.e. film, TV, news, etc.) is in the process of converting from an industrial information economy into a networked information economy. Sounds scary right? An industrial information economy is just a term for a society that has its media produced by large corporations or media institutions. A networked information economy is one in which information and media don't channel from one large business entity, but rather they come from a network or a web of the individuals within the society (good examples of network information entities would be information and media shared on wikipedia or youtube). Now as I said before the media industry is converting from an industrial information economy to a networked information economy. In this hybrid state that we are currently in (between networked and information economies) we are already afforded a taste of the greatest liberty of the networked information economy: individuals now have the ability to create content and mass distribute it; and better yet at no cost! This transition is as a result of the wonderful Internet and increases in bandwidth capacity! It's not all sunshine and roses though, as with any change there is always resistance.
In response to this phenomenon, large corporations and organizations, like the RIAA, have taken painstaking measures to try to restrict the power and agency (the freedom to act) of media users by restricting access and placing artificial gates to the very same media they are promoting/selling. An example from the Television Industry would be how TV networks only stream their shows on their sites; how they usually only have a few episodes, and how they usually take down any other people's uploads of their shows. In doing this they putting up artificial gates between the people uploading all of their shows, their content, and the people who want to consume or use their shows. But the transition has already begun. They are merely slowing down what is inevitable.
In order to meet the demand of unrestricted free media access in the new media marketplace, innovative companies (some legal, some illegal-like torrent sites) are springing up with the sole purpose of giving power and agency to users, artists, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs. Where before, due to the structure of the media and music distribution channels, media companies could make cookie cutter products (i.e. commercial music, movies, and television programs) and herd consumers into very narrow consumption channels, now they cannot, because users can now have the agency to choose between many unregulated media sources and manipulate and interact with their media however they choose. Again this is a result of the Internet, the consumer's choice is no longer restricted to the small number of products (i.e. musical acts, TV shows) that these companies are producing, now they consume anything anyone else is putting out.
Along with the new freedom derived from the emerging networked information economy comes the necessity for new business models, regarding media sales and consumption. There is a high demand for new freedom to interact with media, so within the marketplace some new media companies will rise to supply this demand. As a result media companies, artists, businesspeople and users are all going to have to adapt to new models if they have aspirations of staying afloat. But nobody knows what the destination looks like yet.
This has lead several new, large, forward-thinking companies to create open source platforms, for example Google which is giving its users free reign to build their own companies on top of their platforms, such as the new Droid phone and the attempted release of the collaboration and communication tool, Google wave, which has failed so far. But as with any uncertain environment some idea's will float and some will drown.
Cutting-edge businesspeople and entrepreneurs will have the foresight to identify the successful platforms and then will adapt to these new open-source platforms and the new hybrid information economy constructing currently non-existent business models that will shape and dictate how media is consumed by users far into the future. (When I say hybrid information economy I just mean the hybrid that forms as a result of the transition between the two information economies mentioned before, namely the industrial and the network) So as I was saying, cutting-edge entrepreneurs will create businesses on these platforms, businesses that currently don't exist, that will give agency or greater advantage to consumers/users.
The most recently emerging prominent music business models have focused on both offering a free product that is streamed by consumers and a product that is portable. Good examples of these businesses are those using subscription models, like Rhapsody and Moog (though they aren't free yet). This free product that is streamed would negate the need for physical and digital copies of music because of its wide accessibility and quick high quality streams. A British company who just begin offering services to the United States, Spotify, has been able to offer free streaming of music, paid for by advertising. You should check Spotify out it's pretty cool. Additionally, to combat holes in 3G networks companies like Spotify are even including an offline mode, which allows their customers to make their playlists available even when there is no Internet connectivity, which is a pay-plan feature.
Because these new models represent a free substitute that is superior to tangible products, i.e. CDs, and MP3’s (superior not only because of these new model's free nature that is paired with their high audio quality and portability, but also because they don’t eat into hard-drive space) media companies and artists will be hard pressed to generate the previous large scale profit the music industry was known for, using traditional sales methods. Why pay for something when a superior, free substitute exists? Well, we will turn to Trent Reznor to address how independent artists will create added value for their products, to address this problem and flourish in the hybrid economy and in the network economy to come. (It should be noted that his success prior to the hybrid economy made his huge success much easier)
Creative artists, like Trent Reznor from NIN, recognizing that the need for ownership of music is dwindling and that traditional sales are down, have developed imaginative ways to attach additional value to their music to entice fans/users to pay money for a product that, since the crowning of the new networked information economy, can easily be obtained for free. He embraces the hybrid economy by offering all of his works under a creative commons license as opposed to copyrighting his works. Additionally he has embraced the hybrid economy by giving fans the stems to his recordings and intentionally making over 400 gigs of video footage available from a bittorrent tracker he set up. He did all of this with the intent of creating a community centered around remixing his works and celebrating the amateur non-commercial information economy, which is what the networked information economy will thrive on (i.e. regular citizens remixing and engaging commercial products).
What Trent Reznor has discovered and has exploited is the knowledge that media in the networked information economy needs to be interactive. In the transition between information and networked information economies the members of the society will evolve from consumers, consuming and buying what the large centralized corporations offer them, to users who take the productions from the antiquated information system and productions from the new networked system and remix them, splice them, and personalize them to create something entirely new. There are already so many examples of this (shred video's, overdubbing different comical dialogue over tv shows, music mash-ups, etc).
As a result of all of this networked decentralized media production (i.e. media being produced from something other than a huge media conglomerate), until we make the full transition to the networked information economy it will appear that professionalism no longer exists, especially in media streams like the news. This is mainly because anybody and everybody will be creating all of the media that everyone else is consuming, it will no longer come packaged the same way every time. This notion is important in the transition between the two information economies that isn't really recognized yet, so I will dwell on it for a little while here. It should be noted that professionalism is just a societal construct, an idea that limits ones agency and individuality to originally create. Follow me here, professionalism is no more than a group consensus saying this is what constitues what is good, i.e. good journalism, or good music. It is not like there is some inherent characteristic within good professional music that extends to all of existence; some technique or quality that dolphins, ants, and Martians would unanimously agree is better and more professional than another. Therefore, it is important to see that this transition isn't actually a loss in quality or "professionalism", but rather is a loss of the uniformity and rigidity of a industrial information economy as a means of transferring to a networked economy. An information economy where information flows freely, and original creation is more prevalent.
So back to how this relates to Trent Reznor, who intentionally put the stems(which are the individual parts that make up a whole song, i.e. just the vocals, or just the guitar track, etc.) of the songs on his release Ghosts I-IV and 400 gigs of video footage on a torrent site so that they would be downloaded for free and remixed by media users. By the way Ghosts I-IV grossed $1.6 million in the first week alone and solely from record sales. This happened because he realized that the direction of our society's media consumption behaviors is moving towards the necessity for interactivity with media, and personalization, and an artificial barrierless environment of media consumption.
Amidst the sea of new independent music releases, made possible by widely accessible affordable recording technologies and distribution, Reznor rose above the noise of the standard "11 song industrial information economy album" because where the mass of artists that remain unheard utilized the advantages in connection and distribution afforded by the networked economy, they neglected the need for interactivity, remixing, personalization, and a barrier-free environment.
As media consumption trends skew further and further from radio, television, and newspapers, users are going to increasingly demand the ability to manipulate or interact with their media in the new networked and hybrid information economies. Interactive mediums like Rockband song downloads and blogs will start either replacing or substituting for their industrial information economy equivalents, MP3 downloads and newspapers.
The strongest media companies in the future will be the ones who will discover new currently unthought-of interactive media distribution channels that capitalize on the foundation of open-source platforms (like google wave and android). They will be the ones who can create media or entice the non-commercial segment of the hybrid economy, and the whole of the networked economy, to create media that interactively engages its users.
The End.
-Ben Fillion (Musician, Record producer, Music Industry Entrepreneur)
So now to go back to what I told you that you would understand after having read this article:
-How these industries have changed in the past decade or so:
We have seen that the media industries have started to lose power due to the increased connectivity resulting from both the advent of the internet, and advances in digital technology, and file size efficiency
-My theory of what the most successful Music and Entertainment Companies will look like:
The last paragraph of the above article
-And, how all of this affects independent artists (musicians, directors, script-writers, journalists, etc.)
Independent artists now have incredible power to promote, and distribute themselves through the newfound connectivity afforded by the internet, but additionally they shouldn't forget that the direction that we are heading in is towards user interactivity.
Thanks again for reading
Feel free to email me with questions and comments.
benfillion@gmail.com
By the end of this article you will understand 3 pretty cool things about the music industry, and you won't even have to pay NYU tuition for 4 years to gain this understanding!!!
By the end of this article you will understand:
-How these industries have changed in the past decade or so
-My theory of what the most successful Music and Entertainment Companies will look like in the future
-And, how all of this affects independent artists (musicians, directors, script-writers, journalists, etc.)
p.s. If the language in this article is a bit scary don't worry, as you read more of my posts the industry terms and media vocabulary will become more comfortable : )
Ok now to start...this is so exciting!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The invention of the Internet has forever changed media consumption (i.e. the way people watch film, TV programming, listen to music, etc.). Power and control, regarding media consumption behaviors, have been transferred from the large content creating organizations (like large record labels and television networks) to the content creators/consumers/users. This means that independent artists are increasingly taking more and more power away from these large media companies! But how? Don't worry I will get there.
The media industry (i.e. film, TV, news, etc.) is in the process of converting from an industrial information economy into a networked information economy. Sounds scary right? An industrial information economy is just a term for a society that has its media produced by large corporations or media institutions. A networked information economy is one in which information and media don't channel from one large business entity, but rather they come from a network or a web of the individuals within the society (good examples of network information entities would be information and media shared on wikipedia or youtube). Now as I said before the media industry is converting from an industrial information economy to a networked information economy. In this hybrid state that we are currently in (between networked and information economies) we are already afforded a taste of the greatest liberty of the networked information economy: individuals now have the ability to create content and mass distribute it; and better yet at no cost! This transition is as a result of the wonderful Internet and increases in bandwidth capacity! It's not all sunshine and roses though, as with any change there is always resistance.
In response to this phenomenon, large corporations and organizations, like the RIAA, have taken painstaking measures to try to restrict the power and agency (the freedom to act) of media users by restricting access and placing artificial gates to the very same media they are promoting/selling. An example from the Television Industry would be how TV networks only stream their shows on their sites; how they usually only have a few episodes, and how they usually take down any other people's uploads of their shows. In doing this they putting up artificial gates between the people uploading all of their shows, their content, and the people who want to consume or use their shows. But the transition has already begun. They are merely slowing down what is inevitable.
In order to meet the demand of unrestricted free media access in the new media marketplace, innovative companies (some legal, some illegal-like torrent sites) are springing up with the sole purpose of giving power and agency to users, artists, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs. Where before, due to the structure of the media and music distribution channels, media companies could make cookie cutter products (i.e. commercial music, movies, and television programs) and herd consumers into very narrow consumption channels, now they cannot, because users can now have the agency to choose between many unregulated media sources and manipulate and interact with their media however they choose. Again this is a result of the Internet, the consumer's choice is no longer restricted to the small number of products (i.e. musical acts, TV shows) that these companies are producing, now they consume anything anyone else is putting out.
Along with the new freedom derived from the emerging networked information economy comes the necessity for new business models, regarding media sales and consumption. There is a high demand for new freedom to interact with media, so within the marketplace some new media companies will rise to supply this demand. As a result media companies, artists, businesspeople and users are all going to have to adapt to new models if they have aspirations of staying afloat. But nobody knows what the destination looks like yet.
This has lead several new, large, forward-thinking companies to create open source platforms, for example Google which is giving its users free reign to build their own companies on top of their platforms, such as the new Droid phone and the attempted release of the collaboration and communication tool, Google wave, which has failed so far. But as with any uncertain environment some idea's will float and some will drown.
Cutting-edge businesspeople and entrepreneurs will have the foresight to identify the successful platforms and then will adapt to these new open-source platforms and the new hybrid information economy constructing currently non-existent business models that will shape and dictate how media is consumed by users far into the future. (When I say hybrid information economy I just mean the hybrid that forms as a result of the transition between the two information economies mentioned before, namely the industrial and the network) So as I was saying, cutting-edge entrepreneurs will create businesses on these platforms, businesses that currently don't exist, that will give agency or greater advantage to consumers/users.
The most recently emerging prominent music business models have focused on both offering a free product that is streamed by consumers and a product that is portable. Good examples of these businesses are those using subscription models, like Rhapsody and Moog (though they aren't free yet). This free product that is streamed would negate the need for physical and digital copies of music because of its wide accessibility and quick high quality streams. A British company who just begin offering services to the United States, Spotify, has been able to offer free streaming of music, paid for by advertising. You should check Spotify out it's pretty cool. Additionally, to combat holes in 3G networks companies like Spotify are even including an offline mode, which allows their customers to make their playlists available even when there is no Internet connectivity, which is a pay-plan feature.
Because these new models represent a free substitute that is superior to tangible products, i.e. CDs, and MP3’s (superior not only because of these new model's free nature that is paired with their high audio quality and portability, but also because they don’t eat into hard-drive space) media companies and artists will be hard pressed to generate the previous large scale profit the music industry was known for, using traditional sales methods. Why pay for something when a superior, free substitute exists? Well, we will turn to Trent Reznor to address how independent artists will create added value for their products, to address this problem and flourish in the hybrid economy and in the network economy to come. (It should be noted that his success prior to the hybrid economy made his huge success much easier)
Creative artists, like Trent Reznor from NIN, recognizing that the need for ownership of music is dwindling and that traditional sales are down, have developed imaginative ways to attach additional value to their music to entice fans/users to pay money for a product that, since the crowning of the new networked information economy, can easily be obtained for free. He embraces the hybrid economy by offering all of his works under a creative commons license as opposed to copyrighting his works. Additionally he has embraced the hybrid economy by giving fans the stems to his recordings and intentionally making over 400 gigs of video footage available from a bittorrent tracker he set up. He did all of this with the intent of creating a community centered around remixing his works and celebrating the amateur non-commercial information economy, which is what the networked information economy will thrive on (i.e. regular citizens remixing and engaging commercial products).
What Trent Reznor has discovered and has exploited is the knowledge that media in the networked information economy needs to be interactive. In the transition between information and networked information economies the members of the society will evolve from consumers, consuming and buying what the large centralized corporations offer them, to users who take the productions from the antiquated information system and productions from the new networked system and remix them, splice them, and personalize them to create something entirely new. There are already so many examples of this (shred video's, overdubbing different comical dialogue over tv shows, music mash-ups, etc).
As a result of all of this networked decentralized media production (i.e. media being produced from something other than a huge media conglomerate), until we make the full transition to the networked information economy it will appear that professionalism no longer exists, especially in media streams like the news. This is mainly because anybody and everybody will be creating all of the media that everyone else is consuming, it will no longer come packaged the same way every time. This notion is important in the transition between the two information economies that isn't really recognized yet, so I will dwell on it for a little while here. It should be noted that professionalism is just a societal construct, an idea that limits ones agency and individuality to originally create. Follow me here, professionalism is no more than a group consensus saying this is what constitues what is good, i.e. good journalism, or good music. It is not like there is some inherent characteristic within good professional music that extends to all of existence; some technique or quality that dolphins, ants, and Martians would unanimously agree is better and more professional than another. Therefore, it is important to see that this transition isn't actually a loss in quality or "professionalism", but rather is a loss of the uniformity and rigidity of a industrial information economy as a means of transferring to a networked economy. An information economy where information flows freely, and original creation is more prevalent.
So back to how this relates to Trent Reznor, who intentionally put the stems(which are the individual parts that make up a whole song, i.e. just the vocals, or just the guitar track, etc.) of the songs on his release Ghosts I-IV and 400 gigs of video footage on a torrent site so that they would be downloaded for free and remixed by media users. By the way Ghosts I-IV grossed $1.6 million in the first week alone and solely from record sales. This happened because he realized that the direction of our society's media consumption behaviors is moving towards the necessity for interactivity with media, and personalization, and an artificial barrierless environment of media consumption.
Amidst the sea of new independent music releases, made possible by widely accessible affordable recording technologies and distribution, Reznor rose above the noise of the standard "11 song industrial information economy album" because where the mass of artists that remain unheard utilized the advantages in connection and distribution afforded by the networked economy, they neglected the need for interactivity, remixing, personalization, and a barrier-free environment.
As media consumption trends skew further and further from radio, television, and newspapers, users are going to increasingly demand the ability to manipulate or interact with their media in the new networked and hybrid information economies. Interactive mediums like Rockband song downloads and blogs will start either replacing or substituting for their industrial information economy equivalents, MP3 downloads and newspapers.
The strongest media companies in the future will be the ones who will discover new currently unthought-of interactive media distribution channels that capitalize on the foundation of open-source platforms (like google wave and android). They will be the ones who can create media or entice the non-commercial segment of the hybrid economy, and the whole of the networked economy, to create media that interactively engages its users.
The End.
-Ben Fillion (Musician, Record producer, Music Industry Entrepreneur)
So now to go back to what I told you that you would understand after having read this article:
-How these industries have changed in the past decade or so:
We have seen that the media industries have started to lose power due to the increased connectivity resulting from both the advent of the internet, and advances in digital technology, and file size efficiency
-My theory of what the most successful Music and Entertainment Companies will look like:
The last paragraph of the above article
-And, how all of this affects independent artists (musicians, directors, script-writers, journalists, etc.)
Independent artists now have incredible power to promote, and distribute themselves through the newfound connectivity afforded by the internet, but additionally they shouldn't forget that the direction that we are heading in is towards user interactivity.
Thanks again for reading
Feel free to email me with questions and comments.
benfillion@gmail.com
