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ShareAUSTIN, Texas — Booze and porn — the future of music?
The suggestions were only partially tongue in cheek as the music industry took a critical, sometimes humorous look at itself during the 24th South by Southwest Music Conference, which concluded last week.
The forward-looking tone of the conference was a notable shift. At past South by Southwests, executives frequently complained about what once was the ultra-profitable $15 billion-a-year industry of the 20th century. Now a new breed of decision-makers is looking toward what might be in 2020. At this year’s conference, the search was on for new business models and new ways of thinking about how music will be made, distributed and consumed. And it’s about time. While the industry dithered the past 10 years, its economy bottomed out; sales of its cash cow, the compact disc, have plunged more than 50 percent.
In uncertain times, people look for guidance, revelation, a sign from above. And so South by Southwest became a search for The Answer. A few industry insiders could even joke about it.
Derek Sivers, the founder of the online record store CD Baby, offered not just advice but “the Tao” — the guiding principle — in a vastly entertaining panel on how to rise above an increasingly cluttered ocean of music. One crucial tidbit of wisdom for aspiring rock stars and music-biz entrepreneurs: “Buy people beer if necessary.”
Eric Garland, the head of digital media measurement company Big Champagne, advised the music community to take a few cues from the porn industry. “They’re not trying to force their customers into a relationship,” he said. “They’re just out to prove on a daily basis that it’s a good deal.”
Five industry sages sat in a room full of executives to answer the question “How will we listen to music in 2020?” Their conclusion: “Any way we want to,” said Steve Savoca, an executive with the Domino label. “The future will be about access — packaging music every which way,” from old-fashioned vinyl albums to the trendiest cell-phone applications.
The last 10 years have seen a seismic power shift from record companies to the hands of consumers and their laptops and cell phones, thanks to the ubiquity of online file-sharing. The aftershocks could be even more momentous in the next decade as the technology reaches chunks of the planet that still haven’t experienced the joys of peer-to-peer file sharing. Huge chunks of the world are still without broadband Internet connections (including100 million Americans). As DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) said, quoting author William Gibson, “The future’s already here; it’s just unevenly distributed.”
In the next 10 years, “the paradise of infinite storage,” as former record producer Sandy Pearlman calls it, will move closer to reality. It will allow consumers to access every piece of recorded music ever made wherever they go.
Whether the artists who make that music will get paid is another matter. Most aren’t making much money directly from recorded music now, and that trend is unlikely to change soon.
The answer no one gave in a panel titled “Why hasn’t the music industry sued Girl Talk?” is that Girl Talk, who stitches together bits of copyrighted songs to create new music, hasn’t sold enough recorded music to make suing him worthwhile. Instead, Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) has created a career by giving away music on the Internet as a way of promoting live appearances.
Up for grabs is how intellectual property will be addressed as more Girl Talks emerge. In a lengthy legal debate over the nuances of fair use in appropriating copyrighted works, one comment zeroed in on the source of the tension: “We’re in a remix culture, and the law has not caught up with it,” said Benjamin Franzen, who produced the movie “Copyright Criminals.”
Franzen said it would’ve cost him upward of $4 million to license music and images from the likes of Walt Disney, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin as part of his illuminating documentary on how artists transform the past into new art. “Fair use enabled the movie to be made,” he said.
Licensing costs are preventing Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek from making his Spotify music platform available in the United States. Spotify is a hit in Europe, with more than 300,000 subscribers and 7 million users. But in a keynote address at the interactive conference that preceded the music portion of South by Southwest, Ek revealed that he still must make about 5,000 deals with license holders and collection agencies to get Spotify running in America. His goal is to make music “flow like water” to consumers and still pay music creators.
Yet even Ek acknowledged that Spotify will be only one of many futures for the Music Industry 2.0.
“There isn’t one business model that will save the music industry,” he said.
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SURVIVAL TIPS FROM THE PROS
Because the future is likely to be even more fragmented than the current music world, with its myriad niches, microcultures and sub-basement communities, it will require content creators to work harder than ever to maintain relevance. And it will require the industry to adapt even more quickly to the shifting means by which consumers access music. The pros at South by Southwest offered a few survival tips:
—“You have to find some way to be essential, or you’re not going to be in it,” said Big Champagne’s Eric Garland, expanding on his be-more-like-the-porn industry thesis. “The (digital music) ‘cloud’ is less interesting than who controls what’s in the cloud — and the end users control it. You have to prove your worth to them every day.”
—It’s the fans’ world more than ever. “The biggest secret of all promotion: It’s about them, not you,” advised Derek Sivers, founder of online record store CD Baby.
—The fewer hassles the better. The industry needs to make its music not only accessible, but compatible with any music player. “If music legally and easily can be obtained on any device you want,” said Spotify’s Daniel Ek, “the music industry would be radically bigger than it is today.”
—Music will be streamed rather than downloaded by consumers. “Downloads are stupid,” said Alexander Ljung, founder of Germany’s SoundCloud. “I’d rather stream it from a hard drive that someone else is managing. When consumers press ‘play,’ that file will be managed by someone else.”
—Interactivity will replace passive listening. Fans “do not just want to listen to music, but play with it,” said Domino’s Steve Savoca. “Music-creation technology for the amateur listener” will become commonplace.
They described a music world in which everything has changed and where everything will change yet again. As keynote speaker Smokey Robinson said, “Thicken your skin.”
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Greg Kot: greg@gregkot.com
