Don't Dismiss Musicians Who Forge Their Own Path
from the subjectivity dept
We recently wrote about Tom Silverman’s interview where, in the course of “predicting” the future of the music business, he took some potshots at services like TuneCore for being just for “hobbyists.” In that article, he basically said that TuneCore users were just “clogging” the system:
80 percent of all records released are just noise — hobbyists. Some companies like TuneCore are betting on the long tail because they get the same $10 whether you sell one copy or 10,000. Who uses Photobucket and Flickr? Not professional photographers — those are hobbyists, and those are the people who are using TuneCore and iTunes to clutter the music environment with crap, so that the artists who really are pretty good have more trouble breaking through than they ever did before.
As I noted in my original post on the interview, I thought Silverman was making a big mistake in dismissing those “hobbyists,” since a bunch of them seemed to be making a decent living — and the numbers were growing. I also found the “crap” comment to be pretty obnoxious. We see that type of comment here all too often. We’ll point to some unique content creator who is doing something impressive, and the response (often from angry industry insiders) is that “yeah, but the content is crap.” It’s a funny sort of reaction. It’s as if these people are so afraid that others with better business models will drive them out of business that they need to pre-emptively mock the quality — even if the content seems to be exactly what a certain market is looking for. There are lots of content creators that we talk about whose content I don’t personally care for. But my personal opinion on the quality of the content is meaningless. It’s a question of personal tastes, and if there’s an audience for the content, then, clearly something’s working right.
I wasn’t the only one who felt that the “cluttering with crap” comment was out of line. TuneCore’s Jeff Price (who has been having quite a back-and-forth with Silverman lately) issued quite the sarcastic apology, while mocking the idea that only Silverman gets to decide what is quality music:
We’re sorry that the fact that people are buying music from TuneCore Artists is stopping people from buying music that Tommy likes. If Tommy could only control what music you get exposed to you would be more inclined to buy his music. It’s actually a brilliant strategy: limit choice, force the releases you want to sell down people’s throats, control what music is exposed by the media outlets (like radio and MTV) and then take all the money from the sales that come in. Oh wait, my mistake, that’s the way it was in the old music industry, and 98% of what the majors labels released failed. I guess limiting choice does not make music sell.
Price also points out that Silverman’s claim that this is “clogging” the market is ridiculous. It’s not like people can’t find what they want. If that’s a problem, it’s a problem of filters, not a problem of too much music. I tend to listen to some fairly obscure music in some specific genres, and sure there are acts in those areas that I don’t think are very good, but it’s pretty easy to quickly figure out who is good and who is not and move on. Claiming that “bad” artists somehow hurt good artists is ridiculous. You hear it all the time in various industries, but it’s the same silly story all over again. More content creators don’t take anything away from good content creators. Good content creators can and do still thrive.
Filed Under: business models, labels, musicians
Companies: tunecore
Comments on “Don't Dismiss Musicians Who Forge Their Own Path”
This comes from a disco douche?
“Silverman co-founded Dance Music Report magazine, which ran from 1978 to 1992, and he co-founded the Dance Music Hall of Fame, which existed from 2003 to 2005.”
Tom Silverman has no ability to judge what is crap and what is good.
Re: This comes from a disco douche?
This just in: Greg Skinner’s taste has no bearing on what’s good or not. The fact that *you* don’t like a genre means exactly zip.
Mind you, if he couldn’t get something focussed on “dance music” to live through the early rave era and house music boom of the early 90s, he was clearly focussing on something unpopular.
Price is bitter
Obviously the music industry is making a ton of money through that plan that Price critiques, as has been discussed on this blog frequently. Only problem is that the artists never see any money!
Maybe you’ve covered this elsewhere, but what sort of genres do you listen too, Mike?
And maybe I’ll check out Tunecore…
Re: Price is bitter
“Maybe you’ve covered this elsewhere, but what sort of genres do you listen too, Mike?”
Socialist dogs don’t listen to music, only NPR 😉
if there are 10 restaurants in town and over night you open 90 more, guess what: you are clogging up the market, or a better term is that you are diluting it.
it is unlikely that there is enough business to support all the new shops, but since most of them are run by people who don’t have to worry about actually making a living from running a restaurant (they are just food hobbyists, they have other day jobs), all it ends up doing is hurting the heck out of the original 10.
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…wow, you’re actually suggesting that more people making more music is BAD for our music culture?
How do you feel about, oh I don’t know, population control and eugenics? Do the same theories apply?
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it is unlikely that there is enough business to support all the new shops, but since most of them are run by people who don’t have to worry about actually making a living from running a restaurant (they are just food hobbyists, they have other day jobs), all it ends up doing is hurting the heck out of the original 10.
And so what? It’s called COMPETITION and it’s a fact of doing business.
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That makes perfect sense. /sarc
If there’s not enough business to support 100 restaurants, then a bunch of them are going out of business. And you know who goes out of business first? The places that nobody likes.
(you smegging ignoramus)
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Rated comment as “funny” for being the third dumbest analogy I’ve ever seen on the internet.
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if there are 10 restaurants in town and over night you open 90 more, guess what: you are clogging up the market, or a better term is that you are diluting it.
Odd that you would suggest this, as someone who claims to be defending musicians. Apparently you only meant that you defend major label musicians.
Btw, this also contradicts your previous statements that only musicians on major record labels could get known, doesn’t it?
it is unlikely that there is enough business to support all the new shops, but since most of them are run by people who don’t have to worry about actually making a living from running a restaurant (they are just food hobbyists, they have other day jobs), all it ends up doing is hurting the heck out of the original 10.
Your general lack of understanding of basic market mechanisms — despite being taught them on this very site multiple times — continues to impress and amaze all onlookers.
Competition doesn’t harm “the original 10” if they’re good. You’re assuming, falsely, that there is no differentiation between all the restaurants. The good ones still rise to the top.
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mike, as always, your comments reflect a lack of understanding of the real world of business. there is a huge difference between what is taught in the classroom and what actually happens in the field.
even if the 90 upstart places go broke (and as i said, they arent being run for profit, just for fun), during the time they are open they will attract business. as the pool of customers isnt increasing, that implied naturally less business for each of the original 10.
you know the theory, a new place opens near your house / work / school, and you decide to check it out at least once. now imagine that, but with 89 other new places open right after. you could spend a long time checking out new places and never make it back to your “usual” (one of the original 10).
there is no enough market to support 100 places, but since some of the new ones never have to make a real profit to exist (its just a hobby, they have day jobs), it just creates noise in the market place.
even if the original 10 are the best, people will still sample many of the new places, and newcomers to the area will sample randomly. so there is no way to say that all these new choices are not disruptive.
you know that, it’s basic.
Re: Re: Re: The cry of the mortally injured Republican.
More people are entering the market and you can’t compete.
Cry me a f*cking river. Boo! Hoo!
If you can’t handle a little competition from some “hobbyists” then you should pack it in and become a corporate employee somewhere. The market is better off if a little social Darwinism is applied to you.
Business is not for whiny sissies.
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I really hope you don’t take the time to reply to this. This is so riddled with errors it’s stunning that somebody would even bother to post it. Tell me what sort of music you listen to instead, or do I have to buy the Techdirt “mike comes to speak” package?
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What is the definition of “best?” Is it lower prices? Better quality? If the ten incumbents cannot compete with 100 “hobbyists” then the ten incumbents aren’t the best because customers prefer the the other 90 over the top ten. Yes, allowing competition maybe disruptive to the top ten but it is not the job of government to serve the top ten percent with legislative subsidies (by top ten I mean the top ten wealthiest). The market will serve whatever people want and the people will decide what’s best, not you.
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Also, there are some differences between restaurants and music. With restaurants I expect regulatory bodies to ensure the food I eat is safe. Yes, this costs money but I have no problems with that. But listening to a song I don’t like isn’t going to kill me.
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If you have a business that cannot compete with your competition, your business SHOULD die. Crying ‘that’s unfair’ when someone can come in and undercut your prices or thin out your customer base is the opposite of a free market and over time counter-productive.
If your restaurant cannot compete with ‘hobbyists’, perhaps you do not have a very good restaurant. Your options for when competition appear are to quit, or to make your business so much better that the competition cannot compete. If someone’s business model is that they are going to supplement their restaurant with other income so they can undercut your prices and handle a thinner customer base and still survive – they have a better business model than you.
Have you ever owned a business? Did you cry foul when there was new competition that started after you? Did your competition cry foul when your business started? Your example said there were 10 and then 90 opened. What if it was just one more? What percentage is suddenly ‘not fair’?
You are whining rather than innovating.
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lcAC – (hence forth named L-CAC) “if there are 10 restaurants in town and over night you open 90 more, guess what: you are clogging up the market, or a better term is that you are diluting it.”
Mike – “Odd that you would suggest this, as someone who claims to be defending musicians. Apparently you only meant that you defend major label musicians.
Your general lack of understanding of basic market mechanisms
Competition doesn’t harm “the original 10″ if they’re good. You’re assuming, falsely, that there is no differentiation between all the restaurants. The good ones still rise to the top.”
The term “dilution” in a business sense means – “that the current investors do not receive more, they own a smaller percentage of the market share, until their investments are worth less”
His use of the term “Dilution” actually translates from label speak to the word “competition”. Which the labels have never, in their one hundred year history, had. Everything the labels are doing is in attempt to stop the tides of change from happening.
Now on to my point. L-CAC you need to realize over the next 10 years your business will come under greater and greater competition. These Hacks, these amateurs, these people you can not control, these people that hate you, they will deal with you less and less over time. They will become a greater and greater segment of the population slowly eroding everything you have worked for your entire life, until there is nothing left of the empire you seem to believe in. When that happens I will not pity you, I will not feel sorry for you, I will go to the UK, walk halfway across Abbey road with three of my friends and take a piss in your memory.
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one day you will understand i am not in the music business. aware of it, yes. in it, no. if you cant get the basics right, i worry for the rest of your rant.
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“one day you will understand i am not in the music business. aware of it, yes. in it, no. if you cant get the basics right, i worry for the rest of your rant.”
L-CAC, if you are not in the music busines, why are you so keen on shooting down the opinions expressed here? I find your consistancy lacking in many respects. Thats not a haze, a dis, an insult, just an observation. You seem to make contradictory statements, alot like me as I analyze things in greater and greater depth and change my opinion on specific subjects. If you want have Mike or one of the other TechDirt types give you my e-mail address and we can chat.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
shooting the opinions expressed here down isnt the goal, it is just that often, the opinions expressed here are a little lacking in real world connection. it is incredibly funny to watch mike tear into the dinosaur media companies, and then not watch to discuss his netflix account (which feeds the dinosaurs). there is plenty of silly circular logic, boot strapping, and most recently a series of either left out information or ignored facts.
what is most interesting is getting someone like yourself to stop swallowing the pap even for a second, and getting to actually think about things. rather than excepting the grand generalities and vaporous “it appears that” statements (which later get bootstrapped into “we have already shown that”), you are thinking and that is good. you may not agree with me, but at least you are thinking before choosing team mike.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
I’m thinking you’re a moron.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
it appears that it has been shown.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
“the opinions expressed here are a little lacking in real world connection.”
Agreed, alot of what is here is speculation and opinion.
“it is incredibly funny to watch mike tear into the dinosaur media companies, and then not watch to discuss his netflix account (which feeds the dinosaurs).”
On this I need to disagree. I purchase DVD’s when they drop to the 5=8 dollar range, I use various online pay and TV Network sites to watch movies and TV shows. It fits into the convenience category of what is being debated here on techdirt. It doesn’t contradict what I see happening, serious competition for peoples “LIMITED” time, from groups in the same fields (news, music, video) and outside sources (games, e-mail, blogs, social media, SMS-texting, photography, phone, wiki’s, education, random interests, etc).
“is plenty of silly circular logic, boot strapping, and most recently a series of either left out information or ignored facts.”
Circular logic, not so much, rationalization, and opinion yes. You want circular logic go for Thomas Aquinas
your eyes will bleed. Using a predetermined opinion to come to a conclusion, we all do that, including you. The ignored facts we have both pointed his missing info in the past.
“what is most interesting is getting someone like yourself to stop swallowing the pap even for a second, and getting to actually think about things. rather than excepting the grand generalities and vaporous “it appears that” statements (which later get bootstrapped into “we have already shown that”), you are thinking and that is good”
LOL … you are to funny. For me this is about determining the future of the media creation and distribution business and profiting from its future failures, and/or successes. Its a game that makes me money….
Comcast NBCU merger. GE determined that NBCU would start hemoraging money in 5 years. It forced the profitability higher short term in order to sell the asset (NBCU) off. Comcast being a monopoly and not a true competative business only thinks and does yearly and quarterly analysis of acquisitions. They bought the whole synergy thing, hook line and sinker. You have got to love investment bankers.
So you are correct again. I am thinking.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
the point is i am glad you are thinking. if you take the time to read my comments and consider them, that is more than enough. it means you have considered the other side or a different way of looking at things. there are many commentators here who are so fast to mikes defence, without having considered the other side even for a second. their logic often is “mike didnt say that, you must be wrong”.
“For me this is about determining the future of the media creation and distribution business and profiting from its future failures, and/or successes. Its a game that makes me money…. “
you see, this is another area i tend to disagree with mike on. i really think mike is in the business of being a guru. that means that, like many in his position, he watches the seas carefully and tries to jump in front of waves and ‘own’ them. notice the couple of weeks of posts about cloud computing, a webinar, and then nothing. he is trying to find ways to make money in this manner. i dont begrudge him a living, i just find it funny when he objects to this sort of portrayal.
“On this I need to disagree. I purchase DVD’s when they drop to the 5=8 dollar range, I use various online pay and TV Network sites to watch movies and TV shows.” – in the end, if you dislike the overall system, dont feed it. hollywood has tiers it will sell at, windows that open and close over the life of a movie. as a netflix renter or a discount bin dvd buyer, you are part of the process. you are expected, predicted, and planned for. what looks like crumbs to you is actually the icing on the cake for them.
my only point in that area is that if mike truly thinks the systems we have out there right now are dinosaurs, doomed to fail middlemen crammed systems, then why is he renting movies from what is effectively another middleman company (netflix)? its like saying drugs are bad, and only smoking cheap weed. the results are the same.
glad you are thinking, keep up the good work. maybe you can talk to pault about it.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
” i really think mike is in the business of being a guru.”
Funny I thought I was the guru, predicting with in 3 months when each country will fall to the barbarian masses of them infringers and stealers. 🙂
“in the end, if you dislike the overall system, dont feed it.”
As I said before I dont give a rats a$$ about content providers, I neither like, nor dislike them. I do however have a concern, that on their way down they are going to trample on civil liberties and invalidate the copyright clause.
Which is why I am doing everything I can to find ways to accelerate their failure. Things like. Pointing out the the “you are a criminal tax”, “three strikes”, “packet monitoring by ISPs”, and some of what the collection societies do seem to be illegal under EU law. Creating standards for distributed media and content databases. Helping find all the music record labels have given away as promotional music, this one makes me smile like a cheshire cat, when published the record labels are damned no matter what they do. Putting together a creative commons juke box distro of linux for bars, restaraunts, hair dressers, etc. Putting a distributed full media (music, video, CGI) editting, sharing, and databasing distro of linux (its recording and TV studio in a box).
My friends and I started doing this to make money and it turned into a game. We have a database of several hundred things to do, to legally screw with the content creators. You are assigned one task, and you get to choose one task. I am currently in fourth place out of a dozen or so people.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
my only point in that area is that if mike truly thinks the systems we have out there right now are dinosaurs, doomed to fail middlemen crammed systems, then why is he renting movies from what is effectively another middleman company (netflix)? its like saying drugs are bad, and only smoking cheap weed. the results are the same.
Heh. I’ve already answered this multiple times, but here we go again.
(1) I am not, and have never been, a customer of Netflix.
(2) I am, and have always been, a fan of movies and music and have no problem paying for them and hoping they succeed.
(3) None of that changes the fact that I can and will point out when they’re betting on bad business models.
(4) Even though I’m not a customer of Netflix, I don’t have a problem with their business model, and never said that they are a dinosaur at all.
(5) Telling the movie and music industry how they can do better doesn’t mean that I think they are doomed. It means the exact opposite.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
“shooting the opinions expressed here down isnt the goal, it is just that often, the opinions expressed here are a little lacking in real world connection”
It is interesting, however, that you say this but rarely – if ever – actually cite any basis for your own claims. It’s also interesting that in the long term, many of the opinions here (lawsuits will not kill P2P, attaching DRM to music is bad for business, etc.) have been proven 100% correct despite naysayers and industry shills like yourself.
“it is incredibly funny to watch mike tear into the dinosaur media companies, and then not watch to discuss his netflix account (which feeds the dinosaurs)”
It is equally funny to watch an idiot continually tear into Mike for this without realising:
1. Supporting Netflix IS supporting an alternative industry that’s based on pro-consumer business models (just not all the way back to production at the moment). Blockbuster – the previous and consumer-unfriendly incumbent – is failing for a reason.
2. This kind of statement is abject hypocrisy for somebody who continually complains about a free website but, in doing so, gives that same site hits to generate ad and sponsor revenue.
Re: Better Analogy
There are three restaurants in town – IHOP, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut. These three have controlled all the food in town for a long time. They have grown so rich and powerful that they control the city council, which has passed laws making it impossible for anyone else to sell pancakes, burgers, or pizza, or open any kind of restaurant in town. So if people want to eat out, they are limited to the bland, limited offerings of these places.
Then one day, someone comes up with a way that new technology can help deliver food to people in a new kind of way: Taco trucks! Taco trucks are allowed under the rules because they aren’t restaurants; Taco trucks can bring food to people cheaply and conveniently; People can run their own taco trucks. Pretty soon all kinds of trucks appear – Korean taco trucks, sushi trucks, quiche trucks. A whole lot of food trucks all over town. Some are good. Some aren’t. Some have only a few customers. Some have a lot of customers. Some make good money. Some don’t, and just do it as a hobby to serve their faithful cutomers. Some go out of business. Some people still like the old restaurants, but maybe not enough for them to all stay in business. McDonald’s sees burger sales dropping at lunch time, so they start a campaign trying to convince people that the trucks are immoral and unsafe. They try to get the city council to outlaw all vehicles. Sales drop so much that they close down.
IHOP adds quiche to the menu, cuts staff, and manages to survive with lower patronage.
Beer is not outlawed, so Pizza Hut continues to get by.
Everybody gets food they like, and the only thing that’s hurt is the formerly guaranteed profits of the legacy restaurant corporations.
Re: Re: Better Analogy
* tips hat to Thomas *
Very good analogy.
Re: Re: Better Analogy
http://californiatacotrucks.com/blog/
Re: Re: Re: Better Analogy
Also see
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/06/taco-trucks-vs-restaurant-cartel.html
On finding music. two words:
Sound Cloud.
Or rather: soundcloud.com
; P
“Who uses Photobucket and Flickr? Not professional photographers”
That’s an incredibly uninformed comment. Lots of professional photographers use those sites. All they do is store images. It’s an easy and simple way to promote yourself. I don’t even understand what the point of saying that is. It’s baffling.
The internet has been, and probably always will be, a large percentage of “crap” (to borrow from Silverman) with a relatively small percentage of sites that claim the lion’s share of actual traffic. That’s why there was such demand for companies like Yahoo! and Google to allow us to filter out the “crap”. I could only imagine what would have happened if Silverman made it into the web search business…
——
You searched for “techdirt copyright gone wrong”.
SilvermanSearch.com has turned up 0 results:
You did not search for anything Tom Silverman can profit from. Please try your search again.
——
Music, movies, games, and books have their quality assigned subjectively by each consumer, just as with websites. What we need is ten times the amount of content coupled with neutral filtering and previewing so people can find exactly what they want. Even if individual producers hold a relatively small market, it’s still very possible to carve out a living when they have shed the exorbitant costs associated with the traditional industry.
These people who want to control what is released so they can push their “winner” are perverting the free market. They use it as a shield to justify their own existence and then try to take away their opponent’s shield because “competition is hard”. How is it a free market if the likes of Tom Silverman are behind the scenes pulling all the strings and shutting out most of the talent from ever being produced?
“Price also points out that Silverman’s claim that this is “clogging” the market is ridiculous.”
The purpose of a “market” isn’t so that you can make money. The purpose is to serve consumers. It maybe true that a “clogged” market makes it more difficult to channel money to a central point but that’s not the purpose of a market.
“Claiming that “bad” artists somehow hurt good artists is ridiculous.”
It’s condescending, as if only you know what constitutes a good artist and are more capable of figuring it out than the market.
More evidence that this isn’t about the artist, it’s about you and your opinion.
Re: Re:
and seriously, if you think that the bad artists clutter out the good artists why don’t you help the good artists out and do something about it. Search for them and when you find them start a website and list them. If the market thinks you have good taste in music they will naturally look to your website to find good artists. Start your own search engine and filter out the bad artists. People will appreciate your search engine if it’s good. Otherwise shut up and don’t complain. and don’t go to legislators either.
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we would love to, but we cant find them for all the crap out there. you know, the spammers, the jammers, the people paying off perez hilton to get nice comments on his blog, making up fake reviews, pushing up views on their youtube videos even when nobody is really watching, and so on.
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The recording industry is despicable!
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Strange, I have absolutely no problem finding good artists, and most of the ones I listen to have not been anywhere near MTV, TV karaoke contests, mainstream radio or a celebrity blog…
Sounds like you need to update your searching methods.
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“we would love to, but we cant find them for all the crap out there.”
and you think the government, with a bunch of bureaucratic laws, can do better? If it’s so impossible then why should I believe the RIAA or the govt can do it? On the one hand you claim that the RIAA’s can find good artists, on the other hand you claim that finding good artists is impossible. Which is it?
It’s not like getting rid of the Internet will suddenly eliminate the plethora of people who want to create art and music. They always existed, it’s just that a selection process chose a few to succeed. If the RIAA can’t competently choose the best artists now I see no reason to think they cold have done a better job back then.
If something that is successfully making money is actually crap then there must be something very right about how it’s being sold to profit.
Funny Thing....
… about the “crap” comment – I think that much of what the so-called “pros” produce is utter crap; highly derivative and cliché ridden, particularly movies, but definitely music too (and don’t even get me started about country music in that regard).
So, I look forward to seeing and hearing what the “hobbyists” come up with, cuz often times, it is from a totally fresh perspective.
Re: Funny Thing....
“I look forward to seeing and hearing what the “hobbyists” come up with, cuz often times, it is from a totally fresh perspective.”
The other amusing thing is that *every* professional musician started off as a “hobbyist”. The only difference between acts today and say, The Beatles, is their Hamburg and Cavern Club days are online for everybody to see. Instead of backstreet bars in obscure locations, everybody’s in the same place.
That says nothing about the potential for such acts nor about the quality of the music itself.
One man’s crap is another man’s treasure. Not the kind of crap you flush down the toilet 🙂
hats, sunglasses, bikinis, watch,t-shirts, belts and jeans 4BIZ
Heh. Spambot is more on-topic than most AC’s ..
Hobbyists are the future
All this talk of restaurants reminds me that i know of a restaurant due to open soon where no one will get paid – all 50 staff are doing it for fun. But anyway, what i wanted to say was that i am very bored of ‘Professionals’. Nowadays is just seems to mean: someone who knows how to avoid blame in that field.
hobbyists do it because they really want to, a professional would do it for anyone.
Give me a hobbyist anyday.
And thats what the internet is about – giving us the tools that only the professionals used to have.