The Beginning Of an End Of The Traditional Music Distribution Channels
Posted by Music Blog | Posted in live music | Posted on 16-10-2009
Tags: music, Music Distribution Channels, musician's, The Traditional Music Distribution Channels, Web Music
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The traditional record labels dominated music market is coming to an end. If you have not noticed the latest MP3 download services on Amazon.com, you are missing the beginning of the end of traditional music distribution era.
The big players now are teaming with social networking web sites such as MySpace.com to find new ways to sell music. Why? They cannot stimulate it. people don’t want to pay for CDs anymore. Plus, there’s no need to buy CDs when you may download them for free somewhere on the Web. After a few years of battling, the big labels finally realized the trend is irreversible.
Still, this isn’t new for the independent/unsigned musicians. Independent musicians have long been promoting their recordings via unconventional channels. The entry of the extensive record labels on the Web music communities will have an impact on the independent musicians. But unsigned musicians still have one apparent advantage over the extensive labels – giving out music for free.
Why should you give away free music on the Internet? One evident reason is that individuals don’t want to pay any more. individuals I mean by teenagers and generation Y and beyond. Those are the fanss who don’t understand life in the absence of the Internet. You probably may find a free copy of any given song on the Internet if you dig far enough.
The latest proof to this is that large record labels are teaming up with the social networking websites to encourage and distribute music. This is the marketing niche where independent artists have had since the beginning of the Internet usage. So how much impact will independent artists feel? Big. The social networking communities have been independent artists’ marketing channel, the entry of large players will certainly push the small artists to the back burners. For independent artists to achieve any form of success on the Internet, they have to take radical steps that large labels will not take such as giving away music for free. At this point we don’t know how the record label/social networking music alliance will work out, but one thing for certain is that the music will not be all for free downloading.
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Why exactly does the entrance of major labels into social media mean that independent artists will be pushed to the back burner? I think you misunderstand how social media interaction works.
You can’t look at social media in its entirety as a niche. Rather it’s a series of niche markets in one place (a niche aggregator if you will). An india band’s facebook page is a niche consisting of the indie band and the fans of said band. Such is the same for all other facebook pages. The content/interactions on those pages aren’t directed at individuals who are not fans of the band. Why would say Phoenix attempt to interact with people who aren’t Phoenix fans on the Phoenix facebook page? That doesn’t make sense. The same applies principles apply to twitter and in general social media as a whole. Yes their are exceptions but that’s a different story altogether.
If anything major labels will be less successful on social media because their fan volume is so much higher. It leads to disingenuous interaction which prevents social media from being truely effective. I doubt we’ll be seeing Britney Spear’s actually update her own fan page and reply to wall posts. It would be a full time job on its own with a fan base that big (which is why some intern for her label will be doing it).
Understand social media before you comment on it please.