There is no formula

I recently watched the documentary Before the Music Dies. The documentary had many insightful comments about the record industry. In particular it focused on how the quarter-by-quarter profit mongering corporations sucked the life from music by caring only about the bottom-line.

With companies like clear channel focusing more on playing music that the masses "won't dislike rather than music the masses might like", music has become stagnate, at least popular music. But welcome the internet and music post-Napster.

Musicians now can produce a high quality album with only a few thousand dollars. They can market their music on myspace and youtube, spread their fame through Facebook, and reap profits on iTunes. This method works well for smaller artists whose music cannot be found on torrents for the most part. And even for the big names whose music is spread across the torrent cloud, they make reasonable profits from legitimate sales on iTunes or rhapsody or amazon.

I'm curious if record labels have decided to raise concert ticket prices to make up for the income they have lost from selling multi-platinum records. It would make sense to try although it might just annoy consumers who will relive their live experiences on youtube.

This documentary shed some light on what's broken with the music industry, or rather what has changed. Record labels can no longer force consumers to listen to what they deem is cool in order to sell more pepsi products. There now exists a meritocracy within music where only the most talented, or by today's terms, most viral musicians survive, e.g., 'Chocolate Rain'. But 'Chocolate Rain' is crap as is most viral music which is why we still need record labels to help consumers filter. But I argue that this is all a record label should do. Filter for talented artists and potentially great music and provide for them a nurturing environment rather than exploiting musicians for the sake of selling an ad.

On the other end, musicians need to write music that matters to them, that they connect with and not worry about catering to the masses in the hopes of making it rich. If by writing for themselves, they are able to connect with 1 or 1 million other persons then they have achieved their goal. Music comes form their heart, as in many of life's passions. You can not calculate it. There is no formula.