Trent Reznor did write a post on what to do to sell music today with the net, the clouds and all.
“Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.”
I’m glad I realized that years ago. That’s why I have always been giving my music on high quality compressed files with a rss feed (the so called podcast system). If I search my music on the net, a lot of Chinese websites appear and are giving my music away too. Maybe they get some money from ads but I’m happy to see dozens, hundreds of download of MY stuff.
He continues and this is where it gets interesting:
“Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan.”
Beastie Boys do that with the help of Topspin. Vinyls, digipack CDs, t-shirts you name it.
But I always find that it lacks something, from a consumer and technology point of view: multichannel. Listening to music when it blasts from the four corner of your room is amazing, no question about that. I’m doing it since years now and everytime I get back to plain old school stereo, it’s just sad. I know I do sound and music and for a lot o people it’s not worth it, as HD video is not really impressive for me. But still very enjoyable. Same thing!
So why bands and music producers around the world are not playing this high-end card, releasing multichannel remixed albums (not on physical support of course, because it’s really expensive whether it’s DVD-A or SACD)? Why not trying to break through with innovation and technology? A lot of artists in history did just that, technology has made some albums timeless: Pink Floyd, MJ, The Beatles, Genesis, Herbie Hancock etc all used that to go further and make money. Better sound, sounds you have never heard before, not just more convenient or gimmicky stuff like we do today (mp3s, ringtones, autotune).
I’m only listening to stereo files converted to 6 channels dolby digital on-the-fly (thanks Auzentech) and yet it’s way better than 2 channels. So immersive. So 3D. So not FLAT.
Opportunities to go further in sound and audio experience are tremendous! While the video industry pushes hard to have consumers going HD or even UHD, in the audio industry it’s simply a mess, thanks to patents (yeah Dolby/DTS I’m looking at you) and music labels totally deaf to what is going on. They can’t learn: the biggest success ever in the AudioVideo industry is the DVD Video, when everybody was behind ONE format. DVD Audio vs SACD? Everybody lose. HD-DVD vs BR? Everybody lose. The DVD Video is the less DRM’ed of them all and guess what? It’s the most successful physical support ever. I don’t expect those industries to understand the value of multichannel sound files, offering some real standards (speakers connection, file format) and how it’s the future of music.
I know, the AudioVideo hardware industry doesn’t want to go physical support-less because it would kill a big eco-system of retailers, players sellers, distribution deals etc. As a consumer/producer, I totally don’t care, I want what is possible today. Now.
Today you have some devices letting you to stream music around your house, we experience multichannel audio since Fantasia in 1940 (!!), we have cheap multichannel sound cards and speakers systems, why bands are still selling digital download of 2channels MP3s saying it’s top-notch and complaining about piracy? Get consumers something really better that what you find on p2p, push them to get legal by using innovation! In the digital format there’s more than just mp3s or FLACs files.
People doing music should think about getting noticed and expand their future. As respectful as I am for Vinyl junkies, it’s not going anywhere in this massive digital world and it’s not affordable for artists beginning their career when multichannel audio is possible with a little budget, even if it’s a lot of work (3 times more speakers). We only need more standards and less bullshit. In the audio world it’s a curse. A very slow one.
Suuuurrrrrrouuuuuund