The Big Debate: Great music vs great business, AI in marketing, Rob Stringer interview and YET ANOTHER superfan platform...
Conrad Withey
Experienced music, media & technology entrepreneur // Founder of MusicBusiness.Pro: growth consultancy ??, leadership community ?? & regular industry articles ?? (subscribe ↙? to get notified)
If you missed it last week I recommend this interview with Sony Music Entertainment’s Rob Stringer in the Financial Times .
Interesting quote: “What excites me is people using music as a fantastic all-you-can-eat buffet to find a new thing.”
My overwhelming feeling is that the role of the majors is shifting from artist building to catalogue and rights management expertise.
The artist building will be done elsewhere.
Can you help answer this? ?? I am genuinely interested in what people think. If you want to be successful in the music business….
How much should it be about the music?
And how much should it be about the business?
? Comment below with your view on the ideal split as a percentage ?
My observation right now, is that if you are in this business mainly because of the music you are probably struggling.
Because you cannot make anyone listen to what you want them to anymore.
Which is a problem.
If your plan was to....
1?? Find artists whose music you loved and thought others would (or should) too
2?? Invested in them
3?? Then developed a roadmap to “get the music out there” ...
I think you have a BIG challenge on your hands.
The business now works in reverse. Which means the model has to change.
A successful record company or publisher now needs to be about being a great business first and foremost.
Maybe you feel like you are already minded that way? Ask yourself if you can answer these questions:
?? What is your TAM?
?? What are your values?
?? What is your 3 year plan?
?? What niche are you nailing?
?? What are your unit economics?
?? What is your value proposition?
? How can you scale sustainably?
?? What is your company purpose?
?? What is your ideal artist persona?
?? What is your cost of client acquisition?
??♀? How are you differentiated from your rivals?
?? What is the average lifetime value of a deal?
?? How are you using data to improve on a daily basis?
?? How are you going to be the best in the world at what you do?
If you can’t answer these questions then your business is going to struggle in the new music industry.
It is HARD out there. And it is going to get HARDER.
Relying on legacy strengths, case studies or success stories from before 2020 or the logo on your office door won’t cut it anymore.
So my sense is the right mix is:
At least 80% great business.
At most 20% great music.
But what do you think?
In The Guardian there was another artist presenting yet another D2F monetisation model.
And again with a vested interest in promoting their pet project.
This time it’s a platform called Supercollector.
I fear all this coverage results in a lot of confused artists.
And the truth is there isn’t one model that will win. They are all valid.
All worth trying.
A modern music career will need to embrace multiple routes to monetisation. And multiple content strategies for different platforms.
Free. Premium. Subscription. Blockchain. Physical. Live. Web3. Metaverse. Limited Edition. Drops. Downloads. Fan club. Exclusive. Branded.
And on, and on.
The era of artist as entrepreneur is well and truly here.
There is solid thinking in the article linked below from the International Data Corporation on how #AI can help label marketing teams.
40% increase in productivity!! ??
With so much industry focus on GenAI’s impact on music creation or IP theft, too many label teams are missing the obvious efficiencies that will be increasingly available to us in the next few years.
The big tip in here for me was this one:
“Prepare your data. Organizations that do not have real-time, clean, governed data sets will not be able to take full advantage of this new generation of marketing technology.”
We are lucky in music to have ready access to oceans of realtime performance data.
But have you built the architecture to access that data directly and reliably to feed into these new tools? Are you AI ready?
PODCAST OF THE WEEK
Check out this Trapital episode on major label brands and whether they mean anything anymore.
Dan Runcie and Justin Hunte discuss the topic which focuses mainly on hiphop but is a debate relevent to every label trying to build their business in the new music industry.
I really loved this quote from Justin:
"I think that there is riches in niches. I don't think that can be disregarded. And if you hit the right notes, create the right magic, then success is just time away."
I would probably go even further and say to build a brand in the modern social x streaming music business you HAVE to nail a niche and become the best in the world at that thing and accept that your brand is B2B NOT B2C any more.
Consumers will not care about your business. They will care about the artist only.
Being personality or legacy driven will not be enough to build a brand that means something.
Don't forget to comment below to keep the conversation going and if you think someone else would get value from The Beat Sheet please share it with that person. Have a great weekend!
Digital Media Consulting
7 个月The audience will win, regardless, and that is as it should be.
Founder of Trapital: insights on music, media, and culture
7 个月Conrad Withey thanks for the shoutout for our podcast episode! Glad you enjoyed it. Much appreciated