The end of the album, the rise of NASCAR.

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The end of the album, the rise of NASCAR.

Post by willhouk » Wed Oct 12, 2011 12:05 pm

There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about the state of the music industry in regard to selling/stealing music. It's tough for artists and studio owners in the age of iTunes and digital music.

I have been thinking about where this is all leading and I had this thought. I wonder if 10 years from now most musicians will make money not by selling songs and albums, but rather through ad sponsorship. Think about the song by Trane "Hey Soul Sister." I don't have the numbers on this, but I would think they made more money from that song appearing in commercials than the did from record sales. That song has been all over the place the last few months. Since most young people steal music and don't buy it, will this force artists to look to other sources for revenue, and will that source be selling their songs to ad firms for commercialization?

Now, is this is positive or negative thing? That's a whole other topic, but I wonder if this is where the music industry is heading. Will artists look like NASCAR racers with ads plastered all over their stage as they play shows? Will album covers be slathered with ads, and artists web sites be pop-up havens? I don't know but it's an interesting idea I think.
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Post by fossiltooth » Wed Oct 12, 2011 12:33 pm

It already works that way to some degree. Maybe moreso in a lot of other countries. Maybe ask Joel about it? I could be mistaken, but I've heard they have even more of it in South America than we do here - Sneaker companies sponsoring bands, that kind of thing.

Of course there's always been a fair amount of that in the States, too. For a while in the 90s you could barely open a CD without reading about what kind of picks, strings, and sticks musicians were using. And marketers have always gone to great lengths and expense to get their clothes and logos onto celebrity musicians. That's not even mentioning straight-up multimillion-dollar commercial deals like Britney Spears or Michael Jackson sponsoring Pepsi, or comparatively smaller licensing deals like the ones from Apple.

I think it's always been there, and it will ramp up and ramp down in popularity as culture and economics inevitably shift one way or the other. I haven't seen any evidence that suggests we're in (or headed to) a phase where this is more rampant than usual. But if you see any signs, let us know!

On a personal level, I'm not the biggest fan of bald-faced commercialism in music - But that's just one man's opinion. For what it's worth, I'm sure this kind of sponsorship has been a real benefit in some people's lives.
Last edited by fossiltooth on Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: The end of the album, the rise of NASCAR.

Post by JGriffin » Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:15 pm

willhouk wrote: I wonder if 10 years from now most musicians will make money not by selling songs and albums, but rather through ad sponsorship.
In 10 years? It's happening now.
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Post by Gregg Juke » Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:56 pm

>>>>It already works that way to some degree.<<<<

The unfortunate truth is that things are significantly that way now, and have been for quite some time (at least since Sonny Boy Williamson, King Biscuit Flower, and BB King doing a "Pepticon" jingle).

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Post by joelpatterson » Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:10 am

Didn't I see Robert Plant do a Viagra commercial? Or was that some feverish dream?
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Post by RodC » Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:13 am

As an example, check out the Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt show episodes on Netflix. They left all the comericials in. These are from the late '50s and early '60s.

Most ppl are use to seeing the old clips on YouTube and everything is stripped out except the music.

The amount of time spent on ads would prob loose most of today's audience.
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Post by willhouk » Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:31 am

I know that this has been happening for some time now at various degrees. Especially in the world of hip hop. That genre seems ready made for this sort of commercialism.

You guys probably know more about this then I do. Would you say a majority of musicians at this point in history make more money from commercials than record sales/touring? It doesn't seem that way to me from the bands I know, but I could be wrong.

What I am suggesting is that the influx of technology will spur a fundamental systemic change in the recording industry.
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Post by chris harris » Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:04 pm

willhouk wrote:Would you say a majority of musicians at this point in history make more money from commercials than record sales/touring? It doesn't seem that way to me from the bands I know, but I could be wrong.
A majority of musicians don't make any money at all from their music. ;)
willhouk wrote:What I am suggesting is that the influx of technology will spur a fundamental systemic change in the recording industry.
I think that this, too, has already happened. The way that artists earn income has already been dramatically changed because of recent technology.

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Post by willhouk » Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:39 am

Well, I have a hard time believing that right now the majority of professional musicians make more money from commercial advertisements than record sales/touring/merch. But I could be wrong.
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Post by Gregg Juke » Mon Oct 17, 2011 11:17 am

Where do you think the concept of the new "360" deals came from?
Money, and lots more of it, that the big labels couldn't get their mitts on.
TV, movies, endorsements, product placement, etc., etc.

The traditional realm of "management" and artist. Now the record companies want not only a piece, but the whole pie.

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Post by DrummerMan » Mon Oct 17, 2011 2:45 pm

I have no idea of percentages, but there is a huge push and has been for a while by a shitload of bands to get their music placed into Ads and TV shows. This is especially true, I believe, with Mid-level artists who are somewhat well known and "hip" sounding but don't necessarily command as astronomical licensing fees as, say, TV On The Radio might (and are therefor somewhat affordable to the producers) but see the possibility of making thousands of dollars off of 20 seconds of music placed into an episode of House as a worthwhile, somewhat attainable and tempting goal. Since the current trend there is Pre-existing music over original score (not all the time obviously, but it seems the majority of the time in the big money making areas: prime-time network TV and big Ad campaigns), it was an obvious bandwagon to jump on. It's not quite the same as being "sponsored" by a product, unless your group is hired to write a bunch of pop hits about Campbells Chicken Soup or something, but what I think has happened is that because it's one of the potentially best ways to make money with your music, people are writing more and more music with that goal in mind (consciously or not). I feel like a lot of the new music I hear has this incessant need to be SOOOOOO epic and soundtrack-of-your-life worthy, including all the dynamic breaks and breakdowns and buildups which are useful in getting primetime viewers more vested in the drama of a scene (don't get me wrong, all those things can make for great music as well). I can tell you that there ARE formulas in place for this shit (having been asked to follow them many times). Some bands pull it off, some make it sound really good, and some are just passable enough that if you're not really paying attention you don't notice just how you're being manipulated.

I don't even know if I really have a point here, definitely don't feel like I'm in a position to judge whether or not trying to make music that'll sell Volkswagons is any worse or better than how bands have sold themselves (or been sold by their labels) for decades and decades. Maybe it just happens to be the current state of technology and media that we're dealing with.
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Post by willhouk » Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:20 am

Gregg Juke, I do not know what a 360 deal is. Could you explain that a little more.

Drummerman, thanks for your reply. This is the sort of thing I was aiming to talk about. That is a great insight about bands working with TV shows and what not. I honestly don't know the percentages of how much money is made this way either, but I can see a shift in that direction.

Does anyone know if there are any books/articles/blogs that discuss the factual side of this issue? What I mean by factual side is the actual numbers of where people make money. This is an interesting topic, I can't seem to find any solid info on it.
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Post by chris harris » Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:31 am

The 360 deal just means that the labels want a piece of EVERYTHING. Touring, merch, licensing, etc. EVERYTHING. And, it came about because there is much more money to be made from those other things, than there is from selling records.

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Post by Gregg Juke » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:10 am

What Chris said above. As far as books or articles, they are out there, but it is of course difficult to get accurate dollar information. But if you generally "follow the money," you will see where things have been and where they are going. 360 deals came about as a "label land-grab" when they realized how much they were missing, and the trend towards licensing deals for TV/film/advertising for indie and small label bands has been steady and growing for about a decade (there have always been licensing deals and synch rights, of course; it's just that now more and more bands are vying for those deals as opposed to the traditional major label brass ring).

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Post by fossiltooth » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:55 am

willhouk wrote: Does anyone know if there are any books/articles/blogs that discuss the factual side of this issue? What I mean by factual side is the actual numbers of where people make money. This is an interesting topic, I can't seem to find any solid info on it.
Donald Passman's book used to be the go-to resource for this kind of stuff. It's still a great primer in the basics of contract law, but some of the figures and percentages are a little outdated. It focuses on label deals, so it might not be a lot of use to self-released artists.

For a detail of how the percentages of raw sales break down, you may still see an old chart near the top of the search results. It's terribly out-of-date at least as far as streaming revenue is concerned. I wrote about it a little bit in a recent article on how much musicians really earn on Spotify.

One of our readers wrote in to tell us he was inspired to create a new, updated infographic about how much musicians earn through a variety of mediums. The figures are in pounds rather than dollars, and the numbers might not be 100% perfect - but it's a big step in the right direction.

When we look at these charts, it's important to remember that payment from streaming media is rapidly changing, and it's trending upwards, which is a good thing. The figures on physical media and conventional downloads are pretty spot on though, and they're changing much less rapidly. Maybe I should research an article about this stuff too! It's always good to have a real understanding of the options.

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