Mark Cuban (aka blog maverick), weighs in on music industry problems and proposes the idea of releasing songs in an elongated series the same way a television show season unfolds. He calls it serializing…
Reading last weeks billboard, something interesting popped out at me. The song Low Rider by Flo Rida sold 467,000 units in a single week. There were 27 digital singles that sold more than 100k units in that week. The obvious trend continues that people are ready, willing and able to buy singles of songs they like.
So the question arises, why don’t artists serialize the release of songs ? Why not create a “season” of release of songs, much like the fall TV season and promise fans that Flo Rida is going to release a new single every week or 2 weeks for the next 10 weeks?
Serializing the release of music also allows for the marketing arms to be in constant touch with sales and radio outlets. Rather than having to initiate marketing plans and hope to reinvigorate the interest in an artist, it becomes a digital tour that never ends.
Definitely an interesting solution. I would like to see someone try this.
Now that’s refreshing! The industry needs more ideas like this, if only to further discussion about new business models and/or delivery methods. The album is dead and has been dead for some time. Stuffed shirts at outfits like NARM (2007: The album is here to stay!), the RIAA (let’s sue kids to make up for years of inaction!) and the mega-media monolyths (can’t talk now, we’re golfing!) need to wake up and smell the plastic: burning.
The long-playing album (introduced by Columbia back in 1948), is done. Let it go. What other items in one’s life remain virtually unchanged since 1948? The incandescent lightbulb perhaps? Certainly that may be one of the remaining items, but it’s being phased out. The long-playing album makes about as much sense today as an iron kite on a school playground. Steve Jobs didn’t just introduce a new Mac notebook with paper inside it — so why does the music biz want to stay in the past? It’s not the business itself that wants that, it’s the corporate music-as-commerce types that need to continue padding their stock options and 401ks.
Let’s hope that ideas like this keep coming and that the reinvention of the industry empowers artists - that the new paradigm will be artist-driven - and that it cleans out many of the worthless suits clogging up the pipelines in the industry… with their golf-induced, year ’round tans and chatter about product, units, position, placement and the like. They stopped listening to the customer LONG AGO, and now those chickens are coming home to roost. Boo - frigging - hoo for your collapsing, outdated business model.
Let the artists and the fans move on. Screw the majors. No true music fan ever needed you in the past, and we won’t in the future. Can you say MiniDisc? DAT tape? Cassette? 8-Track, Ringles? You folks are purveyors of shite and always have been. Get a clue and listen to what music consumers are doing with their time and dollars: engage the customer, LISTEN to what they want and FIGURE OUT how to get it to them, even if you have to leave the golf course early 3-4 days in a given week.
And when the customers vote with their dollars - don’t try to tell them that what you’re selling is worth more than they’re willing to pay. It’s the music, stupid, and it’s worth what the market says it’s worth, period. If you don’t like the customer’s vote, then REINVENT yourself, add more VALUE to what you’re selling or come up with a COMPELLING OFFER that entices someone to pay your asking price.
The album concept is the same, tired “Bundle” bullshit that these mega-media types use to push watered-down drivel to unsuspecting consumers: “We’ve got this tiny little gem [a good song]… now let’s try and bundle this tasty piece of meat with a bucket of lips, assholes and other things that people don’t need: cover it with environmentally unsound, useless garbage packaging that in and of itself is typically at least twice as wasteful as the object actually containing the media - and shove it out into the market - embedded with all of our bloated marketing costs,corporate overhead, extended holidays and party conventions, CEO bonuses and the rest… and hope we can get those units scanned for some chart position.”
Certainly this is not true of every album released by the majors, but an overwhelming majority. Armchair quarterbacks in doubt of this phenomenon should plow through the majors’ New Release Books for an entire calendar year (and then go back 20) - or better yet - take a walk through some of the major “Cutout” warehouses around the country, that are packed to the rafters with skid after sky-stacked skid of worthless product that nobody ever wanted and nobody will ever buy.
The majors - specialists in waste - know how to do 2 things well: The Bundle and the Exaltation of the Package as the Product. They’re trying to keep their precious old “bundle” philosophy alive in an industry that is facing the elimination of its holiest of scared cows - the physical package - in much the same way that it keeps perpetuating the bundle (thanks Comcast and Time Warner) on cable television. And why is that? Because they know damn well that most of what they’re pushing is worthless to most people, and given the chance, if people could pick item by item (iTunes), they would likely purchase only a tiny fraction of what these conglomerates offer. It’s the only thing that these people know how to do - and yes - their business model is now failing - as it should. Too much, too little, too late as always.
In 2007 all you could say to these mounting, sweeping changes in the business was Ringles? Come on. What’s next — an LED digital clock embedded in a jewel case? How about a jewel case that plays a Ringle when you open it? Yeah, that ought to fetch another buck or two - and - such things would have nothing to do with the music itself - which would be music to your ears, I’m sure.
Long live music, artists and innovative independent labels that care about the music, the artist and their fans. The industry needs some serious self-examination. Heck, it’s like 15 years overdue. It really needs some mavericks that have a “Says who?” attitude - the type of entrepreneurial attitude that typically permeates young, fast growing companies that are delivering compelling offers to their customers. Hey Old Guard: Take your albums and RETIRE. Go back to the golf course where you belong and get your dumbed-down asses away from the business of selling music. Nobody invited you to the party in the first place (save Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records - he was on the Tap list).