From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2015 #48 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe:mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Website: http://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Monday, June 1 2015 Volume 2015 : Number 048 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Financial Times: How to succeed in the music industry njc ["Susan E. McNa] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2015 21:51:00 +0000 From: "Susan E. McNamara" Subject: Financial Times: How to succeed in the music industry njc I read this UK article today and thought it might be interesting to share here b& I know the topic of how musicianbs make money these days is not only a topic Joni has brought up, but many people on the list have discussed. There is one Joni reference here though, the illustration on the article is called Snakes & Ladders!!! Click the tiny URL link below to see the picture! This is long, sorry to clog up the works. May 29, 2015 5:32 pm How to succeed in the music industry Despite a shrinking market and slumping sales, there are more pop artists than ever http://tinyurl.com/po79r6s Snakes & ladders illustrationB)James Fryer Every day they cascade in packages, thump-thump-thump, through my letterbox, five or six at once. More arrive in my email inbox as downloads or digital streams. This past week I have had more than 30 to listen to: it would have taken me 24 hours to do so in full. So many albums, so little time. As a pop critic, I am baffled by the quantity of new music I am sent. Surely such fecundity reflects the busy workings of a healthy market. But isnbt the music industry meant to be in crisis? Since I began writing about pop 17 years ago, recorded music sales have slumped. In 2000 they totalled $26bn globally; last year they were $15bn. A declining economic sector usually results in a shrinking workforce. But musicians march to the beat of a different drum. Despite the travails facing the business, their numbers keep growing. In 2001 the UKbs annual Labour Market survey reported 25,000 musicians in full- and part-time employment. Last year there were 41,000. PRS for Music, which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters, reports a similar trend. Five years ago it had 70,000 members. Last month the figure was 112,000. The 100,000th PRS member, joining in 2013, was Nicholas Rognli-Olsen Noble, frontman for a Sheffield band called The Gentlemen. I track Noble down to the Norwegian town of Eidsvoll, where he now lives. Things havenbt quite worked out as hoped for The Gentlemen. Formed in 2005, with roots in Christian music, they play melodically punchy indie-rock with arena-ready choruses (untested, alas, in such a setting). They sold 10,000 copies of their first album Smile Back at Me, and supported fellow Sheffield-ite Jarvis Cocker and soft-rock chart toppers the Feeling at gigs. But the label to which they signed, the Stereo Tree, folded in 2009, leaving The Gentlemen to go it alone. bWe were slightly naive in thinking, bGreat, we can do whatever we want nowb,b Noble, now 30, recalls. bBut we couldnbt. The whole network the record label came with was very valuable, and that sort of went away. So whilst we still had a fan base, reaching them was a lot harder than we understood. It became a sort of cottage industry and our career lost a lot of momentB-um as a result.b Noble and his three bandmates soldiered on, releasing albums up to 2013bs Departures. His father Keith was a songwriter too, and in the 1960s had been a member of the Screaming Abdabs, the band that went on to become Pink Floyd. bHe says that back then, if you had a guitar and long hair, youbd get a record deal,b says the younger Noble. Despite the publicity resulting from their frontman being the 100,000th PRS member, The Gentlemen have remained unsigned. They spent around four years working full-time on the band but, latterly, had to take casual jobs in order to support it. The band are still together b theybre playing a Christian music festival in Slovakia next week b but are no longer making new music. In 2014, according to the Official Charts Company, 47,751 albums were sold for the first time. The comparable figure in 1994 was 11,654. The quantity of recordings has multiplied b and so too have listening figures. Although 1m-selling albums are in danger of extinction, the rise of music-streaming services such as Spotify has introduced a whole new order of superlatives. Ed Sheeran, for instance, was Spotifybs most-streamed act in 2014 with more than 860m listens, while his album X was streamed 430m times. Thatbs almost the equivalent of the populations of the US and Mexico added together. At the annual Ivor Novello songwriting awards in London this month, the host, veteran radio DJ Paul Gambaccini, joked that Sheeranbs streaming success would have earned the Suffolk singer-songwriter less than when he was a busker. The great and the good of the UK music industry, gathered at a Park Lane hotel, laughed bitterly into their ChC"teauneuf du Pape. It is an industry tenet that tech companies are vampires draining money from musicbs creators. Yet technology has also transformed the creation of music by dramatically lowering recording and distribution costs. Sheeran is among those to have profited. In the days before he signed a record deal, he self-released his music as extended-plays (EPs), having recorded it in a professional studio costing B#500 a day with a producer and engineer. Not only is that cheaper than in the past, but improved equipment reduces the time taken by recording sessions: two days in the case of Sheeranbs five- or six-track EPs. He then distributed his songs on the internet, the cheapest, most powerful self-promotional tool in history. Sheeranbs do-it-yourself efforts, including a relentless schedule under which he played as many as 300 gigs in a year, led to his first hit with bThe A Teamb in 2011. Only then did he sign a deal with Atlantic Records, a self-made success, not one talent-scouted by the label. But not everyone with a guitar is the new Ed Sheeran. bMaking music is cheap, but making a living from music is difficult,b says Noble, ruefully. To compensate for falling record sales, musicians are seeking out other sources of revenue. Live music has risen in value b in 2008, its UK earnings overtook those from recorded music (B#904m, against B#896m), partially offsetting the sales losses. But gigging is a less lucrative option for smaller acts: there are too many intermediaries such as promoters and venue owners taking a cut. Publishing rights represent a rising proportion of income. Gone are the days when a piece of music was seen to be ruined by association with an advertisement. Electronic musician Moby was scorned by bien-pensant music fans when his 1999 hit album Play became the first to have every track licensed for commercial use in adverts or film soundtracks. These days the practice is unremarkable. Dan Auerbach, frontman of the blues-rock duo the Black Keys, the most- licensed act on Warner Music Groupbs roster in 2010, has dismissed bthe whole idea of bselling outbb as an barchaic indie-rock idealb. . . . bItbs a whole different ballgame being a musician in 2015 than it was even 10 years ago,b says Will Kennard, one half of the London dance music production duo Chase & Status. bThe younger generation, who Ibm working with really closely now, they donbt really understand the concept of selling out, whereas the generation before mine, the one I grew up listening to in the 1990s, definitely did think it was all about the integrity of the art form.b Kennard and his partner Saul Milton, the bChaseb to his bStatusb, have a successful recording career: their 2011 album No More Idols won double-platinum certification, selling over 800,000 copies. But they also produce work for other acts, including Rihanna. bArtists have to be a bit savvier now about how to sustain their career if they want to continue in music,b says Kennard, who is also the co-founder of East London Arts & Music, a school for 16- to 19-year-olds specialising in music education, which opened last September. It teaches business skills as well as performance and technology. bWhile webve got performers who are ridiculously talented, Ibm more interested in finding that young rapper or singer who might not go on to be the next Jay Z, but who has a really sharp eye for artist-and-repertoire or management. Therebs more to the music industry than being a pop star.b Philippa Hanna, 31, is the wife of The Gentlemenbs drummer, Joel Cana. Based in Sheffield, she is a full-time singer-songwriter with a three-album recording career behind her, mainly self-funded. She has an audience in the niche Christian music market with her acoustic gospel-pop, selling 30,000 units in total, but is trying to break into the mainstream. bItbs true of lots of artists today,b she says. bWebve only ever known a culture where you build your own career. I guess there was a glory day when people used to get scouted and discovered and it was more important to find a label at an early stage of your career.b In the absence of record label patronage, crowd-funding is a popular method of raising money b todaybs equivalent of 18th-century poets advertising for subscribers. Alexander Pope earned about B#5,000 for his translation of The Iliad in the 1710s, equivalent to B#100,000 today. Hanna isnbt doing too badly in comparison: she has raised B#25,000 from fans to be used to support her career rather than record an specific album. bThe end goalb, she says, bis to take you to the next level, to where you can attract the right partner, either a label or a manager with some real clout.b Recently she was flown to Nashville by Warner Music for a showcase. bYou have to have the perfect pitch,b she says, sounding not unlike a contestant on The Apprentice. bYou have to have a sales record, a client base, you really have to have a career to take to someone like a label and say, bThis is working, would you like to come on board and invest?bb The entrepreneurial pattern is repeated at the highest level. Dr Drebs headphone empire Beats and Jay Zbs streaming service Tidal are prominent examples. Endorsement deals have deepened into bcreative directorb link-ups, a role that Lady Gaga played at Polaroid until last year, or bbrand ambassadorsb, as with BeyoncC)bs work for Pepsi Cola. In a sign of the lengths to which stars will go to protect their own brand identity, Taylor Swift has successfully trademarked lyrics such as bthis sick beatb for commercial use. Nobel Prize-winning economist (and keen music fan) Paul Krugman calls this the bcelebrity economyb. In March he appeared at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, with a panel including members of the band Arcade Fire, expressing the fear that an ever greater proportion of musical revenue is accruing to the one per cent at the top, those with the strongest name recognition. bI actually donbt quite understand how the bands I like are even surviving,b he said. In the UK, there is a related anxiety that musicians are being driven away through lack of private resources. bItbs not possible for working-class people to sustain a music careerb .b .b .b if they donbt have records labels and stuff,b former Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher complained earlier this year. Yet even if the proposition is true b that music is growing more unequal b how to explain the question of why more and more people want to be musicians, or why my slush pile of promotional CDs is getting bigger and bigger? Most days I sit at my computer writing variations on the same phrase. bThanks for sending the album but Ibm afraid I havenbt got space to review it, sorry.b Another dream dashed (such is the melodramatic train of my thoughts), another CD for the reject pile. At times I wish I could muster the heartless self-possession of Orson Welles in The Third Man, gazing down from the ferris wheel at the little people below. Do we really need all these new songs? Guy Fletcher, PRS for Musicbs chairman, is a songwriter who has written songs for the Hollies and Elvis Presley. He remembers PRSbs membership of songwriters and composers numbering 6,000 in 1965. Back then they collected B#6m b around B#100m in todaybs prices b in performing rights on behalf of their members. Now the figure, split between 112,000 people, is B#665m. The pot has shrunk while the number of songwriters has exploded and it has become harder to negotiate a path between success and failure. The rise of music-streaming and download services allows listeners to cherry-pick albums for hits, diminishing the bread-and-butter of the songwriterbs trade. bIt used to be slightly more even before the internet,b Fletcher says. bYou didnbt have to have a string of hits to make a living. You could be a competent writer b I speak as someone who was a competent writer for many years. The mainstay of my income was the middle ground of stuff, album tracks. Ibve had album tracks by Joe Cocker, Ray Charles, Cilla Black, Cliff Richard, not necessarily the hit tracks from those albums.b Professor Geraint Johnes of Lancaster Universitybs Work Foundation relates the rise in numbers of people involved in music to historic changes in Britainbs economy. Services have replaced industrial production; hospitality is one of the fastest-growing sectors. bLarge numbers of people arenbt getting anything like the compensation that the stars are getting,b he says. bTheybre working in hotels at weekends or doing wedding receptions. A lot of them have regular jobs that theybre doing as well as music.b But not all jobs in music are remunerated hobbies. The Labour Market Survey has recorded a rise in people describing themselves as being fully employed in music b from 15,400 in 2001 to 24,000 last year. bYou canbt look at the music market in isolation; you have to look at whatbs happening in the labour market elsewhere to explain why people might be changing into music,b Johnes says. bIn recent years, therebs been a decline in job security in many sectors of the economy. For some, the decline in security in other jobs may have made music appear more attractive, or at least less unattractive.b Itbs not a tremendously encouraging prospect for the swelling ranks of musicians. But there is something admirable in their economically irrational actions too, a determination driven by qualities that canbt be measured or even always accounted for b hope, fulfilment, ambition, doing what you want to do to. bWe are completely in agreement that we have no regrets,b says Nicholas Noble of The Gentlemen, surveying the wreckage of his bandbs hopes. bWe have had great times, but very little to show for it financially. I met my wife through the band, I wouldnbt have moved to Norway if it hadnbt been for the band. It has changed our lives substantially.b And who can put a value on that? Ludovic Hunter-Tilney is the FTbs pop music critic Sue Tierney McNamara Email: sem8@cornell.edu ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2015 #48 **************************** ------- To post messages to the list,sendto joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------