The Serpent's Fruit

I posted a link to a news article in the TMD ITN page but thought that it deserved a closer look. It’s not about music per se, but it is about digital distribution, which is definitely something that musicians have to deal with nowadays.

However, this time it is books that are in the news, specifically e-books and how they are priced.

A class action antitrust lawsuit has been filed in a US District Court by the Hagens Berman litigation group alleging that five major publishers conspired to raise the price of e-books and force Amazon to drop its $9.99 e-book pricing.¹

According to the lawsuit they didn’t act alone. They conspired with Apple, Inc.

Omnia Vanitas: The New Gate Keepers

About a month ago I attended a music festival where several friends of mine were performing. The festival was one of hundreds that focuses on one type of instrument, for example: didgeridoo, shakuhachi, drum, flute, banjo, dulcimer, harmonica, kazoo, harp, piano and guitar. Piano and guitar festivals are very popular, held in cities throughout the country like Dallas, L.A., Seattle, Portland Washington, D.C., Long Island, Boston, Tennessee and more all over the world. These festivals usually consist of performances by name acts, competitions, workshops, private lessons and booths set up by vendors.

Another thing that I see a lot of at these festivals is DIY CDs made by people that want to break into the music business. At the latest festival I attended there were dozens of CDs for sale by people who had recorded one trying to get some exposure, or just for family and friends. So called vanity albums. With the rise of inexpensive home recording equipment it has become pretty easy to make one's own CD. And with the growing influence of the Internet, especially Facebook and Twitter, an artist can attempt to promote their recording directly to their audience.

In part due to the rise of these social sites it is now considered possible to market your own recordings. The traditional Gate Keepers for the music industry: labels, managers and promoters are, supposedly, no longer needed. Once upon a time these gate keepers held the keys to a career in popular music. They had people that listened to acts, went to shows and gauged the strength of an artist's or a band’s appeal. This weeded out those artists that supposedly were not making good music and groomed the ones that were for success. Was this a perfect system? No. Would I be a working recording artist if I had to go through the filter of a record label? I’m thinking, “not so much”.

So who are the new Gate Keepers? And what, if any, stake do they have in your music career? And does this mean that every person that can make an album should?

The Digital Domain: 1's and 0's or just zeros?

In the last several posts we've looked at how many recordings an Indie musician would have to sell to make a couple of economic target goals: the U.S. minimum wage, and rent, specifically mine, which is a little more than $1,300. Up till now we've only looked at physical product, CD's, comparing sales on an artist's website, at a gig, and through retail stores. We have seen that the farther away the artist got from the customer the more units they have to sell to make our target goals. For example, if an artist sold a CD at a gig for $15 they would be able to apply more of the income from that sale to their rent than if their recording was sold through a retail store via a distributor, both of whom would take their cut.

Below is what this looks like on a graph.


Click image to enlarge

Now we're going to enter the mysterious world of digital downloads. I use the word "mysterious" because some of the of the definitions of that word, such as "difficult or impossible to understand", "having an atmosphere of strangeness or secrecy" and "deliberately enigmatic" are perfectly suited to the digital download world.