Money & Music Don't Rhyme: February 2010

Not many

musicians actually start off with the notion of making a career out of it but when the remotest of possibility of this becoming real occur, people tend to literally lose their minds. All of a sudden they begin to dress differently, speak differently, behave differently and worst of all treat people differently, depending on who they are. We perform music. That's all. Anything that happens either side of this is for the musician & the music enthusiast to opt to pursue....or not.

Primarily we're performing for people who truly enjoy our music and enjoy it enough purchase it and provide well-informed feedback that displays that they are actually listening. Some musicians, however, are 'performing' for solely for major distributors hoping that somehow, some major player will find their needle which is placed in a multitude of haystacks. This is no musical performance. This is when the seedy business side comes into play.

It is here that my grievances with so-called 'music distributors' begins.

Firstly, from a musicians perspective, these organisations couldn't care less who you are....and they don't. Keep paying your annual/monthly subscription and they'll continue on their merry way, oblivious to the fact that you're even there.

They have their subsidiaries telling eager independent artists the benefits of this, that and the other....ALL of which are at a cost and from what I've seen & heard, do little to further the musicians career.

Perhaps if independent musicians were shown the tiniest piece of courtesy & ALLOWED IN to this equation that, in theory, revolves around them & their followers, I suspect they would not be getting somewhat annoyed, as I am aware they are.

In 2009 this was highlighted when Warner Music Group finally managed to get iTunes to introduce their variable pricing scheme.

This allowed them to increase single downloads from their usual 99c as high as $1.29 and as LOW as 69c. The immediate result was a marked downturn in sales. It's infuriating to note that this was implemented during a global financial recession. Doh!

Interestingly the word 'musician' didn't feature in that equation. Hhhmmmm.

I found this news EXTREMELY heartening as music enthusiasts were able to make their displeasure known by not blindly following these price increases.

With the recent launch of the iPad, I am wondering if the same greed will hit such a tranquil activity as reading. It's common knowledge that the digital book industry has been working hard to increase THEIR prices. The great advantage that the ebook industry has is that it is early in the 'adoption cycle' which is a much stronger position to be in as far as securing financial flexibility.

With the book publishing industry having more flexibility than the music industry ever had, us consumers are left wondering which way the balance will swing. With Apple raising prices above $9.99 so early in proceeding, will this over-ride the other option of lowering prices & selling more ebooks.