myspace selling music

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by smopo24

yea, that may work for some people, but i still get spammed by requests; and when it does, they send me email messages (often more than once) like:

hey dude,

saw your profile, you seem to be the kind of person that would dig our music. anyone that likes motown is cool in our book. we are a christian death metal band that sings about poo. check out our music. come to our show on october 17th at the cow shack in san antonio, texas.

They sent you that too?

[bwethera]

In a series of awkward ideas i thought if it were even possible to eliminate the need for a record label and the relationship it has formed with artist and consumers a couple of things come to mind in this:
1 The whole point of a label on any scale is to distribute, fiance and sell an artist work
2 the offer something no one on itunes or myspace can, focus based marketing again the scale is irrelevant. an artist does not have the time or the resource to create synergy and a niche for itself some time once in a great while a group does this on its own but it is not standard fare and sometimes like in the case of discord this DIY legend status doesn't take hold until many years later.
3 A label can afford to do what you cant avoid and out spend market saturation
basically any act you name has been able to avoid this in some way or any other b/c some one else is handling everything else besides touring and the overall music aesthetic.
4 On the major players end they are on a whole owned by a larger group be it viacom or a group of board members it will find a way to adapt

5 same with Indies due to the vision of the group or individual will find a way to appeal to is current sub culture or a way to utilize new technology

*also it should be noted a number of Indies are now what they call boutique labels or funded by major labels or owned by them

6 distributors will only deal with an entity that can either fiance a record or has a history of being able to move units try to get in with southern or Caroline without being incorporated

7 sub culture appeal is apart of a label as much as it is apart of a band that is why in general they sign artist in the same movement making it easier for you to expand off of one artist

I am sure there is more but i cannot extrapolate on how entertainment economics interact with changes in the market further without more thought

[warmowski]

$0.02 inbound:

Record labels are a way for a small number of core persons or single person to gamble with money on choices made (at least partially) out of musical taste. This definition won't change, and hasn't. So labels won't go away.

Of course there are very, very few final, bottom-line things that can be said about the music business, fewer every passing year. Digital distro and unpaid copies are changing behaviors, but (thakfully, from my perspective) persons who are actually curious about music and therefore really love it - still go to stores and don't need to be prompted to do that. For everyone else there's the diminished experience of mp3s.

The most important developments to me are in software that links unpopular music with popular music in various ways. Myspace is one of these for sure, but only by accident, as I'l mention later. The best at this is Pandora, I think. These tools really do broaden exposure of both the listener and the musician in a very elegant way. Tools like these will be here forever.

One thing I believe has been true since the dawn of recorded music is no less true now: most recorded music that changes hands - purchased, copied, whatever - is exchanged not actually on the basis of decisions made by the receiver that concern musical content. What makes most people choose music isnt what the music is, it's how the music fits into their life, their lifestyle, their identity. Myspace I think tends to support this summary and surface asssociation with music, laying it over the real activity, which is socilaization. One day I might figure out how to prove this, but I sure believe it.

I'm one of few people who won't add a Myspace friend request if I don't really like the music of the requesting person. As a "content" guy, it drives my decisions and I seem to be in the minority. The question is, am I suddenly in the minority or was I always in the minority? Does Myspace and digital distro in a wider sense create a big audience of superficially associated people or does it serve those people who were always and will always be there?

-r

[dolivas]

I just see digital distribution like shopping at Jewel Osco as opposed to Peapod.com. For convenience's sake and budgetary constraints shopping at Jewel is way more convenient if it's a block away or a mile away than to order online overpriced groceries that you have to get delivered to you.

In market terms while the ability to get digital downloads seems cheap at first, you have to realize someone had to plunk down money initially at first to buy a computer to download a program such as iTunes or plunk down money to buy a mp3 player. Buying a ghetto boombox to play your cd's or cassettes is an expediture as well but not as much as digital electronics. For the majority of the US those outside of cable/dsl modem speeds physical cd's and/or media like the radio is still what holds sway in what they buy or what they hear as opposed to MySpace which in geek terms seems like a big market (20 million people visit it everyday I believe) in real terms like percentage of population it's a small amount of the music market.

I wouldn't count record labels out just because for convenience sake and for the majority of people that is the choice defacto for any kind of musical buys. If you still are in the market to market your work might as well go to the source that can put you within a block rather than rely just on just digital realms.