Beefing up security during recording process |
Loading ...(story: Web Music Leaks Spur Studio Clampdown) Credit more hysteria and lost $$ to the fear of P2P piracy, but this time it’s hatched in the recording studio during production of the material. I’m not advocating to let these artists be ripped off, but from reading this article it sounds like with every take that these headline artists feel that they need to have an armed sentry monitoring the mixing board. Safes in walls? Huh?
Here’s a better idea artists: make you fans part of the recording process. Sell web memberships on your site to access outtakes from studio recordings. Start a blog or two, or heck every band member start a blog, to journal what’s happening with the upcoming CD!
Fans are well, fans, so give them what they want on your artist websites. The Van Halen website is one where years fans have been wondering what the deal is. Why secret all this recording stuff away in some vault for some rainy day where posthumously it can come out … like all the “new” Beatles stuff that keeps making it’s way out? Sure, they can still keep some of what they are doing under lock and key for future sales, but make money during the process — make the web work for them! Embrace the web, instead of guard against it. Why oh why don’t more artists at least try this? Hmm …
On a positive note, buymusic has just been released touting some 300,000+ songs to download, with many full albums. Prices range from 79cents per song and $7.99 for a full album and up. It’s 128k. I did some searching and unlike rival EMusic, buymusic has a lot of current and older music. They’ve got Black Sabbath
- Review: Buymusic.com
- Why Indie artists REALLY rock
- Buymusic now has “download all” option
- Gene Simmons thinks more kids should have been sued for copyright theft
- Testing OneNote video notes
- Musicians need to act now to avoid massive piracy in music game genre
I think you brought up an excellent point of getting fans connected to the studio and recording aspect of a record’s release. What you really see is a certain fear of intrusion into the creation process — either you have a pop icon who really doesn’t do a whole lot other than walk in and sing who is afraid to show that to people, or you have a control freak who really doesn’t want fans to know what they do to get to the final product.
I think bands like Garbage have struck good middle ground, with members posting from the studio about what’s happening, but it would be even cooler to ofer snippets of product along the way. Of course, the control freaks would rather DIE than have an unfinished mix circulate, and the record companies are afraid promo material is going to take the edge off of first week sales, which mean everything to them.
Ultimately i totally agree with you, and as a songwriter i would love to broadcast all of my music-related life 24/7 onto the internet so that people can witness it. I think we’ll probably see songwriting artists who emerge in the next three or four years be very open to this, as they will have grown up as performers in the Napster age.
I wish i had more time to focus my comments on this — maybe later.
Comment by peter marinari — July 23, 2003 @ 11:13 am PST
Hi Peter
I think it is just a matter of time before artists see the light for their fans and it is encouraging that artists like yourself already see the benefits in embracing the web as part of one’s marketing strategy.
I’m optimistic that the dark ages of online will be moving on within the next 3-5 years. With AOL soon/now offering journals where one can simply IM the AOL Journal bot and one click blogging from toolbars in the browser, artists who aren’t net savvy will become so. The underground isn’t going to completely go away but artists will that don’t think and act more about for fans who crave for as much information — rough or otherwise — of new material.
Just imagine if an artist were to put out a couple rough takes of a song to see what his/her fans thought of it first? It worked good for those American Idol contestants as far as singing songs rough, who weren’t even singing original material (well, a few exceptions)
This would help artists to commercially release CDs that weren’t only containing 1-3 good songs and the rest B-side filler, and on their websites market the B-side material. It will raise the bar for music and music afficiandos everywhere. It will bring the fans closer to the artists, and it will ring the cash register more, not less, IMHO.
Comment by TDavid — July 23, 2003 @ 11:40 am PST
[…] Alas, getting out of the musical rut many artists are in is going to take people who stop living in the 70s and 80s and look at 2010 and beyond. I think some innovative and game changing ideas are coming. The days of make a hit record and sell the CD are, with few exceptions, gone. […]
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