One of the industries in which the fight between the ‘old world’ and the new is the most apparent, is the music industry. While record labels are suing the pants off of filesharing sites and iTunes isn’t making a ton of money even though everyone and their grannie have an iPod, some clever folks have been calling for the new model to emerge for years: artists will make money from their tours, and the recorded music merely is a marketing vehicle for the live performance.
Case in point: David Levine had a quick look at Metallica’s revenues and concluded that 55 live shows brought in US$22.8mm, while 694.000 albums sold brought in US$1.6mm.
Ouch.
Which also serves to bring forward another painful corollary of this shift: how quickly the recording industry is becoming obsolete. Artists can make more money doing what they (arguably) love, playing music for fans, than they can leveraging that to the masses with the help of an overhead-heavy industry. It’s like 1950 all over again.
As I write this I remember reading an article in Fastcompany a few years ago that already profiled a music marketing company that specialized in generating revenue for bands through live performance merchandise. Will try my best and dig that up for you. [Update: Here it is.]
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Rik is one of the founders of Klatergoud.
He's the marketing director of Intivation, a technology company that develops solar powered consumer devices, and a graduate of Delft University of Technology with degrees in Applied Physics and Strategic Product Design.
He writes about entrepreneurship, design thinking, business models, innovation and marketing.
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