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What folks don’t know: more than 90% of published books (and probably even a higher percentage) sell less than 2,000 copies. Some big literary novels that win awards and get major news coverage sell only 10,000 copies or less.

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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

This is a terrific piece, Ted. I love how succinctly you describe the issue. The "they don't need record labels anymore" is right on target. Of course, the "they" in this case are artists whose music/talent is geared toward being popular on TikTok. And good on them, but, of course, not all styles of music fit that mold. My son is a musician and he finds it a bit depressing how many of his peers are trying to write little bits of songs that might "go viral" and are constantly spending time filming these videos, hoping for them to go viral. This is time when a musician might instead be gigging or recording or writing amazing songs that don't fit the TikTok mold. There are many challenging genres of music (and Ted, of course, you know this well) that will never be popular on TikTok. I'm not saying labels cater to those genres either (though perhaps the most powerful thing labels can offer is access to the right Spotify playlists). Which is all to say that being a musician remains quite a challenge.

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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

I’m a senior at Berklee College of music—Music Interdisciplinary Studies (Music Business with an Electronic Music Production focus). One of my classes right now is Music Licensing, which is how I got connected to your video on the future of the music business, from fellow classmate.

I’m not a musician per se, as I got accepted as a sound engineer—currently working on indie films due to what I have learned at Berklee. But to obtain my degree, I have learned how to create original electronic music and even have a few full length songs.

My conclusion right now is that if I want release my music, I will copyright, license and release it wherever and whenever I want. Maybe even for free or at least pursue sync licensing. All the rest looks like a horrible state of affairs. I have always had a huge heart for musicians, which is why I got into and still love mixing music ♥️ but truly things are getting beyond ridiculous!!

Thank you for all you do!!!!

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Jun 2, 2022·edited Jun 2, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

Fantastic article Ted! Your insight is right on the mark! The record company executives have winnowed their value down to virtually nothing. I used to think it went his way: Those executives who couldn't cut it in the REAL business world became network TV executives. Those who couldn't cut it as network TV executives went into flipping burgers or sweeping floors. Those who couldn't cut it as burger flippers or floor sweepers became radio station executives (just slightly above pond scum on the evolutionary ladder, from my experience). Now I know the ones who couldn't cut it as criminally inept radio executives all must have become record company executives! I keep thinking the record companies couldn't possibly become any more shortsighted, lazy, stupid or self-destructively greedy than they already are, but year after year they keep proving me wrong, achieving new lows and even faster ways to put themselves out of business! If they worked even one tenth as hard at their actual jobs as they seem to work at avoiding doing anything useful or being of any value to anyone in any way the record industry would be experiencing a fantastic new golden age instead of slowly dying! Oh well. It was nice to know you record industry. You did it to yourself.

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Jun 4, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

People asked me why I had called my book “The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music” over 25 years ago. The business has fallen further and faster than anyone could have imagined.

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Jun 3, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

My understanding is that publishers are increasingly just using the number of twitter followers an author has as a metric for whether they are worth a book deal. You are very much correct that this isn't just about TikTok or twitter, it is about following the real American dream of getting rich without doing any work. Record companies and publishers think they can rely somebody else or an algorithm doing all the work and still make money. That won't work, but their fade into obsolescence probably won't be good for the transmission of art. It will just mean that one's skill at producing viral memes will become the most important skill to a career in art. I assume there will then be a counteraction as people long for something different at some point, but it I have no idea what form it will take.

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So we are back to the music. That can't be bad.

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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

Brilliant summation of what is happening. Record companies pretty much deserve their fate. All the raw deals for old bluesmen, early rockers and creative folks who didn’t read the mice type or have a lawyer when signing a terrible contract.

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While it's great that the barriers to entry are virtually gone, and anyone can make it happen, I'm more concerned about the load this puts on the artists and creators. Content creation burnout is no joke. These platforms are constant machines that need to be fed. If we've shifted the responsibility to the artist, we're diluting the time they can focus on the artistry and loading them up with other responsibilities that may have otherwise been borne by management teams.

This means that we are no longer incentivizing the "best" musicians to succeed - we are incentivizing the ones who can juggle artistry, business strategy, publicity, community engagement, and content development...and with a personality and style that fits the platforms of today.

This also presents a huge opportunity though - platforms that can streamline this creator experience and amplify their abilities will be more successful, because they are helping these creators focus on what they do best.

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Another issue, though, is that it's criminal how little TikTok pays musicians per play. You could have a million plays and still make peanuts. I know someone who was excited to have gotten 1400 spins on one of his songs...until learning he made about a tenth of one cent on that. This is the most popular app in the world but they still want to cry poor, and remind you that it's free to use, so you shouldn't expect anything whatsoever, and all this exposure is great, right, aren't you happy with that? Et cetera et cetera.

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I love that your first use of embedded Tik-Tok on Substack was used to blast Tik-Tok. Bravo, Sir!

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Tik . . . Tok . . . Tik . . . Tok . . . When will TikTok and all the other online outlets become the new "gatekeepers." If there is money to be had, you better believe that this will happen!

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Since the commercial Internet crawled out of the primordial soup, it laid bare the classic behavior of cannibal capitalism: find a food chain and manage to insinuate yourself into it so you just take a bite out of everything that goes by. Sometimes this actually “added value” by improving the scaling behavior, but other times, not so much. Sometimes it actually reduced value because it was just one more mouth to feed so the end-used price went *up*. On the Internet, it is comparatively easy to spawn a new thing, and at first, not that hard to wiretap a food chain when nobody was looking too closely. Now it’s harder to do but the spoils of disintermediation are mich larger. Of course, Tik-Toc will soon be seen as the next fatted calf and it too will have done to it what it is doing. The record labels are just this round’s big losers. But there is another point here worth considering. Disintermediation is the enemy of scale, but scale is necessary for efficiency. The question is whether we end up with a system where teams of raiders keep hatcheting each other to the point that *nobody* gets critical mass, or are there saddle points where the system can stabilize within rational limits.

It’s already happening to the video streaming services. When they first hit town, everyone was gonna ne a cord cutter - cut that nasty old coax from your cable TV provider. OOPS! Do you need that coax for Internet service? Even so, there are now enough streaming services that we are back at 100 streamers and I cannot find where to find the damn show I want to watch! People failed to appreciate that one of the critical values of cable TV the number of channels bit the directory service that lets you find and navigate to what you want. If you subscribe to 10 streaming services, you can’t find your shoes much less your shows.

It’s the metadata, stupid!

Labels vaporizing themselves won’t help if suddenly there are 100 places people release music and they spend all the time they would spend *listening* rummaging around the Internet.

That means that metadata will be the most valuable thing in the long run. Currently the music biz is in the throws of disruption *at small scale*.

What happens at large scale? How long do you think it will take GOOG to be the place people go to find music?

Plenty is a double-edged sword. Ultimately people pay to have sense to made of things.

And that puts the power back in the hands of aggregators and curators.

And the wheel of incarnation makes another turn.

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Some labels still promote the heck out of their artists: Jim Pugh and Little Village. Bruce Iglauer at Alligator. Of the majors, though, I think only Don Was, running BlueNote, still does much to promote his roster of artists, or takes chances on young unknowns. But those are all specialty labels, too: Roots, blues, jazz.

On the journalism side you allude to, I think Substack is great for folks like you, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and/or Bari Weiss, who have tremendous national name recognition. For the young writer just striking out, maybe not so much. I'm neither young nor just starting out, but also don't have much in the way of name recognition. While I would have probably close to zero interest in writing for any daily newspapers these days, I do write for Living Blues, AllAboutJazz, San Diego Troubadour, and a religious magazine - because each has a very specific audience built around a shared topic of interest. But those are unique situations.

Another aspect of major, name-brand writers moving to Substack is the utterly panicked reaction from the legacy gatekeepers. Never thought I'd see the day that the NYT, WaPo, CBS, etc., would be demanding government control over public discourse. The thought of having an owner of Twitter who believes in a broader range of opinion that they can't control is driving many of these legacy reporters and editors close to the edge of madness.

Not sure if I'm entertained or horrified by the whole spectacle.

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We don't need no record labels.

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We've seen this coming from a long way off - roughly the last 20 years. Legacy entertainment media publishers once provided the necessary risk capital an artist needed to develop a successful career. The world has changed and these old business models are usually the last to adapt, when it's too late. Look at how Apple decimated the record companies with iTunes? And back then all the record companies had to do was co-opt Napster. Couldn't do it and their ability to respond decreased with their revenue streams. Remember when their response to ripping and sharing music was to sue their best customers? Smh...

Artists-whether musicians, authors, poets, photographers, videographers, or podcaster- all just need an online distribution and networking platform that serves them. The art is the way to make the connection - the connection is value. Every influencer knows this. The legacy media is merely a promo and marketing vendor service and will be paid according to value added amid fierce competition. Artists don't need publishers and distributors that add no value. The prestige of having a publishing deal or a record co. deal is a quaint anachronism. As Ted explains - only unsuccessful artists will want one.

The future is coming and the middlemen will provide value or disappear. It's the Golden Rule - he who has the gold rules. Oh, and blockchain will be a big part of the decentralization and coordination of creative markets. The future can't get here soon enough.

Create-Share-Connect.

www.tukaglobal.com

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