As independent musicians, surely by now you’ve heard of TuneCore. For those of you living under rocks, TuneCore became a hugely influential tool allowing independent artists to bypass many needs to record labels by directly getting their music distributed and placed on many major retailers such as Apple’s iTunes, AmazonMP3, and more. Jeff Price, one of the three founders of TuneCore, was recently pushed out of the company. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to think about the evolving world of the music industry. Take a look his article about advances in technology have essentially destroyed the long-held “traditional” approach that the major labels still cling hopelessly to.
Some of the best points he makes are what approaches the labels have resorted to in attempt to keep afloat:
- Sue music fans for copyright infringement
- Create more onerous agreements between labels and artists requiring them to give up even more of their copyrights, not fewer (the infamous “360deals”) while providing less value.
- Use antiquated royalty accounting systems and provisions to slow down or reduce royalty payments owed.
- Stifle innovation under the guise of “protecting” copyright (As one example, the majors made it a condition that they must own a piece of Spotify in order for Spotify to have access to their music).
- Killed artist development and long term careers in a mad dash attempt to make money as quickly as possible.
- Feed the media as much false information as possible (i.e. the entire music industry is dying) in an attempt to discredit, slow down and delegitimize the new emerging industry.
View Post: How Technology Destroyed the Traditional Music Industry