"Being Good" As A Music Business Model.

Flickr photo by visual.dichotomy

There's been some talk recently about new business models for the music industry. Everyone is weighing in, and that's good, because robust debate is necessary to build a sustainable future for the business.

I've even heard talk that "being good" is a new model. But let's be clear: "being good" has always been the model. And actually, forget good. If you want to find success as a musician, you'd better be the best.

To be a great artist, you must have innate talent. You must have the drive to nurture that talent through practice and performance. You must be self-aware, constantly evaluating your progress and making changes that will further your career. You must develop a compelling artistic voice, one that speaks to your audience.

This is a difficult business. Mastery of the creative process is only the beginning. There are many other disciplines in which you will need to excel. You must be a business owner, taking on the roles of salesman, marketer, publicist, accountant and lawyer. At first, these disciplines don't appear to be related to the music business, but they all are essential core competencies. You also have to be an instrument tech, sound board operator, driver, manager, agent, promoter, vocal coach, choreographer, lighting designer, set designer, royalty analyst. . .the list goes on and on.

Being a successful musician is not like clocking in and out of an office job. You are not a cog in the machine. In this business, you are the machine.

UPDATE: One Year Into The Future: Spotify And The New Record Business.

Soon after I published this post about Spotify, I read articles here (h/t @digitalmusicorg) and here (h/t ‏@gleonhard) that got further into the data on the streaming service.

Two key takeaways:

From Techdirt, a piece about the marketplace in Sweden, where the service first launched:

A new report looks at the Swedish recorded music market, and found that it's up an astounding 30.1% in the first half of this year, due almost entirely to Spotify. Digital music now accounts for 63.5% of all music sales, and streaming services (mainly Spotify) represent 89% of all digital music sales. MusicAlly notes that streaming may be cannibalizing downloads, but the massive growth in streaming is more than outweighing the decrease in downloads.

While that is great news for Spotify specifically and streaming services more generally, my piece was about the US over the past year. According to Billboard.biz:

. . .one number is all that really matters here: 13 billion. That's the number of songs streamed by U.S. users since Spotify's July 14 launch in the U.S. Yes, it's a big number, and it covers both free listeners and paying subscribers.

The bottom line is that these numbers show promising growth, especially for a service in its infancy. What's remarkable is how Spotify in 2012 looks like the iTunes Music Store in 2004.