Today in the music industry, a bellwether is sound as Warner Music Group has reported $55 million in net loss for Q3 of 2010. Their reason? “Because of the Internet.”

“Warner Music Group reported…a further double-digit drop in sales as further business was lost to the Internet, resulting in a net loss of 55 million dollars for the third quarter. A year earlier the net loss was 37 million dollars…analysts noted the trend of declining compact disc sales in a market in which consumers are increasingly downloading the music they want from the Internet.”

Q: So what’s the prognosis for the music industry?

A: This Christmas…band managers, merchandisers, booking agents, and music lawyers will undoubtedly go hungry.

Within this fragmented sector, the ones suffering the most are the enterprise record labels–that primordial Pangaea where dinosaurs still roam the earth and continue to harbor animosity toward the Internet over Napster-era mp3 pirating. With a culture of hostility embedded in the mindset of this industry, one can only imagine what prompted Prince to recently declare that the “Internet is over”. Others who continue to adhere to this aversion to digital media follow suit. Expect a faction of “Neo-Luddites” to emerge.

In the recently seemingly-immortal words of Prince:

“The Internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it…the Internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.”

Prince, sounding like ‘grandma’ in her rocker lamenting an era gone by, keeps harping on “Internet abuses” and “no good digital gadgets”. However, the new pop acolytes – who are adept at tuning out the ramblings of grandma – are ready to become the standard-bearers of the digital age, as most have superseded many of the the roles normally delegated to members of large record labels. Musicians, in part, have become their own PR machine, booking agent and enacting their own A/R–very savvy stuff here.

Here are some tools and solutions that will help burgeoning musicians who are technically inclined enact A/R through the chutes and pipes of the Internet.

SoundCloud:

Definitely one of my favorite in terms of social applications for music sharing, SoundCloud gives the DIY musician a large landscape to canvas. SoundCloud uses a viral loop approach (much similar to Facebook) that guarantees continual engagement of musical aficionados and connoisseurs to rate, share and provide feedback on any track you produce–while you continue to live rent free in your mother’s basement making those beats.

Bonus Round: SoundCloud also has prepaid packages where you can enable analytics on your dashboard to measure play metrics on a more granular level, from geo-targets to unique plays (if you absolutely need to geek the heck out). Additionally, the nifty little widgets you can deploy look great on your own website and blog posts:

Sun by Caribouband

Vimeo:

So you have a friend who’s into video production? Need a music video for your band? Well hop into that beater and head on down scenic PCH to get that crunked out video buzzworthy for the masses. With a much more glossy sheen than the matted format of YouTube videos, Vimeo allows musicians to set up profiles, upload videos and also comment on other user’s productions. Also, as of late, I have seen event promoters using Vimeo to distribute video fliers via Facebook and blogs. Definitely, a greener and less intrusive approach to getting the word out about your party (tip: marketing street teams–your jobs just became easier). Additionally, having the option for video allows you the opportunity to preview what your live experience is like:

Caribou from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

Finally, get a content management system up and running. It isn’t very difficult to do. Of the packages, WordPress is the most simplest application to use and does not require a lot of hand holding. For the more experienced, try out Drupal which uses a flexible and community-supported format for website development. You can implement your own band’s viral loop by creating various routes to your content, implement a forum/message board and create your own social network uniquely tailored to your fan base to get your audience engaged.

And one more thing…all the tools I’ve listed above are for the most part FREE! If that doesn’t get Warner Brothers shaking in their boots, I don’t know what will.

No related posts.