Peter Jenner on the Future of Music
Photo credit: http://bit.ly/18lnuFf
Former Pink Floyd and T Rex manager Peter Jenner, now emeritus president of the International Music Managers’ Forum, talks online music, copyright and the future of the music industry. It is very satisfying to see the ideas expressed in our Future of Music book becoming mainstream concepts in the industry.
>As physical sales decrease, how should the music industry be monetising its content?
Record companies believe that music is about selling bits of stuff to people in a retail environment. They always looked on the internet as a potentially huge retail environment and it’s actually a service environment. The record companies should be working out what services they can provide.
They should also be talking to ISPs instead of fighting them. The key thing is people are going to want music as part of what they get on their digital connections. The ISPs are going to have to invest more and more to develop better services, and in that context they will have to start charging for content, whether they charge for content directly with a meter or whether they bundle it or use advertising or sponsorship.
Another way to go would be to look at statutory licensing for different types of usage. It would be incredibly bureaucratic but it would be one way. So let people access whatever music they like and pay a set rate. The same with commercial businesses.
>Do record labels still have a role to play in the music industry?
Yes absolutely, particularly for investment and promotion and marketing. And they could become very good at licensing, at helping artists to develop their website. But they have to get away from this idea of control and instead become partners of the artists. Many of the record and film companies are very enamoured with the idea of control because it’s how their model has always worked, with in-house lawyers and copyright advisors. There is huge inertia in the way the industry licenses and administers content. We have to fight this.
>How have the sources of revenue in the music industry changed?
Until the CD came along I think artists overall got a better deal and more control and a better bite of the money. After they invented the CD the record companies increasingly fought back, decreasing artists’ revenue share and increasing their control. That’s just got worse with the advent of the internet because there is less money available. You used to be able to sell 5,000 albums, now that is incredibly hard so the industry has to look at digital options, but a lot of web services don’t pay properly. Google will pay you a share of the revenue you generate for them, but if you don’t make them money you don’t get money.
>Has social media changed the way bands are marketed and content is discovered?
Yes, but it has huge potential to do more. At the moment, because it isn’t licensable, it isn’t doing the job that it ought to be doing. But what it can do is alter the value chain. With less money available in the music business we have to instead look at what we do have. And what we have is lots of data on music fans. Marketing has always traditionally been more expensive than recording but we can cut these costs by using social sites and viral links. And maybe we can cut out advertising costs because acts can just directly email their fans.
>Can music-streaming services support the music industry?
They are good, but they don’t have all the music. I manage Billy Bragg and there are a hundred versions of his tracks online. I can get a recorded version but a lot of the times on these services there are no live versions. And globally there are billions of tracks so the problem remains of how people find a particular piece of music or if they like something how they find similar bands. People aren’t just looking to buy the music, they are looking to buy a service which is personal and recommends music and enables discovery and which saves them time. I’m not sure anyone is really offering this yet.
>Is there a future for physical music?
Yes, but its role in the industry will become less. Probably physical music, like CDs, will become very expensive and luxurious and they will be like hardback coffee table books and people will only buy maybe one or two a year. The music industry’s job is to make as much money as it can from a track or album, and that includes physical sales alongside digital sales, access services and anything else they can come up with.
>What do you think the music industry will look like in 10 years?
Probably very similar. But what we might look on as broadcasting income will hugely increase. Most revenues will come from users paying to access the content. You won’t notice that you are paying for recorded music so much.
I think the artists ought to be much more powerful, whether they will get it together is another matter. There will be record labels, but whether they will be labels that own content or just be agents I don’t know. They might be more like the Performing Rights Society and less like Universal.
Read the whole interview here from Sara Vizard at Strategy Eye
Great interview, thank you.
I’ve recently come face to face with how murderously difficult it is to sell music. Maybe my music sucks, I don’t know, but man…
Jeff
http://www.jeffshattuck.com
All these years later and there is still no “established” working business model, not that people aren’t trying. I’d like to see proof that the ISPs aren’t already raping us for current service before they tack on any extra fees to access choice music content legally. I’ve got a feeling they will be greedier than the record companies were in the era of the $20 CD, when you get to see how the pie is cut up between provider and artist. I hope I’m wrong.
I’ve co-owned a record shop in Nashville for over 35 years. It seems no one talks about the greed from the major labels that has killed the Cd as much as the internet. The lack of profit for the one stop dist. and retailers is something most consumers don’t know about. The labels have screwed everybody down the line. Roughly 13.00 cost to make 2 or 3 dollars profit for retailers. While they got maybe 50 cents in each disc. as someone who is still in the business, I could see cds selling again but it needs a re-boot. Retail priced at 5 to 6 dollars, if one major would do this across the board, I believe the cd would make an amazing comeback. there are plenty of consumers wanting to own physical product at a fair price. I see and hear about it everyday. And the Lp is now the newest overpriced rip off, once again the majors have just on a bandwagon and priced it at an unreasonable profit margin for the distributors and retailers. The greed never ends.
I’ve co-owned a record shop in Nashville for over 35 years. It seems no one talks about the greed from the major labels that has killed the Cd as much as the internet. The lack of profit for the one stop dist. and retailers is something most consumers don’t know about. The labels have screwed everybody down the line. Roughly 13.00 cost to make 2 or 3 dollars profit for retailers. While they got maybe 50 cents in each disc. as someone who is still in the business, I could see cds selling again but it needs a re-boot. Retail priced at 5 to 6 dollars, if one major would do this across the board, I believe the cd would make an amazing comeback. there are plenty of consumers wanting to own physical product at a fair price. I see and hear about it everyday. And the Lp is now the newest overpriced rip off, once again the majors have just on a bandwagon and priced it at an unreasonable profit margin for the distributors and retailers. The greed never ends.
the wrong people are in charge music has lost its way. the word (singing) is used to loosely and phones are NOT instruments. the rock star has gone the way of the doe doe the next gen of musician not many if any because kids are learning to play on 6 buttons on gaming controller instead of 6 strings you get the drift …