It’s never been easier for artists to market and distribute their work. However, it’s never been easier for millions of consumers to take it, copy it and share it without paying for it. Are there any solutions? It all depends how you approach things.
Creators take control
It was 1986; more than halfway through the decade that taste forgot. Young Janet Jackson was swivelling her hips, slapping her knees and crooning about control.
“This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say and control of what I do and this time I’m gonna do it my way…” she wrote.
Control was Jackson’s coming of age: the first album on which she obtained co-writing credits and, in turn, intellectual property rights over both the songs and their performance.
Little did she know that her catchy, danceable sentiments would become the central question for artists, musicians, writers and other content providers more than 20 years later.
Creative chains
Before the 1990s, artists were largely reliant on marketing, sales and production teams to get their recorded music out to the public. The creative chain connecting artists to their fans linked from the agent and publisher to the distributor and retailer with many minor links in between. Along the way, everyone took a cut of the profits.
Artists were generally happy to spend their time creating new content rather than focusing on the business of selling it.
Fast forward a few years and digital technologies, especially the Internet, have changed the way artists create, distribute and promote their work.
In 2003, the University of Southern California dedicated an entire conference to the subject called Artists, technology and the ownership of creative content, creative control in the digital age.
The introductory conference material said: “Creators in virtually all fields are finding that new digital technologies provide new tools for creativity as well as new ways to sell their works directly to the audience, bypassing intermediaries. This is fuelling new struggles between creators and major media corporations over the control of creative expression – and the economic rewards and market power that such control entails.”
The money and the power
The recent Pirate Bay case and Eircom’s new role as copyright policeman show just how desperate the big media companies have become in trying to control, and make money from, their artists’ content copyright.
Although their actions make financial sense, they reflect a complete lack of understanding of how the new digital information world operates.
Colin Hetherington from Zoo Digital in Dublin believes that those who understand that the new technologies are about sharing content, not controlling it, are the ones who will prosper. “The people who are embracing the technologies, using them on a day to day basis and integrating it into their communications that are smart enough to understand the channel and extract value from it.”
British comedy troupe Monty Python recently posted much of their best video content on YouTube – for free. The video also included an ad for their DVDs on Amazon.com. The results? A 23,000% increase in their online sales through Amazon.
The bands Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails also discovered that giving some content away for free actually increases audience and sales numbers. Two years ago, Radiohead allowed people to decide how much they wanted to pay – from £0 to £5 – for the new album online. Nine Inch Nails also put the first volume of their album Ghosts up online under a creative commons license. If listeners wanted the whole 36 track multi-volume album they were invited to go to the band’s official site to download it for $5.
Image management
Hetherington thinks the new technologies are a double-edged sword for artists. “On the one hand, it provides them with a distribution channel for their work to a greater audience and on the other hand once it is unleashed/ posted onto the web they are handing over control to communities of fans and people.”
Britney Spears’ management tried to exercise some control over the star’s image by attempting to shut down fan sites that were using copyrighted photos. Online communities were outraged and her own fan base felt persecuted and alienated.
It’s not uncommon to see films, television shows, music and art creatively remixed or dubbed on the Internet. In most cases, the original artist has no control over the final hybrid content. For example, it’s unlikely that a YouTube video of Star Wars dubbed with the voice of an East London film gangster was passed to George Lucas for approval.
Even so, it may have gained the film a wider audience and spread goodwill for the latest Star Wars franchise, the Clone Wars.
Digital technologies have done more than just democratised creativity, they have sparked a renaissance in the way creative people communicate with the outside world.
In this new age, content creators must think about which need is greater – total control over passive listeners or an engaged, enthusiastic audience?
Margaret E. Ward is an Irish Times business columnist, blogger margaretward.ie and managing director of Clear Ink.
POQ
Monty Python recently posted much of their best video content on YouTube – for free. The video also included an ad for their DVDs on Amazon.com. The results? A 23,000% increase in their online sales
Popularity: 43% [?]
Before the serious stuff:
“It was 1986; more than halfway through the decade that taste forgot.”
I am sick of people ragging on the 80s, the 70s were far less tasteful.
Now on to the serious stuff. While there is no doubt the rights holders are taking the wrong approach towards the digital age, it is also clear to me that there is no right answer yet.
There are instead some interesting theories about models that may prove successful but in essence the profit-making power of the digital age is still in its infancy and the truly reliable channels will showtemselves over time as various market forces, not least survivalism, leads us towards a workable answer.
For the time being the Radiohead and Python cases are exceptions, which are caused in large part by the pre-existing popularity of the artists and their ability to leverage that.
This is not to ridicule online entrepreneurship. only to question it. We are all so busy rushing to find the hot new way to sell that ample time and effort isn’t being put into finding out if something works.
Of course that last point also holds for how record companies sign and promote artists these days but that’s a debate for another time.
Posted by Emmet Ryan | May 7, 2009, 3:57 pm