Yorke to musicians: don’t let the labels rob you
David Byrne interviews Thom Yorke on the future of music in the latest Wired. Some interesting tidbits from the Radiohead front-man.
Byrne: Are you making money on the download of In Rainbows?
Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales.
Byrne: What advice do you have for bands that are just getting started?
Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don’t sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you’re an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don’t see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.
As unsigned artists (both new undiscovered artists and recently liberated big acts) take Yorke’s advice to dis-intermediate the big labels, it will cause a sea change in the music industry’s value chain. The four major labels control most of the revenue in that business (90% by some measures). It’s theirs to lose…. and lose they will.
NIN remixes site does it right
Recently launched by Trent Reznor, Remix.nin.com is the best template I’ve seen of a fan-focused and fan-driven music experience. The music is available for download as original multitrack audio source files for people to download and remix at will. Thousands of versions have been produced by amateur musicians. As with any large collection of music, some tracks are better than others.
What the site excels at is allowing you to find, listen to, and subscribe to tracks that you actually like. The site is all Flash and has a lot of bells and whistles. To find tracks, you can score and sort remixes by 10 different mood scales (recognizable vs. non-recognizable, humorous vs. serious, ethereal vs. cacophonous, etc.). The playlists are all dynamic (Highest Rated Today, Most Popular of all time, Newest, etc.) and are driven by the fan base. The bonus is that all the dynamic playlists are syndicated via RSS or (even better) via Podcasts that automatically download to iTunes or your iPod. You can find and consume new music however and wherever you want.
Even if artists don’t “open source” their music to fans, music retailers and aggregators could take a cue from this site in terms of the flexibility with which users can discover and consume music. The music industry (and most retail-oriented businesses) still try to sell music via traditional merchandising (iTunes is no exception). But as the trend of “long tail” music consumption continues and web interfaces evolve, consumers will win even as the music industry’s oligopoly wanes.
iPhone browser market share
Net Applications released data showing that the iPhone has already passed up Windows CE in terms of browser share. On one hand, this is a phenomenal feat given iPhone has only been around for 5 months vs. Windows CE for 10 years. There are many, many more Windows CE devices out there but as ComputerWorld points out, the iPhone has the benefit of a better browsing experience and unlimited data plans. However, as one commenter points out, mobile devices make up <0.25% of the entire browser market. iPhone may be destined to be a big fish, but it’s still a very small pond.
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