Doing it for the Fans

The dream of many musicians is to land the coveted “deal,” the record deal to be exact. I remember dreaming as a teenager of “getting signed” to Columbia records, home of many of my favourite artists at the time. I was impressed by the calibre of performer and the swanky marketing their artists had. Nowadays, it seems the role of labels is changing in the industry they've essentially created. Upon reading the blogs of colleagues commenting on the issues surrounding copyright, I see two major ideas that are central to all of them as fans.  They love music and they want free and equal access to it. Period.  When I say free, I don’t mean they are unwilling to pay, in fact it has been quite the contrary. Although they have downloaded music, Derek, at Underground Radio, David at Picture of Interest, and Meg at Animated Films, all report that they gladly and intentional purchase music only from their favourite artists, as a show of support.  In addition to this, they buy merchandise and attend live shows.  I talk a lot about the agency of the artist in determining how the music reaches the fans.  This is not done with out a synergistic marketing network that is in place solely for the distribution of music.  These include, radio, music television, and good ol’ fashioned word of mouth.  As long as the can artists get music to the fans, I see that other aspects of this industry are just as relevant if not more so the artists themselves.

            I often listen to Toronto’s Jazz FM, which has listeners from all over the world via the Internet, and then there’s satellite radio. Follow blogger David posted an interesting suggestion about a music subscription service to appease the label hounds (I have wondered about this one since during the Napster days.). Vevo and YouTube have pretty much replaced music television channels, most of the music channels still have awards telecasts, and documentaries that cover artists.  Yes we can stream MP3s from our car stereos, but these “old” still provide effective outlets to experience music from all eras by people who are just as in love with music as we are. My girl Becky from Psyched About Music commented on my last post singing the praises of artist centric independent labels and rightly so! With the web, these labels have the chance to give artist great exposure at very little cost. Will they need to rely so much on copyrights? I don't think so. One of my recent discoveries (being a mommy, I kind of live under a rock, okay a play pen, but it’s okay.) was a video of a live performance of her song “Breathe Me” by Australian singer Sia in a radio station.  

            What a perfect example of the artist being simultaneously local and international in a single performance.  Then here’s American pop “idol” Kelly Clarkson singing a cover of the same song in concert.  Now in the spirit of sharing, I’m all for artist-to-artist acknowledgement of work, but most music competitions are and YouTube stars are dedicated to cover songs (and to her credit Sia has song on The Great Gastby soundtrack). My colleagues have caused me to question, is there really a need to get a handle on something that is always moving?  As it gets more and more difficult to enforce restrictive laws, there are many ways artists can get their music out that demand new approaches by the big record labels.