A Think Piece onThe Music Shitness
The music business is a shitty place. Anyone who's read about it, let alone participated in it, knows this to be a cold, hard fact.
Every major 'system' built for royalty collection, musical works exploitation and artist promotion is disjointed, archaic, and/or entirely nontransparent.
Haphazard business infrastructure aside, let's not forget the overtly predatory nature in which its people operate on a daily basis.
Executives, A&Rs, managers, lawyers and creatives alike, have learned to exist in a cesspool of sexual misconduct, collusion, violence, clout chasing, and utter terror tactics, as if it's just a regular Monday at the office.
The way the traditional music business works today quite literally makes no sense, and only makes "cents" for the 1%.
Yet still, 99% of creators feel they must fight for their spot in "the business" and its platforms. They chase algorithms not built for them, they chase executives who don't respond, they chase accolades that were made up by other people, they chase a carrot that will forever dangle just a bit out of their reach (even though THEY are the actual talent!)
New music platforms feverishly 'claim' to support the emerging creator economy, yet most are simply throwing new tech paint on old, dusty, industry bones. I suggest: Read the terms fully and see if you can consistently reach a human before signing up to anything 'new industry.'
Companies are only just now building tools to 'support' creators because "independent" is the quickest growing sector in the global music marketplace. We're a whole 50% of the marketplace now!
Where were some of these companies five years ago when "indie" was less than 5%? That's right, they didn't care. There wasn't enough market share to care. Which is fine! That's just business.
Ahhh typical music business, only caring when something is hot!
Most people don't think about how rules were just made by other people, and that if they wanted to, they too could create their own rules (within legal reason of course). You only need one 'crazy' person to believe wholeheartedly in a new way, and just a few others to believe in that new way too.
For the past 4 years, this is the approach I've taken at my company. I'm most certainly the 'crazy enough' person to execute creating an entirely new music industry from scratch, with many verticals. And now 5,000 other people also believe in the better music industry we are creating together.
The people are the power and the purpose. We took our time getting to know people, instead of rushing to raise and scale. People are an integral part of what we do; now and forever.
Imagine a music business where the business people understand and uphold that you, the creator, are their partner.
Partners share, partners win together, partners change the world.
We're bringing back artist development too.