| Musical Artists As Free Agents? |
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| Home Theater News Music - General News | |
| Written by Jerry Del Colliano | |
| Thursday, 14 August 2003 | |
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Music consumers and AudioRevolution.com readers frequently wonder
why record labels don’t adopt new music technologies more quickly. From
the outsider’s perspective the music business moves in slow and highly
paranoid ways. As for the paranoia, consumers are right – the music
business has long been overly concerned about piracy (remember the
fight over DAT) and now with MP3 files flowing by the millions, they
have reason for real concern. But why can’t the major labels just adopt
DVD-Audio, SACD or Windows Media 9 as a new format and move on? Why
can’t they load up commercial file sharing sites with all of their
catalog songs?
The major reason has a lot to do with the artists and their contracts. Popular musical artists are historically signed to long-term, 7 album deals that are subject to an amazing level of negotiation between the label and the band’s management and or legal team. These deals, just like those in modern day sports (especially the NHL), aren’t always beneficial to either side. AV and PC Technologies move faster than many of these long term contracts can keep up with which causes the troubles that consumers complain about. For example, if a label wants to release an artists’ music on a download site like the new Napster or Apple’s iTunes, they rarely have such a provision in all but the newest record contracts. Because of these omissions the labels need to negotiate with the artists which often means the label has to give up other profitable elements of their business relationship with the artists in order to sell their music online. A group of larger artists are starting to question why they need a label at all much like a free agent testing the open market. Ground breaking musical businessmen (and women) like Prince and Ani DiFranco have shown that they can market and sell their music directly and even with lower volume of music sold they can make more profit. Sources inside the record business tell AudioRevolution.com that the Eagles and their long time manger, Irving Azoff, are planning to release an Eagles studio album on their own. At this point in their careers, The Eagles can promote themselves and their new CD without the help of a label, likely with Multi-Platinum results. Not all artists can pull off going solo and making a profitable venture out of it thus they still need the help of a label. What is needed for the success of both the label and the artist is a more flexible and creative contract that allows better for the sale of their music as technology changes. The fact is, the consumer drives the market and record labels are in the business of selling music – not just CDs. Music today comes in many more formats than before and consumers demand that labels keep up. Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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