I have come to a conclusion after two days in hell thinking about the pains of beeing a smll independent record company.
1.The major labels started their suicide two decades ago, long before filesharing was a fact. This, because of reasons explained in my earlier posts.
(To blame: The companies themself)
2. The same major labels refuse to implement new ways to make money, holding on to the physical record, that we all know will be history in just a couple of years, not because of filesharing alone, but because of the physical media becoming obsolete.
(To blame: The companies themself)
3. The same major labels keep holding on to a very unhelathy way of manipulating the audience and market through collaborations with TV-channels, marketing completly undemanded artists with force throuch channels like “Fame Factory, Eurovision Contest and “Idol”. This is pissing the consumers off. Being treated like “consumer-caddle” expected just to recieve, accept and swallow what the major labels and TV-stations present before them without questioning. Shure, it works, for now (by shere marketing force), but the lifespan and sale-cycles of those artists is very short and there is no relation on an emotional level created between those artists and the audience. So it will fail.
(To blame: The companies themself)
None of the above has anything to do with people downloading music files from the net.
Well maby a little… but the major labels has been neglecting the signals from new consumer demands and habits, they could have adjusted their business model to fit the audience new behaviour. But they just wont adapt. So they will die. Buy self chosen suicide, really.
(To blame: The companies themself)
This is an illustrating example:
-Lets say that a salesman of meat suddenly discovered that no one enters his store anymore to buy it. He reads in the papers that people now demands vegetables, and they want to buy them over the net.
Then the salesman has two choices:
1. Continue to sell meat from his store, spending all his money on advertising, trying to convince the consumers that “meat is way much better than vegetables” and it should be sold from inside a store.
2. The man could start selling vegetables over the net.
Wich one of the options above would you choose?
A traditional record company would choose the first option and go bancrupt. That´s what they´re doing right now, as a matter of fact.
An untraditional recordcompany would choose the second option and get rich as a troll.
Simple.
Still, we are in the middle of this process.
Me as a small indepentend label manager, will take so much beating before the old system is gone and a new one is established.
It is a painful process. Forgive my hard words that sometimes has to come out, it is just my symptoms of frustration.
A brief convsation with a very wise man from inside the Filesharers community gave me some hope today.
I´m definitly getting into vegetables. Hoping to keep my head above water until it starts to sell.
love
/Stefan
