It was announced this week that UMG (Universal Music Group) would be partnering with various financial backers to build hotels that would house a new musical experiences for its guests with performances from acts signed to their label. I, of course, chimed in and made various posts about it on twitter to raise awareness. But then I got to thinking…do indie artists even care about this?
Through my 13 years of being a music producer I have come across just about every type of artist you can think of. From the ones who are organized down to the ones who don’t even know about Distro Kid. Yet, they all seem to have one thing in common. They really don’t know the business, and frankly don’t seem to care. That bothers me. As a creative I understand getting lost into your work and only focusing on building a fan base to express yourself to. However, what I can’t seem to catch on is never having an interest in how to make money from it or even what’s happening to the industry. Its almost the equivalent of working at Apple and knowing nothing of the new iPhone. Customers would look at you insane for not evening knowing how many megapixels are in the camera, let alone the name of the product. So why do artists of today, in majority, don’t care about these types of discussions? I think it may come down to not even being aware.
Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, made a statement awhile ago telling artists that if they want to make more money from their platform that they would have to release more music frequently. For those who understood, they were irate because you’re telling them that that have to force feed a system to gain attention of Spotify’s users. For these same musicians, artists, and labels a lot of us focus on quality over quantity. No one would ever tell Prince that he has to release 4 albums a year to make money even though Prince’s output would actually allow him to do that with ease. Yet, for a lot of the artists that I interact with they simply didn’t…….get it.
I’m lost, if you post about being a fan of Nipsey Hussle, Jay Z, or even Master P (I may be showing my age) then you know that they preach ownership and if you understand that then how come no indie artists are having an actual dialogue about launching their own DSP (digital streaming platform) in response? I may be asking a question that’s going above most artists’ heads but then I always think, it shouldn’t.
The lack of awareness is simply the result of only one thing I can think of. That may be the average indie artist doesn’t think that anything that happens in the industry will affect them. Yet, every other week, another artist jumps on social media ranting about how the system is rigged.
I wonder when they’ll investigate why…..
