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Wired has a great article about Nettwerk Music Group, a Canadian music management company (they manage Barenaked Ladies, among others) and their ideas on how to promote artists in the new “digital world” (+2).
Specifically Wired mentions one idea from Terry McBride, the CEO:
“Let’s give away the ProTools files on MySpace. Vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. We’ll let the fans make their own mixes.” The room falls quiet. Musicians usually record their instruments and vocals on separate tracks; the producer and mixer combine those tracks into a finished product. McBride wants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use them like Lego bricks to create something all their own.
This is exactly what I was talking about in my post Self-mixed MP3s back in April. Give people control over the music and see what they can do with it!
But the coolest part of the article touches on something I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks: Bands as corporations:
“Eventually, a major band could be its own public company.” The key, he adds, sounding like an overzealous investment banker, is that the value of a band would be measured like a stock and would receive capitalization in expectation of future earnings. “At that point, even a band selling 100,000 units a year becomes profitable,” McBride says.
How long is it going to take for a talented artist or band to go their own way, put their music online and make a business out of selling to their own market/audience ?
Hopefully not long, because once it happens, the music industry as we know it today will be turned upside down.
