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Today's WSJ (subscription required) has a fine piece on "An Inroad for Indie Bands, No Major Label Required" that examines the shifts taking place in the music business:
Before digital technology, an unknown band's best hope of a lucrative career was a record deal with a major label. Fans' only options were the albums in the bins at the local record store and the DJ-driven hits on the radio. Today, affordable recording software and online social networks like MySpace.com offer unsigned bands two things that only a major label could 15 years ago -- a high-quality product and a mammoth distribution channel. And fans, usually the target of broad publicity campaigns, have become active online promoters of their favorite music, bypassing traditional retail outlets -- like the now-defunct Tower Records -- and creating a vast P2P (peer-to-peer) marketplace outside the influence of the major players in the music business. It goes on, analyzing all the new possibilities created for both artists and fans (buy the paper). But one bottom line remains the same: there must be a way to protect the music:
One challenge to indie artists will be reminding the fans -- those who came of age in the Napster era of free downloads -- that music is a protected commodity. Nate Ruess, lead singer for the Format, still trusts the P2P market, however, even though the band's self-produced album was leaked on the Internet two months before release. As a robust online buyer himself, the 24-year-old justifies his optimism: "It's a lot more gratifying to hear a record that you pay for." If the fans agree, more indie bands may be a few downloads away from viable careers.
posted by James DeLong @ 1:21 PM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation
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