23/05/2021

I had drifted apart (both literally and figuratively as i live on a barge) from the music business world for a few decades. I come from a world where musician were doing promotion through gigging (I know, difficult for the time being) and advertising was done through words of mouth: band started supported by their close friends and if they were good, words got out, the circle widened and they built an audience. After this period where I stayed away completely from the music business what I witnessed when I came back to it earlier this year (to help meine guten Freunde Golem Dance Cult) was not the best sight :

• music is now more than ever considered as a simple commodity (or a soundtrack for a dance routine on what the junge Leute call TikTok?)

• Internet and social media/tools were supposed to cut the middle man and help diffusion of music for the musicians (remember the argument in the Napster case) but it seems to me there are more middle men than ever now. A whole ecosystem of middle men has been created and l;et loose on unsuspecting musicians....

• save for a few passionate people, it is now becoming the land of "rap and honey" (to paraphrase the band Ministry) in terms of scammer who propose "amazing deal and out of this world diffusion" which are actually a lot of time rebranding of free distribution services or shameless self-promotion. I'm not even referencing the level of knowledge of the music business those "intermediary" have (Charles had an interesting email exchanges a few week ago with a "label" who did not know what was the difference between recording contract, publishing deal and license but wanted him to provide them exclusivity on the album and pay for diffusion on Deezer and iTunes).... gottverdammt!

• "new deal" proposed by established actors are so unfair as to make the Faustian pact looks like a creative common license. Established label now proposed 360° deal  as a first option to new signing act. What does it means? It means that label get a piece of the pie of everything artist are doing be it: concert revenue, merchandising, publishing and recording, for the whole universe, for all eternity... (Faustian indeed) 

The saving grace is that there is stil a fair amount of passionate people with great ideas and the will to change the status-quo. I'm currently making a white list of those (in my little black book), and  will consider sharing for those interested. 

....end of rant... for today! 

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