We Have Seen The Future Of Rock And Roll…And It’s Complicated

At the end of last year I was asked by The Word magazine to write a feature on what the future of music and its experiences are likely to be. Specifically, to look at emerging trends and extrapolate 2 – 3 years forward. What's emerging is best summed up by the title the editor chose: “We Have Seen The Future Of Rock And Roll…And It’s Complicated”.

We all know that revolt and disorder are rocking the business. What’s fascinating is the breadth of imagination being applied to the problems. Whether they can be applied fast enough, we'll soon know. In the short time since publication, my predictions are becoming fact with growing frequency.

The full article can be read here.

Here is a summary:

Introduction
Who’s going to pay for free music? Canadian musicians are proposing a $5 monthly levy on every Internet and wireless account. Many companies are relying on advertisers: We 7 gives away music with an ad attached. iMeem and Last.fm try to build audiences of millions so that advertising volume will pay the bills.

But why pay for a banner ad if you can be a patron of the arts? That’s Nokia’s approach (they invented the ringtone after all) with their new Comes With Music service.

Are these the new ways to do business? Nobody really knows because this is a brand new game. But when even the squares on Wall Street have figured it out and publicly downgrade a music label’s share value, the problem is very serious.

If the music labels can embrace convenience and customer behaviour and learn to capitalise on the new ways people experience music, then the next few years could be an open frontier seldom seen since the late ‘60s. Screw it up, though, and it’s possible that within two or three years the multinational owners of the major labels will break them up and parcel them off to anyone with a taste for adventure.

Music Labels
The 360 deal, as executed by Madonna: many executives think it’s the way forward for the business, though Jessica Koravas, European Manager for AEG, owners of The O2, says, “I expect there will be some spectacular failures as some players discover that the other guy's job is harder than it looks.” It’s not even a new model. Motown was a prime example of an independent record company aligned with Jobete publishing and organizing the Motown Revue tours. But the 360 Deal looks modern and sexy.

To those not seduced by big advances and the myths in rap videos, it’s possible to conduct a career outside the music label system. The artist-as-business-unit tends to favour intelligent, arty “legacy bands” such as Gang of Four. Their bassist Dave Allen blogs regularly and in November published an intriguing manifesto which can be summed up as: make it cheap, make it quick, post MP3s as music gets rehearsed and recorded, enrol the most rabid fans as marketing agents, partner only with an indie label. Gang of Four’s activities invoke the experimental punk spirit that created them.

In 2008, expect to see music labels be simultaneously quite pig-headed and embrace the new reality. Though the shouting will continue over the necessity of DRM it will probably disappear. How to monetise the anarchy of p2p has been an ongoing backroom exploration for most of last year and it’s highly possible that a license service will become reality this year, with music downloaders paying a monthly subscription to legalise their ongoing file sharing activities.

Live Performance
While Prince got the publicity for selling his album to The Mail On Sunday (who chose to give it away) the real innovation was doing a 21-night tour in one location.

The appetite to see famous bands that quit before you were born just can’t be sated. CD reissue programmes have made everyone contemporary and there is no such thing as a forgotten group – even Shed Seven can reform for a tour. To keep things lively, one of the band members will dissect the tour on his blog.

As managers learn there is money to be made from controlling their band’s online and mobile concert activities, the activity increases between fan, band and show. At the recent O2 Keane show, ticket holders were asked beforehand to sign up for band content and could then stream or download videos from the show afterwards. There were 30,000 downloads.

In 2008, it’s a certainty that other major artists will announce a residency at places like The O2. If all the greedy parts in the payment chain can agree, you will be able to buy the tickets via mobile phone.

As artists finally accept that there is an unending appetite for live recordings that audience members are happy to provide, there will be a growth in “official” concert recordings. (Do you want your live experience enshrined as a shaky mobile phone video on YouTube when you can easily provide an HD version with stereo sound?)

Mobile and Internet
After years of promises, the Internet is finally moving to the mobile phone and that will mean big changes for music. By 2010 it’s estimated there will be 4 billion mobiles in the world, dwarfing the number of computers. There’s no official news, but rumours continue that Google is developing a gPhone, betting their business can grow just as big.

Phones like the gPhone, iPhone and some Nokias use wi-fi for Internet connection. It means music and videos can download faster than on 3G and the evangelists say that soon not just mobile music and video downloads will be common, but Internet radio, live concert TV and on-demand videos. The only downside is the cost of all that data. Mobile operators hate low charges.

2008 is a transition year. The iPhone’s functionality and originality has made a big impact. By year-end expect to see more mobiles being sold as media players that also make phone calls. Nokia will try to become your indispensable mobile assistant, storing Facebook profile, interactive contact list, photo books, maps and music in one place for easy access. Comes With Music won’t be a big success but Tesco Music might. The country’s biggest supermarket has quietly become a very successful mobile network. They dominate physical music sales, so why not move it online and onto your mobile?

Radio
The UK government wants us to switch from FM to digital radio. We don’t care. Even the biggest digital-only station has only 3% of the nation listening and the City boys bankrolling the digital radio expansion are starting to pull the plugs, with Virgin already slashing its digital-only stations. Instead, we’re listening to radio on the Net. Six of the Top Ten iTunes podcasts are regular BBC shows.

A further problem is commercial radio’s seeming inability to compete or collaborate with companies building Internet broadcast empires. They’re fixated on competing with the BBC, beholden to shareholders who want them to consolidate into two or three consortiums. There’s even the launch this year of C4 radio, a public broadcast competitor to the BBC.

The big issue for radio is to work out whether it’s in the content business or the delivery business. Radio needs to concentrate on reaching audiences in the ways they want to be reached, not in the ways it wants to reach them.

Digital radio will continue to suffer and the government may have to review and revise their digital radio strategy. Meanwhile, Internet radio keeps growing.