Artists do the rights thing
By Janelle Brown, Salon Magazine
August 11, 1999 - In an overly air-conditioned Marriott ballroom on Times
Square, nearly 1,000 music industry executives, Internet entrepreneurs and record label
representatives settled into Jupiter Communications' Plug.in conference last month to
debate "The Future of Music." As suit after suit clambered onto the stage to
promulgate concepts like "data mining," "secure music distribution"
and "monetizing radio," the rapt audience took notes on the ways record labels
might reap the riches of the Net.
Meanwhile, in a much smaller room upstairs, Marc Geiger -- founder of
Lollapalooza and now CEO of the start-up ARTISTdirect -- was evangelizing his own idea:
Musicians should maintain their own Web sites and sell merchandise directly to their fans.
With Beastie Boy Mike D. in tow, Geiger promoted his company's ability to build a
"direct relationship" between musicians and fans, without necessarily getting
the record label involved at all.
There's a conflict brewing here. Record labels are quickly getting hip to
digital distribution and the promotional power of the Net, and are hoping to monopolize
every moneymaking angle of the online world. On the other hand, new online marketing
networks like ARTISTdirect and Electric Artists are encouraging
artists to reap those profits for themselves.
Who actually owns the digital rights to Web sites, fan databases and online
merchandising?
"When something is new and is there to be captured, I don't know why it's
assumed that the label should be owning it," posits Geiger. "The Net channel as
we see it spawns multiple new revenue opportunities, including the opportunity to have a
relationship with the fan. Artists have the ability to forcibly claim those rights
today."
Traditionally, record labels have brought in the lion's share of their revenues
by selling records, often using Draconian contracts to minimize the artists' take of the
profits. Record labels took ownership of the music, its marketing and sales, reserving
only a tiny percentage of the take for the artists. So, the artists made their money
by merchandising ancillary products, like concert tickets or T-shirts.
But the rise of MP3s and freely available digital music online has record labels
reassessing their business models. If you give the music away, how does the record label
generate revenues? Over and over again at Plug.in, record labels advocated the idea of
making money from products that have traditionally been ancillary to their business: those
tickets, T-shirts, and other promotional gimmicks. Some labels represented at the
conference said they would be willing to offer downloadable songs in the MP3 format free
of charge, but would demand demographic information and an e-mail address in exchange --
valuable data that can be used for marketing and promotional purposes across the label.
Related Links:
Who
has the right to a band's fan database?
