Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry

Music without the music industry (labels etc) is the internet without aggregators (reddit etc)

What happened on the internet before content aggregators (or before you had access to them)? you'd see a cool website and tell a friend the website address or you'd send a link to a friend and they might pass it on if they cared enough, they might not. That's a few people, unless the website was seriously incredible it would never be seen by maybe a hundred people. Now with sites like reddit a "pretty cool" website can be seen by millions of people.

Music is like that. There are so many artists that produce great music but nobody has ever heard of them because their "network" extends to maybe a couple of friends and friends friends and some of their friends friends friends, unless they get a big break (like shared by an already famous artist) they'll remain pretty small, forever. I bet everyone here knows of an artist they like but who couldn't make a living from their music, whether that's a friend or someone they've seen in an obscure Youtube video.

The music industry (big labels) provide huge value to artists, so many artists would never have the reach they have now if they didn't have labels. Would Justin Bieber be known by hundred of millions if he was still making songs on Youtube?

The idea that sites like kickstarter are the future for creative endeavours is partly true, they can help fund some projects and open up artists to new ways to fund their work, but they can't replace the music industry. Very few people care enough about music to not need to be told who to listen to, or to invest in their favourite artists, they need to be given music to choose from (see: top 40) and decide what they like and buy it.

Things like selling a CD for $10 or a download for $1 are what fund the music industry, if the music industry dies so does the way we consume music. No longer will we be able to just consume, we'll have to find it too. I want the option to seek out new music, I want the option to fund artists I love that want to be independent, I don't want it to be a necessity.

    Music is so much more than sounds – 
    how else do you explain the Gathering of the Juggalos?

marketing

I agree with nancyhua. I sort of use "patronage" as short hand, don't let it confuse you. I think to the fan, they must not feel like it's pure patronage... they should get some sort of concrete interaction or recognition back from artist. There should be real value there for fan for this to sustain as a model.

That's not short hand at all - patrons of the arts, going back to antiquity, generally got a private performance of the work they commissioned in addition to the opportunity to fraternise with the artist. They typically also branded themselves onto the work somehow.

My argument is there aren't enough dollars seeking that experience today as there are consumption dollars (which the industry has gotten used to). In the past, monetising that long tail of demand was prohibitive. Today it is not. As a single example, I would never contribute to support a musician yet my lifetime worth to the music industry is at least tens of thousands of dollars (including concert tickets).

There is enough money in that delta to fund the artists, lobby legislators, and enforce the status quo. That's the problem. If you aren't re-routing that demand you're proposing a nice but idealistic hypothetical.

Did you read the article? That's kind of the point he's making, that they're the start.

Yeah I, would agree they're modern versions of crowd patronage. I do think though that in the future, musicians will have a more fleshed out platform catered to their needs. With their music, community, CRM admin, etc.