Niche Music and the Long Tail

I came across another thought-provoking blog posting today on Anita Elberse’s article titled Should You Invest in the Long Tail?. The post is on SpringBoardMedia and points out that “…the real truth of the long-tail is simply that in a business environment that allows for more long-tail content and transactions, more value will accrue to those companies that exploit an aggregate of long-tail content.”

Kind of a “duh!” moment but it only makes sense – if businesses stock a variety of both popular and niche items, chances are you’ll sell more of all of them. When discussing current technologies and their effects on media, goods, etc, it’s too easy to turn it into a polarized topic:

1. Current technologies are a salvation for niches and will be the demise of mass-produced/marketed items.
2. The long tail is overhyped and isn’t going to make a difference in the long run.

To me, right now it’s important to study the nuances and get people to report on their own habits and experiences, which is what Chris Anderson’s book and blog and Elberse’s article do to an extent. The SpringBoardMedia post looks at a nuance that was new to me, the idea that some of the real long tail financial winners will still be bigger stores who have the name recognition, the ability to hold/license a large variety of popular and niche items, and probably a good discovery or social networking aspect to make it easier to sift through the store’s items.

What’s easily lost in the long tail discussion is that most really aren’t focusing on the two polarized points of view listed above, but that it provides for an improvement over the industrial model of market and social production and interaction. This Common Craft video pretty much sums it up for me:

More ice cream!

Defining Niche Music

I’ve found myself having to frequently explain what I mean by niche music without yet knowing how narrow of a niche I’ll be focusing on in my final project. Right now I’m using a broad definition: anything that’s not mainstream. Have you looked at the Billboard charts lately? Are these the songs you listen to? When/if you turn on the radio, do most of the FM stations satisfy your listening desires? If not, as far as I’m concerned, you are into some kind of niche music. Please go ahead and take my survey, you qualify and you’ll be doing me a big favor.

To add to the problem with defining niche music, a lot of music genres that used to be niches are now much more widespread – hip hop, indie rock, alternative, etc – and a lot of artists that aren’t popular in the mainstream are categorized in these genres. What I’m curious about is how people are discovering music if it’s not promoted by the mainstream, so for now, it’s niche enough for me. In the survey I’ve asked people to use whatever phrase they think is appropriate to define the types of niche music they listen to. Low fi, shoegazer, underground hip hop, classic punk, old skool, noise rock, whatever, I’m guessing no one likes labeling but other than generating a longer list of individual musicians/bands that people listen to, it has to be done.

The whole project is really just about getting individuals to put in their own words how they interact with music that isn’t heavily promoted by mass media. There are a lot of preconceptions around about various types of music and the people who listen to it; as well as all the preconceptions about Web 2.0 phenomenon. For a study to be successful I think it needs to be rather open-ended and do some data collection about how individuals are actually finding/listening to/sharing/making/promoting music. It’s easy to theorize but plenty of that has already been done about the state of music online and what will happen with the long tail and niches. I just want to look at a variety of specific examples grounded in reality and see what pops up.

“What’s the Future for Musicians” Seminar Highlights

I attended the Future of Music Coalition’s seminar this past Monday, here’s a bit of summary and highlights:

• Social Networking can work really well for musicians, but it generally takes a huge amount of time and effort. Not a huge revelation but something that was a common thread in most of the panels. It left me wondering what entities will/are developing to do this – obviously bloggers, fans on networking sites, and a rash of other businesses – but what will they really look like in the long run. Musicians can do it themselves but I’m guessing many don’t have the time or desire to do this kind of self-promotion.
• Marcy Rauer Wagman’s excellent response to a comment from an audience member/musician who was upset about music piracy: The old paradigm for musicians used to be 1) play locally 2) get signed to a record label 3) the industry takes everything and musician gets nothing, or even ends up owing money. New paradigm: self-produce, distribute and promote and keep the revenue stream/trickle for yourself. Still not optimal – and obviously doesn’t apply to many of those who have made it really big – but generally an improvement, especially for niche musicians.
• Something I was totally ignorant about was that terrestrial radio only pays royalties for songs it plays to the composer; online radio pays both the performer and composer. Seems to have developed as the entrenched music industry sought to fight competition from online services, though of course the fact that performers aren’t compensated by terrestrial radio stems from a legacy of greed.
• Legislation around royalty rates for online broadcasting is pending and important to keep track of for those of us who’d like there to be a good variety of webcasters around. Per Ken Freedman, webcasters are only exempted from outlandish royalty rates (often 70-200% of an online radio station’s actual revenue) if they have less than 230 concurrent streams.

A great seminar overall by an organization that’s passionate about keeping current technologies open and available for all to use fairly. From their site:

Building a Musicians’ Middle Class
Eight years ago, Future of Music Coalition was conceived as an organization that would work to build structures to create a musicians’ middle class. It was clear to us that, while the music industry has made a handful of artists very wealthy, the vast majority of musicians live gig-to-gig, unable to afford the basic protections and securities of life that allow them to continue making their art and, equally important, without a way to educate themselves to break out of this cycle.
Since our 2000 founding, we have focused on elements that would allow musicians to better participate in the issues that affect their livelihood: encouraging the development of digital distribution models that reduce costs and increase connections between musicians and their fans; examining new business models that create more equal partnerships between creators, labels and consumers; fighting against payola and media consolidation that reduce artists’ chances of radio airplay; advocating for net neutrality provisions to ensure that all legal Internet traffic is treated equally; and helping musicians navigate the often-confusing world of health insurance coverage. We want musicians’ labor to be valued, we want them to be compensated for their work, we want them to understand how the myriad laws and regulations affect them, and we want them to have access to basic health insurance and medical services