Musicadium Blog

I have been thinking more and more about just EXACTLY how far we have come in the past 13 years. Not just in Music, but everything.  But we are all about music, so seriously, just how far have we come? 

This served as a bookend reminder for me.

I see articles about The Presidents of the United States getting in on the iPhone market - people can now stream their 4 album discography on their iPhones for $3 USD unlimited access.

I have been around for the handover from Vinyl records to Cassette Tapes, to Compact Discs and now on to digital medium.  No other generation has seen that amount of change ever in terms of sound recordings.

My journey of listening to music began as a 13 year old in Rockhampton, Queensland - 1996. The Presidents of the United States’s self-titled album was one of the very first albums I ever purchased.  My experience with music began with the radio.  I started out listening to the local FM station, which failed to connect me to any music that I can remember.  One day, I decided to move the dial over to Triple J, Australia’s youth network.  Now, it just happened to be Aus Music Month at the time.  I was suddenly filled with the amazing sounds of bands like The Living End, Regurgitator, Custard, The Superjesus, Tumbleweed, Silverchair, Spiderbait and more.  This was my only method of finding out about new bands and music, as well as analogue methods - magazines and friends.  No computer connected to the internet to even think about that.  The Internet was invented, but nowhere within my reach.

Progress 2 years ahead.  I am still listening to Triple J.  I get my first modem - a 33.6kbps modem that pings and whistles and screams at me to connect, albeit slowly.  Fantastic times were had looking at pictures (no, not dirty ones) on the internet - ooooo! aaaaaaaaaahhh!  Multimedia!  The music industry was very much still in the major record label mode of find band, make hit, become rockstars!  MP3s were not an enemy yet - little did they know…

2 years later, 1999.  It’s official.  I have decided that Music is my life.  I am 16 and I have begun to learn the drums.  I am still listening to TripleJ, I am reading about my favourite bands on the internet, but there are still no real gatekeepers to filter good stuff down to punters!  Napster really has it’s claws into internet users.  Other P2P software such as Limewire, KaZaa, Audiogalaxy and Morpheus crop up after Lars Ulrich from Metallica whinges a lot about Napster and it gets shut down.

1999 through 2004 - The awkward years of music and internet - a lot of development going on, but the internet and the music industries really had not learnt how to work together yet/didn’t know how to exploit each other for mutual gain.  The Dark ages, really - the music industry really doesn’t know what to do with itself and was still smarting from the P2P fiasco.  Majors start merging as they can’t sustain themselves anymore due to P2P.  I am playing in bands, finding out about bands via TV shows and Movies, as labels start pushing their bands to get their music synced as another revenue stream.  Savvy independent bands and bands on Indie labels start to rise to the top as they take up on this internet thing as a promtional tool.  I start a localised Rockhampton internet forum, called Hoist Rocky Online.  Never thought it would be anything more than a few people in Rockhampton coming together to talk about a few bands.  P2P goes to next level and “Torrenting” of whole albums, TV shows, software and movies becomes more prevalent, it’s popularity running concurrently with the advent of affordable broadband internet access.

2004-Present - High speed broadband internet access, iTunes, MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, iPhones, Bluetooth, Twitter, Social Media Marketing.  Convergence and Web 2.0.  Social Media marketing is on the rise, Radio and TV advertising budgets on the decline. I began to put on shows in Rockhampton, using MySpace and the web forum - loads of success!  I move to Brisbane and get a job at Musicadium!  CD Sales are down, WAY down.  Traditional record label models dying rapidly.  Major marketing money still working, though no longer as effective.  Music consumers spoiled for choice.  P2P still a problem, though frowned upon. Bands are making massive amounts of sales in territories they have never played live in, via marketing themselves on social media sites and by being written about by blogs.  Niche markets are not so unreachable any more. Digital Distribution comes to the fore - allows artists to take control of their own royalties and earn money for themselves and market themselves!

I don’t think that we as a society realise what a revolution we are going through at the moment.  When artists can manage their own royalties and make a decent living from organising their own bands and make their own fans, sans record label.  The internet and convergence of technology has changed, within 15 years, the way that we interact with the world.  Environmentalism has meant that more people are turning to the internet for news instead of newspapers and magazines, so as to prevent unnecessary destruction of trees and larger carbon footprint.

Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way as a band.  Be an early adopter - if you aren’t reading blogs, writing blogs, using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and searching for new ways to benefit your band through the internet, you really need to catch up!!  We aren’t in flying cars just yet, but who wants to be that band left in the dark ages and who hasn’t embraced the new culture and models of the music industry?  Hell, this guy believes bloggers will become what ‘used to be’ called record labels.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under General, Marketing & Promotions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.