Zen and the Inaudible Podcast, or Why the Record Industry is Doomed, Pt. II

What if you posted a podcast and nobody heard it?

Such is the Zen limbo in which my first Podcast now exists. Urged on by my friend Tom Watson and inspired by conversations with my friend Fred Wilson I decided to produce a podcast.

My idea was a virtual radio show called Down in Flood, dedicated to the quest of dowsing for the wellsprings of American music.

It was a natural. Easy to do. People like it when I post about American music. I have a small home recording studio at my disposal. And I have done radio before (I co-produced and co-hosted a 9 hour retrospective, the WCKR-FM P.Funk Radio Thang, back in 1989).

I set about recording the first episode--overly long at 68 minutes with too few mike checks and certainly not as tightly programmed as is should be, but a very decent start. The idea behind the first show was to explore Bob Dylan's Old, Weird America--to borrow the title phrase from critic Griel Marcus' brilliant little book about Dylan's Basement Tapes: Dylan's music and the old time American music that inspired it.

Then I looked about to see what it would take to post the show legitimately. The answer was nearly $1000 spent for basic licenses from ASCAP, BMI, and Harry Fox. And even then I might not have paid all the right people.

A grand is a lot of dough to spend on a lark like one podcast that may come to nothing and was certainly undertaken without the intent of remuneration. The truth is that if I post the file my guess is that no more than 100 people will download it and that exposure to the music in it will spur at least one or two, maybe more, CD sales--especially since I would diligently post a playlist/discography linking to buying opportunities for every commercially available recording I play. So I'm hardly robbing money from the likes of Sony Music or Dylan's publishing company.

But instead of being made part of a potential word-of-mouth podcasting army, I'm treated as if I were a professional broadcast outlet in the business of selling advertising against the audience the podcast is expected to attract.

Instead of offering me help--clearing my use of the music in exchange the inclusion of ads and links authorized by the companies, links that could drive potential buyers to sites where purchases can be made--instead of such innovative ideas, the music industry is offering me a prohibitively expensive license to ensure that my podcast will remain an invisible link on my Website.

All this comes at a time when the music business is struggling to find new channels beyond radio and MTV Networks for marketing music to an elusive buying audience. No wonder the record industry is doomed!

Comments

[Tony Alva]

Can you give us any clues as to how one might find the invisible link on your website that one could accidentally click on and hear your podcast?

I have to laugh when professional sports franchise owners cry about their money woes, how greedy players are etc..., since it's nothing but a complete karmic turn around on them from decades of their own exploitation of players. Nobody feels sorry for them. Yes, the players want and got a better equity split over the past 20 years and maybe it's challenging the leagues to adjust their business models for this balance, but they'll find a way to do it. They just have to embrace the fact that gone are the days of compensating a player at 1% of what he's bringing in.

The record industry has this same problem along with others that make it almost impossible for them to avoid a complete die off. In addition to artists demanding better equity split, technology is the monster eating everything in sight for them. Now, one might think that it's all about file sharing and such (see A VC blog), but I think It’s more related to the cheap cost of production, duplication, and distribution (File sharing indeed hurts label bottom line, but it hurts distributors more.)

Artists no longer need the big budgets that record companies have saddled them with for decades to create the indentured servitude relationship they have used to make crap loads of cash on which they shared very little of. Even if the record companies were cash heavy again, I really don't see artists flocking to them to sign one of their pawnshop like deals. Why should they when they can get a better risk sharing deal from someone else. The cat’s out of the bag now. We know what it COSTS to produce, duplicate, and distribute a CD. They can no longer lie to us about it. Nobody cries tears for the big record companies much like they don't for the pro sports franchise owners. They both ripped off those who actually earned the money for years and now the table is turned. Sports franchises will survive, I don't think the record companies as we knew them will. I think the only part of the current model that will survive is distribution.

I just finished a nine-month album project that was recorded in my basement studio and mixed at Smoke & Mirrors Sound in NYC. The clients produced their own packaging artwork, and the master has gone to duplication for less than $1.30 per disc. Production related costs including travel were roughly $2500 for tracking and mix. Add that to duplication costs and you’ve got 2,000 copies of a thirteen song CD packaged and shrink wrapped for a little more than $5,000. I can only guess that with a record company development deal this kind of thing would have meant some or all of the following:

- Coughing up artist publishing rights, accepting a huge advance against future sales that would have to be paid back whether the disc sold or not
- Using one of the record companies big studios to record in
- Mandated use of label contracted producer (at artist expense of course)
- Sole label discretion of what tracks make the final disc.

Gee, why doesn’t that sound like an attractive deal?

The distribution part is one where, yeah you could do it yourself by leveraging the internet and other methods (selling at gigs, pressing store owners, etc…), but in order to get access to real sales channels, well, that’s a mafia like nut that’s tough to crack. At least their bidding on YOUR package, not one that finally squeezes out of the ass of Sony Music.

My hope is that after it’s all bottomed out, a much more equitable, approachable, and open business emerges no matter what kind of format we’re listening to music on. Until then it’ll be more doom and gloom for those old Soviet’s at the record companies.

“Manager’s doin’ time in jail, his big Cadillac is up for sale…”

-Peter Case-

[jackson]

Jason - any chance posting the titles from your limbotic podcast, I'd like to run out to the shops and buy the records on vinyl.....I know, I sound like a broken one!

[chervokas]

Ironically, among the things you're not supposed to be allowed to do is post playlists and otherwise give information in advance about what is on a podcast. The industry has this whole thing so sadly ass backwards.

Now if I were a Dylan fan I might want to look here

And if I wanted to hear a much tighter, cleaner, better produced virtual half hour radio program about Elvis, Chuck Berry, and the birth of rock and roll I might look here.

But that's just me.

BTW, I here Sundazed has nice new vinyl out on some of the classic Dylan stuff. And here's and irony for ya--I'm having such trouble w/ the Springsteen DualDisc that I may just by the new album on LP now that its out on vinyl.

[jackson]

Thanks!
I think I just might go out and buy myself a vinyl copy of 'Devils and Dust'. Maybe I'm way out of touch, and crying too loudly in public, because I thought only Dance music, and the odd indie band pressed vinyl these days.

[Tony Alva]

"I'm having such trouble w/ the Springsteen DualDisc that I may just by the new album on LP now that its out on vinyl."

Devils & Dust dual disc plays fine in my circa 1999 stock car stereo, but I can't get the master of the CD we worked on for the past nine months to play in it. What the...?!

[josh kerbel]

Forget about "Why the Record Industry is Doomed", what about the broadcasting industry, along with all of the government legislation that goes along with it? What meaning will censorship legislation have? Can every right wing, left wing, racist bigot homophob create his own media following?

Now there will be some interesting answers!