David Lowery on self-publishing of music and the impact of free

[roustabout]

I thought this was a very interesting essay - I ran across it on longreads.com. 

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/

The writer is David Lowery, of Camper van Beethoven, a former quant trader, a former programmer, and husband to a concert promoter - a very bright fellow who knows a lot about both the tech and music businesses. 

Plus, he's funny. 

An important piece of his argument that overlaps with publishing is this:  the old days (in music;  I'd say this is still true today in books) featured some artists not getting paid enough - and many others getting paid too much.  The music business bet on a lot of horses, realizing that not all the horses would come through. 

The big money in music no longer wants to bother - it's more cost-effective to let Youtube and file trading define what's successful and make their money selling advertising impressions around and recordings of that music.

He's none too happy - as a musician - that Apple still gets 30% of the gross of anything it sells.  As an Apple shareholder, he likes it, though.  The risk that justified that margin when itunes was brand new doesn't exist any longer. 

For a band trying to sell directly to its audience, that's a huge cut to give to Apple (or Amazon, or BN) just to avoid having a fan enter their credit card into a website - but fans are notoriously lazy, and they want to buy through the method they already have set up, not by a direct purchase. 

The slice of his argument which seems weakest is the discussion of revenue from live performances.  I can't see how the intertubes have much impact on that.  In aggregate, live revenue is up, but tours are longer and crowds are smaller.  To me, that has a lot to do with differences in how people decide they want to spend their leisure time and conflated with demographic shifts.

Still, a well informed and interesting piece.