David Byrne On Digital Age Music Distribution

I wanted to point you to what I consider a must-read article written by musician David “Letting the days go by” Byrne, formerly of the 1980s-era Talking Heads.

In a Wired magazine article titled “David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars,” the veteran offers advice to new artists and other veterans on how to distribute music and make money in the digital age.

Check out his blog, too.

Technology set music loose from its social settings. With no ability to record music, consumers had to go where the music was: concert halls, clubs, opera houses, etc. After recording technology was developed, music became a product, says Byrne. We could take it home with us, and, with today’s portable music players, literally everywhere we go. Although the music “package” may have changed, we still have an urge (instinct?) to listen to it in social settings with other people.

Byrne douses a bucket of cold reality on the old music-making model: Back in the day, artists toured to promote new albums. To survive in the music business these days, artists must change their attitudes about concerts. Performing for fans is an important part of the music, and, as I mentioned in The Long Tail of Independence, sales from concert tickets and merchandise can compensate for low album sales.

Byrne’s offers six “possibilities” to veteran and new artists on how to distribute their music and survive the changes in the music industry. Here are the first three:

• 360 or “multiple rights” deal – Because of declining CD sales, record labels are trying to make money in other ways. Under a so-called 360 deal, labels take a cut of everything, from music to concert to merchandising sales. (Apparently, record companies traditionally did not take a cut of ancillary profits.) Some say such deals take the pressure off artists to produce a hit. With 360s, record labels are reasonably sure they’ll make money, whether or not CDs and digital files sell well. For an example of a 360 deal, see “The New Deal: Band as Brand.”
• Standard Distribution Deal – Traditional deal where labels pay for everything and give artists a cut of the profits. This deal is not ideal for artists, says Byrne. “The label, in this scenario, owns the copyright to the recording. Forever.” However, the Internet has lowered the costs of recording, manufacturing, and distributing music, so the label-does-all idea isn’t as valuable to artists as it once was. Artists can finance some of these tasks themselves. Just say no to SDDs?
  
  Under the standard deal, artists are beholden to labels in more ways than one. “The typical pop star often lives in debt to their record company and a host of other entities, and if they hit a dry spell they can go broke,” Byrne writes.
• License Deal – Artists retain copyright of the masters and allow record labels to use the masters for a limited period of time. Sounds like a better deal for artists. Ownership is everything, my friends. Byrne writes: “If the members of the Talking Heads held the master rights to our catalog today, we’d earn twice as much in licensing as we do now — and that’s where artists like me derive much of our income.”

Click over to Wired and read about the other three distribution models. (The comments are good, too.) And read more Byrne blogging here.

Byrne notes that all models are subject to shift and change, and no one model works for every artist. Nothing is absolute. But everyone – recording artist, visual artist, writer, or whatever – should heed this advice:

“I would personally advise artists to hold on to their publishing rights (well, as much of them as they can). Publishing royalties are how you get paid if someone covers, samples, or licenses your song for a movie or commercial. This, for a songwriter, is your pension plan.”

The music industry is in flux (other industries, too), and we, living in the ascendancy of the digital age, have prime seats to watch it unfold.

(Photo by Gilles Larrain Studios)