It hasn’t been all that long ago that I can remember heading
to the mall to hit the music store in order to pick up the newest release from
my favorite artists on CD. Those days have quite simply come and gone. Like the
days of vinyl, 8-track and cassettes, the CD/DVD is on its way out, giving way
to a radically new world of on-demand digital entertainment. Moreover, the
sheer speed at which one can create, post and share new music and media has
forever changed the business model of the industry and it has the once powerful
gatekeepers struggling to keep up.
While the Internet
has officially been around for over four decades now, very few people at its
inception or today have been able to predict the direction and impact it will
have on future generations. Again, not very long ago, the original Napster had the music industry
up in arms about piracy laws and its fear of losing revenue. The irony in
neutralizing that file sharing threat is that it hasn’t stopped the overall
movement of the industry to one that is becoming increasingly based upon a
digital on-demand platform. This shift to the digital platform, which
coincidentally, Apple in its visionary mindset saw coming long ago, has left
artists, record labels, distribution outlets and the entire entertainment
industry scratching their heads trying to figure out how to wrangle the beast.
The industry solution at this time, at least as it relates
to music, seems to be in trying to secure a portion of the market
through proprietary digital music platforms. To me this seems so blatantly a Johnny-come-lately approach, that I feel it is likely to fail before it even
gets off the ground. Why? The problem as I see it is that industry
professionals are missing the bigger picture and are selfishly focusing on the
immediate monetary aspects as opposed to seeking to understand the larger movement
and what it means for the industry two to three decades down the road.
In a 2013 article entitled, Caught
In Time: The Music Industry’s Struggle To Adapt, Hypebot contributor Justin Stansbury shares my
sentiment and view of the lack of vision by industry executives. Furthermore, I
share Stansbury’s genuine view and approach in wanting to aid truly talented
individuals navigate their way through the industry. As he states in his
article, listeners have long ago embraced a new model for themselves. The power lay with them and if you are an
artist in this fast paced industry, or an industry executive, the key does not
lay in finding a new way to control the industry and the market. The key lies
in the heart of the digital movement.
The heart and future
of the digital movement is underlined by global connections, shared values and
personal experiences. Personal influencers are the new power brokers and at the
end of the day, the new digital audience places their trust in these
influencers because of their shared values and experiences. More importantly, they
place their money in those products that come from this shared position as
well. If you want access to your target audience in a world where music quite
literally moves at the speed of sound, you have to be tuned-in to your shared
values and more importantly those personal influencers driving individual
choices.
Oh, and if you are a
big label executive out there reading this and it hits you that maybe it is a
rebirth of celebrity sponsorships, you’ve already missed the point and the
future of the industry. Personal influencers are more likely, outside of a very
few powerful celebrity influencers, to be a friend, co-worker or someone we
know personally, with whom we have a placed a genuine level of trust. Therein
lies the key to those who opt to listen and if you are listening and reading,
then I may already be ahead of the industry professionals struggling to figure
it out.
