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From the course by Vanderbilt University

Understanding the Music Business: What is Music Worth?

105 ratings

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Vanderbilt University

Understanding the Music Business: What is Music Worth?

105 ratings

This course will examine the music industry in the United States, with the unique perspective gained by Vanderbilt University’s location in Nashville, TN. Nashville is a major center of music in the United States, and the music created here has a global reach, particularly in the country, rock, pop, singer-songwriter, and Americana genres. However, students will learn that the basic principles of recording, marketing, copyright, licensing, and live performance are the same, regardless of musical style or genre. The music business is one of the most rapidly changing industries in the US today. It is also an industry filled with contradiction, and media headlines and anecdotal stories often add to the confusion. Here are just a few statements paraphrased from recent news stories: * The music business has collapsed * Demand for music is expanding at the greatest rate in history * Historic recording studios are closing at an alarming rate * More people are making recordings than ever before * Musicians usually lose money touring * Musicians usually make money touring * Major artist pulls songs off streaming services because they don’t pay fairly * Major artist makes a fortune from streaming services * People won’t buy records anymore * Vinyl record sales are soaring This course will attempt to make sense of these seemingly contradictory trends and data, outline the basic structure and mechanisms of today’s music industry, and encourage students to think critically and entrepreneurially about the future of music. Leaders from various areas of the music business will lend their perspectives through in-depth interviews, and footage from a recording session will give learners a behind the scenes look at how a song goes from the spark of an idea hummed into a cell phone to a finished recording. Participants will grapple with questions about art and commerce which are both timeless and crucially important today, and will emerge from this course with tools allowing them to make more informed decisions as creators, promoters, and consumers of music. Course launches February 19, 2016.

From the lesson

New Models, Trends & Strategies

Upheaval in many sectors of the music industry – much of it brought by the digital revolution – has led innovative people on both the business and artistic sides of the industry to do business in new ways. You will learn about opportunities for entrepreneurialism that come with technological advances; you will think critically about the controversies that arise when traditional businesses must redefine their relationships with artists; and you will hear from a business owner who has succeeded by questioning old boundaries and focusing on artist services. You will wrap up your engagement with the course by considering some larger ethical questions and asking yourself what you can do to support a healthy music ecosystem.

Introduction1:42

The Entrepreneurial Musician3:45

Fan-Funded Recording2:58

Criticism of the DIY Approach1:46

New Business Models1:38

Interview: David Macias43:34

Sync Licensing2:04

Music & Big Data5:33

Interview: David Pomeroy68:11

Ethics & Controversies3:09

Meet the Instructors

Jen Gunderman
Assistant Professor of Musicology
Blair School of Music

[MUSIC]

Historically, the music business has been driven by a lot of a gut instinct,

a lot of emotion, a lot of very colorful people.

But it has not been all that efficient at predicting future trends.

The greatest talent scout probably in the history of rock music was a guy named

John Hammond who had signed Bob Dylan to his contract at Columbia Records

based on a gut feeling about him.

There was nothing to suggest in the beginning that Bob Dylan would become

the artist that he is today and the influence that he is today.

In addition, it used to be that DJs played a song because they liked it or

maybe because somebody bribed them to play it but

it was a little bit more freewheeling and based on personalities.

In addition, in recording studios, there have been countless examples of either

experiments gone awry or accidents that turned out to be fantastic sounding.

This has led to new sounds along the way, and

innovations in recording technology by doing things quote unquote, the wrong way.

Also in the past, business could track the number of radio spins in a particular town

and the number of albums that had been sold but they didn't really know very much

about how music was consumed outside of those pieces of data.

In fact, even sometimes, this data was misleading.

About 15 years ago, I guess it was, a manger

of a band that I was playing in got a phone call from a guy in Spain that said,

we want to book your band for a month tour in Spain.

And the manager woman said, what are you talking about?

We've never sold any records in Spain.

And he said, yes, you had.

There was this whole thing about imports being less expensive for

Spanish people to buy and so they were actually huge and didn't even know it.

It was one of those things that would probably not happen today.

Another way that that opportunities may have been missed in the old way of doing

things is if you can imagine, say for example, a high school student in the mid

1980s buys a record, talks about that new album with their friends at school, maybe

burns cassette copies for people because they're so excited about this new band.

That person listens obsessively over and over in their bedroom every night to this

new record and maybe made a homemade t-shirt or traveled an hour to the next

town to see them live and then bought a t-shirt with their babysitting cash.

All of that behavior,

from burning the cassettes to talking to friends about it to sharing

the music with people was untrackable from a business person's point of view.

Today, all of that behavior that I just described, including the sale of imports

and whether or not your band is huge in Spain, would be a lot more easy to track.

Not only that, but would be connected to particular consumers.

Businesses in the music industry are taking advantage of an unprecedented

amount of data that is available about music consumers these days.

Artists and

business people who represent can track plays on various streaming sites.

They can pinpoint geographical locations where songs are catching on and

even predict where the song will catch on next, based on previous trends.

They can watch artists on social media and see how the noise about them is growing.

They can predict months ahead of time which songs will be hit nationally, and

internationally.

They can track how often people talk about certain musicians on social media,

how often they share tracks, or upload tracks.

They can collect information about the gender, age,

and other traits, of listeners.

In short, data analytics regarding music

is driving music business decisions to a greater extent than ever before.

From the point of view of a person who finds analytics useful,

this allows businesses to predict future success of songs and

artists and helps promotional resources be more effectively targeted.

You're not going to waste your money on songs or

on artists that are not connecting, or that you know will never connect.

Forbes Magazine called one music analytics company, Moneyball for

music, which I thought was really interesting.

it's a reference to the use of data, of course, in baseball and in other sports.

There's a similar feeling among some musicians and

people in the music industry that this approach may work and

may actually be the future of the industry and give outsiders a chance.

But it takes some of the unpredictability, some of the fun,

some of the heart out of the game.

In addition, data is sometimes misinterpreted.

It can lead businesspeople to uncomfortable conclusions and

force decisions to be made that would not have been made otherwise.

A lot of people still have privacy concerns about the amount of data

that is being gathered on listeners.

And data can't predict how an artist is going to develop in the future,

if you look back on our Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen examples.

When decisions are made on real time public reaction to new music, it's

difficult to imagine how there could be a hit record that is ahead of it's time.

Or what happens to the music that is going to challenge listeners to try

something new?

These are things to consider when you

are balancing the weight of data analytics in music.

[MUSIC]

[APPLAUSE]

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