As much of an Apple fan boy as I am–nobody like a monopoly. I really like iTunes and e-music too, I just feel like there ought to be another model.
I’m generally not a fan of content subscription models. Typically consumers pay for more than they actually use. They are inefficient. Managing most content subscriptions is too hard–and most subscription business models exploit that. I can’t shake the feeling I’m being taken advantage of. I’m convinced there is an alternative– and I might just have stumbled on to it. Although admittedly, the process I envision already exists to some degree (on itunes– natch). As Lance Peter put it –“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”
Last week on Twitter I asked: Why not subscribe to artists via a paid rss feed- say 1.99 a month for a song and other digital stuff (alt mixes, lyrics, recording notes, blog from the road etc.) I subscribe to the Colbert Report, Daily Show and The Soup on iTunes and the shows land conveniently on my Apple TV. It’s better than TiVo–nobody’s getting ripped off and I don’t have to skip through commercials. it’s just not quite as portable as it needs to be (though it’s getting much closer) and its too expensive, but the exchange feels better because I’m getting what I paid for.
Back in the 80’s, one of my favorite bands, the Cocteau Twins, used to regularly release ep’s– 12 inch records with 3-4 tracks. They’d release these every few months and then release compilation lps. I always thought this EP strategy was genius from a revenue strategy perspective and never understood why more artists didn’t do it . That is until I learned the horrible awful disgusting truth.
Here’s the point: it’s time to shift the release schedule to a constant drip rather than gushing in 12 month intervals. The snag, of course, is If you release one single a month, radio can’t keep up. You also risk loosing the ability to milk every possible dime out of each hit your record may (or may not) have. Radio simply can’t assimilate one single per artist per month even if every song were a hit–which by definition cannot be. Hits are consensus tracks — poplar favorites– from the artist. Highly-involved fans burn out on artists’ hits. They hear them too often precisely because they have achieved popular consensus.
Imagine though, subscribing to your favorite 4-5 artists a month– adding or dropping those subscriptions as needed. Now you are subscribing artists–not to a service–you’ve e-eliminated the middleman.
The RSS subscription purchase process goes something like this– 1. Dig the hits (now, “loss leaders” to be given away or shared to bring the customer in) , 2. buy some catalog, 3. fall in love with artist, then 4. pay to subscribe to the artist feed.
Of course it won’t work if artists insist on marketing through labels and labels insist on DRM. Providing artists with secure, paid, rss feed technology would allow them the ability to sell (all) their content themselves-and with the use of collaborative filtering and free feeds from emerging artists, a new model may well emerge that enriches artists for the studio efforts. You can see the beginnings of this on sites like Garageband.com and iLike where bands similar to what you are listening to make songs available for free.
Imagine (because I totally dig their iPhone app AND their music) that Deathcab for Cutie has a paid feed I can subscribe to. I get a song or two a month, pictures from the road, notes on microphone selection and placements on their guitar rigs–hell even files for re-mixing, thoughts on lyrics, chord tabs ringtones,etc.– you get the idea. Of course I’m paying for THAT!. $2, $3, perhaps $4 bucks a month. Here’s the thing–the band I love is mediating for me–I don’t need mediated recommendations – I’m getting them from a band I trust and enjoy. Imagine that a band asks Deathcab to share its music via Deathcab’s feed. Deathcab gets all the dough–NewBand gets the audience. Now anybody Deathcab likes could add value until they are big enough to go at it alone.
Of course all of this gets even cooler when the feed is device-agnostic. This is ultimately the goal– right? This is what the Mac-haters are correct about. The advantages of the walled garden are real, but they come with a price–my Colbert report goes away after I watch it. But when the feed comes to you–independent of the device–and we’ve released the futile bonds of DRM we’ve achieved a new level of value in the marketplace.
When it started, the Internet did like every media before it–copying the media that preceded it: TV ran radio shows, Radio read the newspaper–you get the idea. Now social media is converging on feeds driven by the consumption of content: More and more these feeds are becoming the auto-publication of media behavior (consumption and creation). Interest spawns awareness through these social, syndicated connections connections Artists can set up to sell their feeds– they can do it from their own website– I’m sure the technology is already there. Well what do you know, here’s a couple now : umundoinc.com. and podbean.com. Paid feeds need not be done in lieu of what is already underway –but as an adjunct to it. Here’s how pretty much anybody can set up a premium paid feed on Podbean.com.
This is not a new idea–but perhaps an idea whose time has come. If not, I’m certain that it will eventually. We know the internet will continue to change the process of content mediation and filtration. Now I think we’re seeing how those changes get monetized in a way that more fairly benefits the creators of content.
This is the kind of creative destruction that the big thinkers on the web have been talking about since the turn of this century. People like shows and songs and bands– they bond with the creators of content–the artists. Any business model that brings the consumer closer to the creator of the content is bound to have more inertia than one that distances the artist from audience.
