Thursday, September 27, 2012

Radio Radio



Life and work have gotten in the way of my blogging recently and I have not had the opportunity to review some of the topics that I am really interested in. I resolve to do better. In the interim, NPR’s Morning Edition has run three fascinating reports this week on some current controversial topics in the music industry.

On Tuesday of this week, they ran a long  study of the pros and cons of crowd funding vehicles such as Kickstarter. The story was important because it showed that for everyone who raises a million bucks on Kickstarter, there’s another artist who couldn’t even meet half her goal. This is also the first story that I recall that brings up the important point that not all artists want to shill for themselves on the internet. It was a fascinating piece and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in trying to start a Kickstater (or similar) campaign. Here’s the link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/25/161702900/crowd-funding-for-musicians-isnt-the-future-its-the-present

The next day they ran a story on Spotify and how record labels, publishers and artists actually receive money from the service.  Although I am not sure that the reporter did a great job explaining the economics, the piece did show the current state of Spotify’s royalty payments in all the grim reality. I found this fascinating. Here’s the link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/26/161758720/how-musicians-make-money-by-the-fraction-of-a-cent-on-spotify


Finally, today’s story focused on You Tube and how it has rapidly become the music on demand spot for new music listeners (and I thought it was just a place for watching old Rolling Stones videos…) Again, fascinating/controversial stuff. Listen especially to the comments made by the guitarist from the Dead Kennedys.: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/27/161837316/youtube-shares-ad-revenue-with-musicians-but-does-it-add-up

All in all, three really important stories from NPR.