Music 2.0 Explained

By Bobby Owsinski

Can't figure this Music 2.0 thing out? Not sure how to make money without the support of a label? Want more contact with your favorite artist? Well, gather around the screen with the cool blue flame because I'm here to tell you how to do all those things. It's a concept called "Tribal Management".

It's not that I'm that smart to dream something like this up, but I am smart enough to recognize a good idea when I see one and marketing guru Seth Godin seems to have finally cracked the the new business model that the music industry has been so desperately trying to create.

Godin recently gave a presentation to a number of music industry executives and while I'm not so sure they actually got it, a lot of people who really love and care about music took notice big time. So if you haven't yet seen Seth's twelve page PDF (it's racing around the Web like wildfire), let me summarize.

In the Music 1.0 days artists were fairly isolated from their fans, not by design, just by the mechanics of the business. The artist made a record (I'm using that term to mean any kind of recorded media) that the label pressed and marketed and sold to a retailer. The retailer sold the record to the customer, who with any luck became a fan of the artist. The retailer was the only entity that actually had contact with customer/fan (unless you consider fan clubs which, for the most part, were mostly lame).

But we now live in a different world. It's now possible for an artist to know each and every one of his/her fans. It's now easy to communicate with them, to ask for their advice and help, to sell directly to them, and to make them part of the overall artist's brand. The fans and the artist are of the same mind. They are passionate about the same thing (in this case, the music). They are part of the same "tribe".

The tribe wants intimate contact with the artist. They want a personal email telling them there's a tour stop in their town. They want to be asked if they'd like to hear the artist do a Stone's cover. They want to be offered out-takes and different mixes, even if the general public would find these things boring. They want to be offered a chance to buy (or even to pre-buy) the latest release. They want to be as much a part of the artists life as the artist is of theirs. They are of the same tribe!

Trent Reznor knows his tribe. His recent "Ghosts" instrumental album is available with something for everybody. You can download 8 tracks for free, or all 36 for $5, or buy a $10 CD, or a $75 deluxe edition, or even a $300 ultra-deluxe packaging that includes just about everything but a new laptop. He sold out of 2500 of the available $300 packages within 48 hours. Of an INSTRUMENTAL record! The tribe ate it up with a spoon. Trent knows his tribe and his tribe knows him. Trent proves that the tribal concept, loosely defined as Music 2.0, actually works.

If the record labels (any label, major or indie) were smart, they'd get into the business of servicing the tribe. In this they actually might make themselves in a useful and necessary tool for the artist. Many artists just want to make music and either can't focus on or don't have the skills to go beyond that. But if an artist is skilled at communicating with his tribe, then he is cultivating a fan base on a level unlike anything seen before. And his tribe will love him for it!

A long-time veteran of the music industry, Bobby Owsinski has produced and composed for records, motion pictures and television shows along the way. Currently a principle in the DVD production house Surround Associates and content creator 2B Media, Bobby has also penned hundreds of articles for many popular industry trade publications and has authored several books that are now staples in recording programs in colleges around the world including "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook", "The Recording Engineer's Handbook", "The Audio Mastering Handbook", "The Drum Recording Handbook", and "How To Make Your Band Sound Great". A frequent moderator, panelist and program producer of a variety of industry conferences, Bobby has served as the longtime producer of the annual Surround Music Awards, and is one of the executive producers for the "Guitar Universe" and "Desert Island Music" television programs. Visit Bobby's Blog at http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com/ and his website at http://bobbyowsinski.com