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Take your fingers out of your ears
Jul. 5th, 2012 12:53 pm"Radiohead wouldn’t exist without early major-label funding. The future won’t bring new Radioheads. All I want to say here, truly, is: let’s get used to it."
http://mkdo.co/post/26352263455/radiohead-wouldnt-exist-without-early-major-label
If you went back to the 90s and took tour-funding from labels out of the equation, then yeah, of course Radiohead and all the other bands that made it using tours and 90s-era media (like radio and paper press) would have tanked. That's not surprising at all.
What's surprising is to make the same assertion now, where the media ecosystem is so dramatically different. The amount of business that people do on the internet -- where you don't need a van, don't need to coordinate with multiple venues, and where people can hear your music even if you haven't begged a radio station or a club to play it -- is huge. The music business has never seen the internet before. That dynamic is poorly understood, if it's understood at all. If you assume that bands of today have no other option but to spend money on all the things that bands of the 90s needed to spend money on, you are missing the point of why people are so excited.
That's not to say that touring and publicizing don't contribute to a band's success any more -- they do -- but to say that they are the *only* things that do is ridiculous.
http://mkdo.co/post/26352263455/radiohead-wouldnt-exist-without-early-major-label
If you went back to the 90s and took tour-funding from labels out of the equation, then yeah, of course Radiohead and all the other bands that made it using tours and 90s-era media (like radio and paper press) would have tanked. That's not surprising at all.
What's surprising is to make the same assertion now, where the media ecosystem is so dramatically different. The amount of business that people do on the internet -- where you don't need a van, don't need to coordinate with multiple venues, and where people can hear your music even if you haven't begged a radio station or a club to play it -- is huge. The music business has never seen the internet before. That dynamic is poorly understood, if it's understood at all. If you assume that bands of today have no other option but to spend money on all the things that bands of the 90s needed to spend money on, you are missing the point of why people are so excited.
That's not to say that touring and publicizing don't contribute to a band's success any more -- they do -- but to say that they are the *only* things that do is ridiculous.
