The Do It Yourself Artist

How much has the music industry changed over the last 10 years. Really. CD sales are down, record labels are in upheaval, and no one is buying albums anymore. Has it really been that drastic of a change?

Check out these numbers:

• 105,000 new albums were released in the USA in 2008 (that’s four times as many as in the early 2000′s)
• of these 105,000 new albums, only 6,000 reached sales of over 1,000 units in the first year
• 30,000 new albums were released in the U.K. last year (that’s a 30% increase from the year 2000)
• There are more than 10 million bands on MySpace (3 million in 2006, and 600,000 in 2005)

What does this tell us? That with the changes in the industry with CD sales and downloads, this technology also allows artists around the world to write a song, post it live, and record a video for the song, all in the same day. Thus, the proliferation of music online as evidenced by the numbers above.

So, who is going to navigate through all of this music? Who will determine what is cool? Who will the arbiters of taste be?

And, as a band, how will you get heard through all of the noise? Do you need to be with some sort of label for promotional purposes? And what about the band that has all of their music online but cannot afford the up front costs to fund a tour?

It seems that a middleman is still required between the artist and the fans. I don’t think this middleman will be the label. I think it will be entrepreneurs that see financial opportunities in helping bands swim through the competition.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com
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