Danger Mouse is probably the most brilliant writer-producer working in music today. But his musical skills aren’t really the point here. This blog is about technology and change. And Danger Mouse is showing the recording industry just how powerless it has become.
His latest project is a collaboration with alternative dalrings, Sparklehorse, and featuredsa Who’s Who of guest artists: The Flaming Lips, Iggy Pop The Shins, and the Pixies’ Frank Black. The album is entitled Dark Night of the Soul,. It ships in a delixue case with a 50 page booklet of photos by filmmaker, David Lynch, of Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and my personal favorite, Wild At Heart.
The record is amazing. It’s not really my cup of tea style-wise. A bit too broody and slow for my taste. I’m mostly an up-tempo kind of guy. Despite that though I can recognize great songwriting and producing when I hear it. And “Dark Night of the Soul” brings the goods.
So here is the technology transformation bit: An as-yet unspecified “contractual dispute” with his label, EMI has led to the label refusing to release the album commercially.
Danger Mouse’s solution? Set up a site where fans can purchase the David Lynch booklet, CD cover and a blank, recordable CD for $50. Then tell fans to go find the music on the Internet any way they can. Hint: Bit Torrent and Pirate Bay.
There are two epigrams that date from the Early Days of the Internet (say, 1998). One is: Information wants to be free. The other is: The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. You don’t hear people talk like that anymore. but that doesn’t mean that those things aren’t true.
The Recording Industry As We Know It™, and its twin sister Commercial Radio™ have about three to five years left to live. As soon as broadband wireless service (e.g. WiFi, 3G/4G cellular, WiMAX) becomes more or less ubiquitous, their customers are going to scatter like a school of fish chased by dolphins.
Why would anyone listen to the latest dreck from Christina Aguilera or to Boston for the billionth time when they could just listen to whatever they wanted streamed from their own music collection, or to a niche Internet based “radio” station that serves up the kind of music they like, or to Internet stations recommended by a friend on Facebook?
The large record labels are becoming increasingly irrelevant to many musicians as their reason for being amounts to a way to ship lots of bit of shiny, silver plastic. But digital downloads are steadily eating the market for CDs. Sales of CD’s have been down for years. Purchased digital downloads are largely replacing them. The problem is, you can’t mark up a digital download 80% like you can a bit of shiny, silver plastic. The margins on downloads are minuscule, like 2 percent. Two percent times several million is still money. It’s just not hot-and-cold running cocaine and hookers kind of money, if you know what I mean.
More and more band make their money on the road, doing the hard work of touring. This fact is seen in the increasingly consolidated ownership of large music venues and the possible merger between the world’s largest ticket broker, TicketMaster and the world’s largest venue and tour management company, Live Nation. Can you say anti-trust?
But, as Danger Mouse shows, there are a million ways to skin a buck from a market in fragments. None of them have anything to do with the Recording Industry As We Know It™.
