Music Industry Meets Its Future
Saturday, 12. 20. 2008 – Category: Enversa Companies
Ever since the MP3 format was widely adopted, the major recording labels have been scrambling to get a piece of the action online.
While the major labels have done battle with the digital music terrorists, musicians from around the world have appropriated new technology and created avenues of distribution and marketing.
Be it the ability to sell records through Amazon.com or a simple Web site to promote upcoming shows, artists have been empowered like never before. Their reliance on the traditional industry players and managers, lawyers and booking agents is no longer a given.
What is a given, however, is that there hasn’t been a breakout artist who has risen from the routers, switches and fiber optics of the online world. But this may soon change.
Jonah Smith has been called “One of the most important voices in modern soul,” something the Syracuse, N.Y.,-native and Brooklyn-based musician doesn’t take for granted.
For the past few years, Smith has been hooked up with SocialUr (formerly CornerBand.com), an online music firm whose goal it is to help artists remove the barriers to success set up by the traditional music industry.
The arrangement has paid off, as Smith’s band has been able to tour steadily and push out close to one million downloads of its songs.
“Artists can be empowered to control their own destiny,” said Scott Beck, chairman and chief executive officer of CornerWorld Corporation (formerly CornerBand.com).
Socialur.com is, in one sense, the evolution of the online music industry. By combining secure digital distribution, traditional record sales, file-sharing, media partnerships and artist services, the company has created a package for do-it-yourself artists, who are becoming embraced and noticed.
“A lot of people in the business are number crunchers and don’t have ears and vision, “Smith said. “It’s very hard to break through, so you find friends where you can.”
What Socialur.com does is rather simple: Through an alliance with file-sharing service Kazaa, the company allows artists to distribute their music digitally and for free. Songs are encoded with copyright management software so an artist can control the music.
A fan may download a song, but the artist commands how many times it can be listened to before a license is purchased. With distribution through partnerships with over thirty alternative weekly newspaper Web sites, and ancillary services such as copyright filing, Socialur.com acts as a middleman for the artists.
Major labels such as Sony, BMG and Universal have rolled out their own online services, but the products serve simply as digital distribution points for established artists or new artists bankrolled by the labels.
Socialur.com focuses on those artists who don’t have the power of a multi-national corporation behind them.
In the end, it comes down to money. And major labels have complained for years that they have to pour massive amounts of funds into artist development. Beck said that can change.
“Some record label people are using Socialur.com to find new talent. It would be nice if the corporate and marketing side of the business understood that there is a way to distribute music to large communities without all the costs,” he noted.
