|
|
|||
|
||||
|
Home 
Research Themes
In Focus
Digital Transformations II:Toward a New Form of Musical Culture February 2007
New Tools of the Trade |
|
|
|
||
Table of Contents
Introduction A Crossroads in the History of the Recording Industry
All Resources New Tools of the Trade Many individual artists and bands have developed their own websites for the purposes of gaining exposure, as a means of interacting with their fans (through bulletin boards, chat rooms and blogs), and for generating new streams of revenue. Since the mid-1990s, it has become common for artists to have their own, professionally run websites, and, increasingly, these are associated with "official" fan clubs of one kind or another. The clubs are run variously by the artists themselves, their management, record labels, or by specialized third-party interests. In addition to selling music, T-shirts, and other merchandise, the websites have become a central part of the way in which many artists support their touring activities, offering preferential access to concert tickets for fan club subscribers. The websites become a way for bands on tour to stay in touch with their fans, generating excitement as they move from one venue to another. This new form of cross-media interaction – Internet + live tour – is one of the ways in which artists have innovated dynamic relationships between old and new technologies. Indeed, such innovations may well constitute a strategy through which an economy based on the sale of CDs moves towards a more integrated and interactive form of musical culture based on artist-fan relationships. Subscription-based fan clubs (an off-shoot of the Internet + tour phenomenon) have come to be regarded within the record industry as a potential source of revenue, as a more general way of overcoming the irregular production and consumption patterns associated with sound recording, and as a means of removing some of the need for huge promotions timed with tours and record releases. Outside the popular music arena, a third-party site called Artistshare.com has even developed a kind of patronage system for a number of its jazz and classical artists: fans are offered a glimpse into the creative process of the artist through a variety of interactions over time. The cost of doing so can range from a few dollars to thousands of dollars in some cases. It is unlikely that any but the most popular artists will be able to develop and manage subscription-based fan clubs, let alone rely on a patronage system. It is clear, however, that maintaining a professional website has become a necessary part of every artist's career. While general support from the Canada Music Fund is available for the creation of artist and label websites, a more focused approach to the problems of maintaining an online presence may be required in the future. In particular, the upgrading and maintaining of websites at critical moments in an artist's career, such as the release of a new recording or video, or in conjunction with touring, may require special targeted funding. Given the increasing reliance of ISPs on entertainment services, ISPs should also be expected to support Canadian artists in much the same way as other media have in the past through programs such as FACTOR and VideoFACT. VideoFACT's parallel programs, PromoFACT-Web and PromoFACT-EPK, which support the development of artist websites and electronic press kits, offer one such model. Canadian artists have become innovators in the online arena and have begun to develop novel ways of interacting with their fans, generating additional sources of revenue using new technologies in the process. Popular artists such as Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, through an arrangement between their Canadian management company, Nettwerk Music Group, and a US-based digital music site known as Beatport.com, have recently invited their fans to remix recordings of their songs by allowing them to purchase individual tracks (e.g., vocals, guitars, and drum tracks) from their multitrack masters. From the standpoint of revenue generation, the individual tracks were posted in full CD-quality format and sold for $1.49 per track, making the cost of creating a remix considerably greater than the cost of buying the original song as mixed by the artists themselves. In effect, the recorded song had been transformed from a closed commodity into an open one, a product that could generate multiple revenue streams depending on its technological end use: as a finished song on a CD, a downloadable MP3 file, as the source of a ringtone, or as the basis for a fan-generated multitrack remix. From the standpoint of musical culture, the remix strategy employed by Nettwerk Management and its artists is significant because it involves fans in the creative process in a new kind of way: it recognizes them as participants in musical culture, not simply as consumers. Innovative strategies that encourage artist-fan interactions can go beyond the conventional boundaries of artist "promotion" into a realm that is fundamentally creative; as such, new categories of funding that lie somewhere within or between the Creators' Assistance and the New Musical Works components of the Canada Music Fund may need to be developed. Conclusion All Resources |
Printer friendly version|
Culturescope.ca is a service of the Canadian Cultural Observatory and its partners.
|
The Canadian Cultural Observatory and Culturescope.ca do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in a new window.
Some of the material available in the resource collection originates with an organization not subject to the Official Languages Act and is available on this site in the language in which it was written. |
|
|
|
|||