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No Profit

Sí, se ha hablado muchísimo acerca de que si el modelo de negocios en la música está cambiando y que las disqueras se van a ir al diablo y que los artistas van a ganar dinero únicamente a través de los conciertos y que bye a los intermediarios y blablablá… pero este comentario del usuario Uzzah en esta nota de Fark me dejó pensando:

Compare two tourings kids acts: Dora the Explorer and the Wiggles. Dora is just a person in a suit, and thus, you can have 20 different Dora shows (with 20 different people in 20 different suits) playing in 20 different venues every day, generating 20x revenue each day. By contrast, the Wiggles are four specific guys, and there can be only one Wiggles show going on at a time. And if the Wiggles get sick, or want to stay home for a kid’s birthday, or just have burned out on touring, their income flow stops. With Dora, you just find another person to stick in the suit, and the revenue keeps coming.

The record industry used to be like Dora. Royalties from record sales produced a steady stream of income regardless of whether the particular artist played that day. This allowed artists to tour and then take a break, relax, work on new projects/songs, etc., and still be able to pay bills. But if you cut that revenue source out, the artist becomes like the Wiggles — if you don’t play today, you don’t get paid. Until the artist gets to the point where the revenue from one show can pay the bills for a whole week, playing live is just the equivalent of a 5-day a week, 50-weeks a year day job. There’s not a lot of room for creativity and exploration in a job like that, and the quality of the music will probably suffer.

Couple that with the points others have made about fragmentation of the audience leading to smaller — and thus less profitable — shows, and there’s a reason to believe that the “make your money touring” model just isn’t viable.

September 17, 2009, 4:36pm; Comments | Tags: 8 nt