So it’s been a while since I have shared my musings in a format longer than 140 characters. Today is as good a day as any to catch up.
I am in New York for an extended stay and happily working away at developing the various tentacles of my business. In New York, resources seem endless as do opportunities. Trick is to ferret out the ones that really make sense and focus your energies on those. This week, the LAMC has taken over the NY cultural scene. A fabulous conference put together and run by a dear friend. Good example of finding your core and mining it. While the “major” players are going down in flames (so what happened to Popkomm?), this conference focused on “outsiders” seems to be doing just fine. For that matter, so is the sister label, management and all around 360 business he has (congrats to you my brotha).
Meanwhile, I see the world still melting, both in an economic and music industry sense. Is the recession really ending? Is Michael Jackson really dead? Is it true that the best marketing plan is to simply die? Well, I think I will hold off on that one for now. What I have found is that many outside dabblers and their private equity groups are retreating from the fray. All those major acquisitions on the publishing side have waned and the catalogues that did not sell during the frenzy have now lost value…just like your house. Now those companies are scraping to pay the light bills and finding that they can’t service the debt with the cash flow from those catalogues they overpaid for. Hey fellas, you realize you have to actually WORK the catalogue to maintain or increase income stream? It don’t do it by itself…
In my career, I have seen a few of these occurrences. Outside equity players think they understand the music business, get a front man and put up a ton of money to get in the biz figuring they can buy experience. Does not (always) work. In this latest round, look at EMI. Smarts guys, innovative ideas, completely missed the nuances that drive the music business. You can’t fire everyone. Someone has to deal with the artists and songwriters in a language that they understand. Music is a very strange world and the cocoon that creators need to be in to create can not be messed with. Of course that is just one of the problems they encountered…and yes, they too are having problems servicing their debt.
This is all a good thing. Music people should be in the music business. People who live and breathe the stuff. Most of us got into this because we love music. We are musicians, songwriters, producers, fans…all of it! We don’t know what else to do. I can practice law but…no, really!
Now I look at the options and meet with everyone. Smart guys with money and real music people who managed to escape the damage and survive with some capital to grow. Perhaps in my next post I will be talking about who ends up being the better partner. Or perhaps I find that I am best where I am, on my own, growing it all organically. We are actually doing well. No big press pushes. Just friends telling friends that we found a way to monetize music assets and operate a good, honest business. We actually earn and pay royalties on over 300 albums so far. Not bad for two guys in a house.
This all may make for an interesting micro study some day.
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