Artist Corporations and an unaddressed elephant
Edition 17
Hi folks
Happy Wednesday! Welcome to The Industry Playlist 🎵
It’s been a minute. Some life changes necessitated me to focus on other things and took some time to get back here. There’s a lot to cover and I’m going to touch upon some major developments/announcements going back a few months cause they are important to talk about.
This week’s dive has me talking about Artist Corporations (or A-Corp), a new scaffolding for protecting artists’ interests suitable to their nature and scale of creative work; Spotify is a feature once yet; I have a lot of thoughts on their latest music economics report released some months ago. And finally, some fantastic further reading on how the future of music is taking shape.
Recently I’ve been down some R&B rabbit holes and finally made it to the 90s. The golden era of old school cool. Adina Howard is an icon, you might not remember her by name but her music will immediately bring back the 90s cool. Check out Freak Like Me 🎵
Now, let’s get to it.
🪁 SONIC SHIFTS
Artist Corporations - transforming creative equity to financial equity for long-term value creation
Creatives are financially infantilized. Often, any sort of legal and financial protection comes after many years in the industry, and perhaps, long after they have signed off their rights to their IP. Tbh, that is the nature of work; it’s not just in the creative industry - we start informal before we get to the formal. The good news is that with increasing professionalization (and financialization) of creative industries, the creatives are getting smarter and savvier, and are having access to knowledge and more importantly professional help, to navigate these changes.
Artist Corporation or A-Corp caught my eye. Its designed to be an equity container that is appropriate to scale and size of creative work and functions as a controller of asset and estate of a group of artists. Think how founders incorporate a startup with each having equity, but now swap that with a band (each band member has equity in the A-Corp and are a founder). This is not a revolutionary idea, but reimagining that to the scale and size of creative work, definitely is.
Far too long, creatives seem to get the short end of the stick. They are excluded from proper capitalism (they are unable to generate wealth collectively through equity), played hot and cold with the majors and big tech; while at the same time they’re told that this is the age of the solopreneur.
There’s been significant concentration of market power in creative industries under the guise of distribution. A-Corp structure might lead to retaining greater value (transforming creative equity to financial equity) for creatives in the world that is leaving them behind. This is an exciting topic that I am following closely.
Spotify Annual Music Economics Report
This is the elephant in the room.
Some quick meta observations - firstly, there’s a lot of language of ‘it was like X before’ and ‘today it is like Y thanks to us’ - this before and after isn’t just non-rigorous, it bets on the uncritical eye to conflate correlation with causation.
Secondly, some specific assertive language ‘Spotify has been on a mission to get the world to value music again - and the system we’ve built together is working’, ‘the fact remains: thanks to streaming….’, ‘we think that’s what really matters’, just tells me that they know they have a PR crisis simmering in the independent music community and they need to get their narrative out.
To me the economics report served more to obfuscate than clarify. Because they also control access to data, its a frustrating scenario where you cannot independently verify those claims. In and in itself, the numbers look great and optimistic and promising yada yada yada, but like any good consultant will tell you, everyone has a great story to tell. Spotify is no longer tone deaf to the pushback and its ready to counter those claims. I’m not buying it just yet - in an upcoming TIP deep dive I am going to tackle some of the unaddressed questions from their report. Stay tuned 🎵.
📚 CURATED INSIGHTS
The Fan-Industrial Complex - Some cutting edge thinking on how fandom is evolving as the music industry gets…..industrialized. Industrialization of music is just a shorthand that refers to the shift in how music is created, distributed and consumed, moving from a more organic, community-led model to a large-scale, commercially driven system. In this world, fandom isn’t just an audience, it’s infrastructure.
The unflattening of music - We keep hearing how algorithms have flattened culture. It has. This article talks about how digital streaming’s negative effect is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a larger continuum; and that is possible, it may also hold the key to reversing the trend.
What Suno And Udio’s AI Licensing Deals With Music Majors Could Mean For Creators Rights - tl;dr, tech has won. Majors went from ramping up of legal pressure last year, to become partners today. Leaving the quote that capture my thoughts on this -
“History has taught us that the major labels often act based on short-term financial gain rather than long-term protections for artists and the industry as a whole. And that concerns me," Cacciotti says. "We may once again find ourselves locked into licensing frameworks that fail to account for the deeper implications, both in terms of creative control and economic fairness for the independent community when a unified voice should be front and center when responding to disruptive innovation."
Streaming 2.0 and unintended consequences - The world has gotten smarter and is looking ahead to the challenges and opportunities of Spotify’s two-tier subscription pricing coming later in the year.
Entertainment’s Mad Max era - Everyone needs more from everyone else, but there is not enough ‘more' to go around. We are officially in a zero sum era of music.
Are We Reaching Peak [AI] Slop Soon? - AI-generated content relates to human art like industry fast-food to a real cooked meal
🔥 KEEP TRACK OF
Coca-Cola Launches Record Label with UMG - this almost feels like many years late. And its brand proposition is old wine in a new bottle. Still, two big players making a move and so worth paying attention.
Live Nation Investing $1 Billion in U.S. Music Venues - Boosting America’s economic and cultural revival. This is perhaps the biggest news of the year. I’ve written about the analog revival, I expect this to become a defining strategy in the near future.
❄️ INTERESTING STUFF
[Interactive] Shared DNA in music - we are the summation of all the people in our life. So is music. Its a slow marination of ideas, projects, sound, inspiration, and so many other things. The Pudding does an excellent job of linking our music past and present.
[Interactive] 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die - A book with 1001 albums chosen by a panel of music critics to be the most important and influential in popular music. This site will help you listen to them all. One album a day.
Also, this week I am in Bombay speaking on a music industry panel. Someone thought it was a good idea to give me a mike. The panel has got an interesting bunch of speakers, moderated by Shefali Bhatt, a tech reporter who writes a lot about internet culture. We will be talking about how technology is evolving and what it means to be an independent artist. I’m looking forward to the conversation!
So if you are around in Bombay, drop in to Anti Social on the 26th (Thursday). This is a free event and you can RSVP here.
That’s all for today. We’ll be back in your inbox next week.
Thanks for reading,
Rohit