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This week 70's icon Peter Frampton Tweeted that he had over 55 million downloads of his song "Baby I Love Your Way" for which he only received $1700. The tweet was part of a series of tweet where he told about testifiying to congress on the behalf of ASCAP. You can read it for yourself here:https://twitter.com/peterframpton/status/1025584924609400832 .
These older artists cannot seem to come to terms with the fact that the world has moved on. We no longer have the same music industry that we did in the 70's, 80's and 90's where a handful of acts dominated the industry because radio and MTV were really the only places to get heard by a significant number of people. The industry today is much more friendly to the indie artist. For a fraction of the money that it would take to produce and promote a band in the 80's, indie acts can produce totally professional sounding recordings and promote themselves by themselves or with the help of some very affordable outsource partners.
The industry is also much more friendly to the music fan. Heard about a great band from a friend or magzine? Just do a YouTube search and you can check them out immediately. Instead of buying albums of filler to get one or two good songs you can buy the good tracks on iTunes or listen on Spotify. For true music fans, this is nothing short of a miracle.
So... recorded music, for the most part is now free. That's the price of all of the democatization and simplication of producing and listening to music. That sucks for artists like Peter Frampton who enjoyed big royalty checks but it does not mean that people do not value music, nor does it mean that there isn't a lot of money to be made in the new music industry. There have been some great books and articles written on this subject. For a primer I would recommend "Free" by Chris Anderson. you can check that out here: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905
This democatization is not the end of recorded music, just like radio was not the end of live concerts and sound recording was not the end of sheet music; although many people in the industry thought that it was! These older artists want things to go back to the way that they used to be... "Let's make music great again!" is their motto. Does that sound familiar?
Sorry Peter, but this is the new music industry. It's the wild wild west and this new generation has set out to tame it in their own way. There is more music than ever in EVERY genre for fans to enjoy and it's easier for bands to connect with fans who love what they do. Wether you are a fan or an artist, this is the greatest time in history for music and potentially very profitable for those with vision.
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