Crowdfunded Album Leaps Onto The Charts, Sells More Than Rihanna And Coldplay
from the but-it-can't-possibly-be-done dept
We keep hearing from the neo-luddites of the entertainment industry that new business models can't possibly work. In my recent debate with Jon Taplin, for example, he insisted that Kickstarter "doesn't work for most people" -- as if the old Hollywood system does. But as we've seen, the innovator's dilemma and the general march of progress are unstoppable. The trend lines keep moving in the right direction with crowdfunding. It seems that a guy named Ginger Wildheart got a massive response to his own crowdfunding campaign -- such that his crowdfunded album jumped up the UK charts, surpassing both Rihanna and Coldplay. Considering how much money the labels spend trying to convince the public to buy Rihanna's music, and the fact that Wildheart barely spent at all, that's quite a statement. As he notes, things in the industry are changing -- and changing for the better:"This chart entry marks a historic change in the way bands and artists can release music direct to their fans, afford quality production values and actually make a living too.It still amazes me that so many people still don't see what an amazing opportunity this is for musicians.
"For too many years labels have been using musicians as fodder for developing their own marketing techniques, usually at the expense of the players themselves.
"If you have a modest fan base you no longer have to consider quitting a business so obsessed with youth and photogenicity and get down to the task at hand.
"The future of music is in the hands of the people and is finally the responsibility of the musicians.
"It's the most exciting time in decades, many musicians have earned this freedom."
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: charts, crowdfunding, ginger wildheart, uk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Failure to monetize
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wont someone please think of the starving artist
If they actually get to make a living we wont be able to call them starving. We need to keep them starving, so I can have my third car and second boat. Oh the humanity of it all.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Their war on the internet is increasing because these successes are a threat to their business model - and they would rather try to shut down artists that are routing around them than to change those precious money faucets they've spent the last century perfecting.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Adapt or die
[ link to this | view in thread ]
There are many people who can't see alot of things.
They are getting left behind, their fight is just the struggle of someone drowning at sea.
Sooner or later their strength will run out.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Adapt or die
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Adapt or die
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Failure to monetize
And then he had none.
This sums up their behavior, they bleed billions in greed because they make stupid decisions trying to "make it big".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
The more delusional it is the more denial it takes to maintain it.
People who don't wear the blinder are either crazy or a threat which needs to be dealt with.
And it takes ALOT of denial, lying, bribing and cheating to deal with them. Hence all the claims.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Instead of deciding what his fans should like, he let them speak up for the song they thought should be on the commercial album.
Participant print marketing at it's finest.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Everyone.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
These successes can not be bought with a large advertising budget, they require work on the part of the artist. It can not be faked by a team of press agents posting to twitter, G+, and Facebook. So the business model doesn't work for the labels.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Also I would have expected the sort of drivel I just spouted way before the 18th comment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
If 'unsigned' musicians are topping signed acts, then it most likely wouldn't be a stretch for the Entertainment Industry to change the rules of their own rankings.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Isn't there...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Adapt or die
Yes, a boatload of buggy companies closed with the arrival of the automobile because they couldn't fathom that these smoke burping, ungainly things could ever replace them, and the horse, as the main means of road transportation. It wasn't a hard conclusion to come to in the early days of the auto industry either.
Some didn't and the became the coach designers and makers for car companies. Remember the old GM ads with the tag line "body by Fisher"? They got started as buggy makers who bet on the car and survived even if only a small portion of the larger auto industry.
The major failure is that they can't see any other way for things to work. Be it an individual or a company. That's just how things are supposed to work.
On a bit of a tangent myth surrounding both the recording industry and motion picture industry got their start by infringing on patents held by others and neither bothered much about whether or not their product infringed on copyright. Could be a delayed guilty conscience?
Both industries have responded with near panic when confronted by home recording -- reel to reel and cassette for audio and VHS for video then the various recording and copying applications available for computers -- and even something remotely related like player piano rolls. It's like they have no confidence in their business models or their products.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Failure to monetize
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fill in the blank!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Can't wait for this to pick up and become the popular way for new music to be released without involvement by major labels. Couldn't happen to a more slimy group nor a more deserving group. All the court cases and the misinformation has gained them nothing but disapproval in the eyes of the internet users; who just happened to at one time been among their best customers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
And by 'most people' we are referring to the artists actually out there producing art, not just the ones that have been 'signed' by a label.
If you seriously think the 'Music Industry' works for 'most people', I've got ocean front property to sell you in Kansas (Brooklyn Bridge included at no additional cost...)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I hate to agree with the man, but he is right, it will never work for most people, because most people will never reach that point, just like the actual system doesn't work for most people either.
The thing is, it does work well when it works and it is potentially a better model than the old one, so Taplin is just full of it.
Any system that enables more than 2% of the people trying is better than the old system which see a failure rate in the range of 98% according to industry insiders.
Further, money is not the best measure of success right now, but how much well people can live, does it matter if you you make 20K a year and live as well as someone making 100K?
The music industry used to expend millions of dollars, then tech came along that made it possible to anyone to distribute the same crap for pennies, suddenly you didn't need millions to make it happen.
That should be our go, make things happen without making it expensive and out of reach of everyone.
I think the next phase inside society will be a revolution in home production of goods enabling everyone to be a producer of goods, services will be very important and IP will be just another bug in the windshield.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I can see an artist who is not good at dealing with the public hiring a good PR agent to post on their behalf working well. The artist accepts that they "suck at twitter" and tells their fans that, and gets a partner to do that well.
As long as everyone is upfront and honest about what it is and why - so the artist really can spend time on their art - most fans (and the kind of fans you really want anyway) would have no trouble with it. As long as the agent isn't posting fake stuff, or being lame (in whatever definition the fans of that artist think), it'd be great.
It may not work for the labels, but it could work for an artist who doesn't want to put the work into PR themselves.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
In this case, the 'dog' in question keeps being handed pieces of meat, keeps seeing the reflection, and keeps making the same mistake and losing the meat, over and over. It then looks at the people who keep handing it the meat and does it's best to bite them, blaming them for the inevitable consequence of it's repeated stupidity.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
It's been so long, thanks for bringing back the nostalgia.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Already their supply of captive-audience eyeballs is dwindling, between online ad-blocking and DVR ad-skipping and changing entertainment choices and other causes.
Now, the demand side of their operation is under threat too, as huge successes emerge with relatively little in the way of traditional forms of marketing, employing the crowd and social media.
And this is a good thing. After the umpteenth time of my eardrums rupturing because of that annoyingly awful screechy guy in that *@#! Juicy Fruit commercial, I'd dearly love to see the advertising industry dry up and blow away like a tumbleweed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Failure to monetize
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Umm... neither do the labels...
Sorry if I'm repeating old rhetoric. For some reason that line just jumped out at me and I had to comment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
With twitter and such, you can make almost anything a trend for a few minutes. The question isn't the ability to get the public to react for a second, but rather to get them to react for a long period of time.
You might also want to look at total album sales for Rihanna or Coldplay for their current releases, and then you might grasp why an internet flash in the pan really is just social engineering, not a movement.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Adapt or die
All of these executives obtained their jobs by being good in a known and proven environment just like the one they learned about in school. None - or very few - of them have experienced the terrifying world of entrepreneurship where every day can present new and undiscovered risks (and opportunities). It's a terrifying thing for them to face compared with the vague theoretical possibility of their companies death.
Imagine you are driving down a nice highway and everything is going smoothly. Then the road starts getting a bit rough and you see people by the roadside waving hand painted signs declaring the bridge is out ahead and shouting at you to turn off the road and start exploring one of the dirt tracks or open fields. Would you take their word for it, or would you keep driving until you could clearly see that the bridge was out? And if some of those people were carrying hammers and pickaxes or other paving tools you might even start believing they were responsible for the rough road you were currently on. Thousands of executives would not only believe that, they would even try to run down those people in the belief this will somehow make the road smooth again (which it would if they were right about the cause).
Besides, 'everyone' knows that big corporations never die. They just spray out a bunch of pretty gold parachutes before hitting the ground and bouncing back up again.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
There's a really good blog here about it: http://www.bemuso.com/?p=373
(For those who don't like clicking unsolicited links, it's title DIY doesn't mean "do everything".)
That's, for me, what's so frustrating about this. There is plainly value that can be added by all these legacy players, and people WILL pay for value!
If they'd just pull their heads out of the sand and stop trying to litigate their way back to 1982.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
This is a real artist. And you've just been proven wrong. By the very article you're commenting on.
I'm honestly not sure if you're being an idiot here or just trolling.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Erm, guys, can people stop mock trolling these threads? It's hard enough to address real points among all the genuine trolls without everyone else jumping in to parody them. Poe's law is always in effect here at the best of times, no need to make it worse...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I'll take a wild guess and presume that you won't bother coming back here in 14 days if you're proven wrong, or even admit that there's something here even if you don't get instant billionaires overnight, right?
Nah, you guys seem to think you're making a point, but you move the goalposts and attack independent artists so often it's hard to take you seriously.
Prove me wrong if you want, but I bet you won't bring facts to the table.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
the album in question
http://open.spotify.com/album/73xDb3btCJreR24fPbavTs
[ link to this | view in thread ]
We've seen a few trends in recent years that show how digital sales are allowing trends that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. For example, there's often a spike in sales of particular older songs after an X Factor contestant covers it - a dynamic sales increase that would not have been possible pre-digital due to manufacturing lead times. There's the Facebook campaign that led to a Rage Against The Machine number 1 Christmas single as a backlash against The X Factor itself, and so on.
Here, we see that people are willing to support an artist with pre-sales - meaning he's already "recouped" before the album's release, unlike most major label artists. I'll presume this is one artist who won't be bitching about not being paid enough money when I check the album out on Spotify, nor whine about piracy if he see that some people are pirating the album.
Is he going to outsell all the major label artists in the long term? Perhaps not, but why does that matter if both the artist and his fans are happy and he's in profit in the first week?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
At the time of posting, this shows Ginger Wildheart's album at #9. Other new releases this week include The Offspring at #27 and (usually strangely popular in the UK) boy band Jedward at #33. Both of those releases are on major record labels, from established artists with bigger names than Wildheart. But, they're both significantly less successful, at this moment in time at least.
I'll take a guess that you wouldn't use the relative failure of these albums as ammunition against the major labels, but you'll be happy to shoot down every independent attempt at breaking their stranglehold on the market. It's always excuses with you people - "oh that won't work for everyone" or "I don't like the product so it won't work" or "that won't create overnight millionaires so it doesn't count". In the mean time, artists are making money, have more creative freedom and their fans are happy. Who cares if some middleman isn't happy?
Again, prove me wrong if you want, but you have to bring more to the table than assumptions based on your own biases.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
If you visit some of the forums where this is discussed you'll probably see that they're generally very happy with the return on their investment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
With twitter and such, you can make almost anything a trend for a few minutes. The question isn't the ability to get the public to react for a second, but rather to get them to react for a long period of time.
You might also want to look at total album sales for Rihanna or Coldplay for their current releases, and then you might grasp why an internet flash in the pan really is just social engineering, not a movement.
Flash in the pan, huh? I take it you're involved with the major labels, hence the disparaging comments, reigning in on an independet artists' success. Nobody's allowed to succeed in music except for major label artists, right?
The very fact that an independent artist is high up on the charts is proof-positive that substantial market penetration is possible with corwdfunded projects. True, this is an exception and not the norm but then crowdfunding is in its infancy and will only grow over time. So don't act surprised when situations like this occur with greater frequency in the near-future.
And the best part is, there's ABOLSUTELY NOTHING you can do to prevent it from happening.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
I made myself laugh with that typo.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No. Just because I admit that I'm a troll doesn't make me any less of a troll. I'm not mocking anyone. I'm trying to get a rise out of people who start blasting crap without paying attention to what is going on. Watching guys like The eejit tell me that this dude is a real artist without reading my name makes me laugh. Why don't you want me to be happy?
I enjoy it a lot. Do you come here strictly to read, or to comment? When you comment, do you expect replies and discourse? When I comment I expect people to tell me how wrong I am and why. I do it here because I like the community here, but some of the people can get a wee bit overzealous (DH catches it almost every time, some others not so much). While I agree with a lot of the analysis posted on this site, it's fun to see who agrees just because Mike proclaimed it vs who has thought things through.
Fun side story: I work with a guy who also reads and comments here. He's a big supporter of Chubby Masnick. We try not to post comments on the same stories because I troll and he doesn't. We're both usually pretty good about it (neither of us posts a ton) but it has happened. So every once in a while if you watch closely you'll see the same snowflake supporting and trolling the same story.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Failure to monetize
He's hardly an "average person." He's more like another example of someone who built their name in the '90s label system who now handles his own career.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
A freakin Awesome troll!!!
I doff my hat and lower my ban hammer to you Sir. May you be Trolled one day when you least expect it too and then know that *with a tear of pride in your eye* the art and skill of trolling has not died but lives on, and on, and on.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Failure to monetize
Of course, he hasn't had anything like such success since then, be it with either his band or as a solo artist; with either independent releases or major labels. He's not a household name, and many don't even remember the band. The last top 40 album they had was released in 1996, they left major labels a long time ago and his last solo album only got to #189 in the UK in 2008.
But, now we have to reject his recent success because he had some association with a major label? Yet another pathetic excuse to reject another successful artist who dares to undermine your beloved majors. Get a new playbook, this one doesn't work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
If only you weren't so intent on rejecting every successful artist using these methods...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Defining Masnick's Law
How about this?
Masnick's Law stipulates that no matter how many examples are provided of successful non-copyright based business models, copyright supporters will always marginalise each success as available only to a peculiar minority of artists, and thus not viable for the majority - for which the traditional copyright based business model will forever remain the only effective means of being paid for one's work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Defining Masnick's Law
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20080617/2333571437#c440
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Defining Masnick's Law
Thanks for linking to the original.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]