End of days for the big label boss ego, being audience driven and AI innovation from...wait for it......Westlife! 🤯
Conrad Withey
Experienced music, media & technology entrepreneur // Founder of MusicBusiness.Pro: growth consultancy 📈, leadership community 🤝 & regular industry articles 📰 (subscribe ↙️ to get notified)
Is Netflix’s audience-first mindset a wake-up call for the music industry?
Here's a business insight that will make label leaders think hard and question if they're in it for the right reasons.
It's a quote from Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos.
Towards the end of a recent (excellent 👍🏻👍🏻) The New York Times podcast (linked below), he rebuts the presenter's view - on a movie called "Irish Wish" - that it was poor.
After pointing out that, while she wasn't keen, a lot of people watched and loved it, he says:
"We try to make movies that are great.
We define quality from the perspective of the audience.
If the audience loves the movie that's great.
That's quality."
I love that. 💓
Audience-led.
Customer-focused.
Here's my question: Do you run your music business the same way?
Or…
Do you think YOU know what great music sounds like and try to get audiences to align with you?
In my near 20 years working in the music business, the vast majority of label leaders think the second way.
I believe it's going to be a struggle to survive with that strategy in the social x streaming music industry.
It creates unsustainable levels of risk, results in poorly allocated marketing spend and a culture counter to the one that has helped Netflix win the streaming war.It's no surprise, as I heard recently from a senior major label lawyer, front line labels are now only successful with 1 in 40 or 50 artists signed. 🫨
What do you think?
Is it time for music industry bosses to adopt a genuine audience-first approach?
Can they roll back the egos and go with the crowd?
Had you heard about Ping from Apple before? It was news to me.
Spotify isn’t just having to compete with TikTok and Snap Inc. for user engagement but also the video streamers like Netflix.
Music is fully part of the attention economy now and if we want our catalogues to be heard we need to figure out how to grab users engagement (active or passive) in and around competing attractions for their daily “screen time”.
The ego is dead⚰.
Long live the ego👑.
In the hallowed halls of record labels, a revolution has taken place.
The larger-than-life personalities that once ruled the music industry with iron fists and golden ears have fallen.
But in their place, a new ego rises – one that's both everywhere and nowhere at once.
For decades, the music business thrived on big egos:
💪 Label executives who could make or break careers.
🦻🏻 A&R reps certain they could spot the next big thing.
📻 Pluggers who bullied their way onto radio playlists and magazine covers.
These titans shaped the soundscape of generations.
Their intuition, their connections, their sheer force of will – these were the engines that drove hit after hit.
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But that world is gone.
Enter the age of the algorithm.
In this new era, success is measured in streams, likes, and shares.
The power no longer resides in corner offices but in lines of code.
The new kingmakers are faceless: AI-driven recommendation systems, predictive analytics models, and viral social media trends.
The old egos have been humbled.
No amount of shouting or name-dropping can compete with the cold, hard efficiency of machine learning. The industry veterans who once ruled by gut instinct now bow before dashboards of data.
Yet, make no mistake – ego is not dead.
It has merely changed form.
Today, the artist reigns supreme.
In a world where anyone can upload a track to Spotify or create a viral TikTok hit, the power has shifted dramatically.
The new ego is that of the creator, the influencer, the multi-hyphenate artist who builds a direct connection with fans.
This new ego is:
👩🏻💻 Tech-savvy, fluent in the language of algorithms and engagement metrics.
🤳🏻 Image-conscious, cultivating a personal brand across multiple platforms.
❤️🔥 Fiercely independent, often bypassing traditional industry structures.
But there's a second ego at play as well – a collective one.
The ego of the crowd, expressed through likes, shares, and streams. In this new landscape, the will of the masses, amplified and directed by AI, shapes the future of music.
So, as we bid farewell to the cigar-chomping execs of yesteryear, we welcome a new regime.
One where the ego is distributed, digital, and data-driven.
The personality cult of the label boss has given way to the cult of the algorithm and the authentic artist.
Is this new world better?
It's certainly more democratic, offering opportunities to voices that might have been shut out in the past.
But it's also unforgiving, demanding constant engagement and adaptation.
The music industry's adaptation to a new world order has only just begun.
The recent changes at Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are a reflection of the seismic shift that has and is still happening.
What's your take?
Do you mourn the loss of the old guard, or do you welcome our new algorithmic overlords?
✉ And the 2024 award for "Best application of AI by an artist" goes to......
🏆Westlife🏆!
It's great to read about a positive, legitimate & innovative use of hashtag#GenAI in the music industry for a change.
And who would have thought it would come from a band that has been working for 26 years?
Respect.
The Kugou AIK tool that was used for the track reportedly allows users to sing and record songs in 10 languages, and 15 Chinese dialects.
Congratulations 👏 to Tencent Music entertainment Group & band manager Sonny Takhar for highlighting the potential of the tech to open up new markets.
⬇️ If you have thoughts on these articles and posts please share in the comments below ⬇️
📢 And, if you are an independent music business leader and want to connect and talk about the future of our industry please DM me! I love to keep building my network.....🛜
Musical Artist | Associate's in Mass Communication/Media Studies
5moInteresting!🤔
Experienced Music Professional
5moThis article is the equivalent of saying "Remember when there were steaks and chops and meats of all cuts...now it's all sausage. How will butchers continue to do their business?" It leaves out the very onerous role of the sausage maker. Yes, there are algorithms, but where are the scalable alternatives to them? Where are the shared experiences? The Brian Eno apocryphal quote of "Only 10k people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but every one of them formed a band" tells a different story than "Oh boy, populism should govern everything." Sometimes audiences aren't ready for a sound and a label has to take the lead with it. Sometimes audiences aren't ready for a career, hence Cherry Red and Light in the Attic and Numero. You can choke the outlets where campaigns used to live, but throttling doesn't replace artist development. To accept the music industry as it currently exists is to accept an $11B shortfall from where it used to be 25 years ago (accounting for inflation). The fix is in. Populist algorithms with no context = monoculture. Good luck with that.
Founding Father of Good Soldier Songs
5moRemember the public voted for Brexit x