The death of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax earlier this week wasn’t just a loss for gamers and fantasy fans, but for creative types and undependents all over the world. Some of the web’s best and brightest undependents have been remembering the role-playing game titan as only they can.
According to some highly-regarded scholars of the intersection of music and popular culture (by which I mean, whoever wrote the first entry that came up after my hasty Google search), David Lee Roth once said that the reason most music critics love Elvis Costello is because most music critics look like Elvis Costello. (For those who have never really gotten over the nerd vs. jock tensions in high school — Hi! I’m Mike! — it should be pointed out that Costello later got nominated for an Oscar and commissioned by the Danish Royal Opera, while Roth is now doing this.)
The point is — or should be — the relative acceptability of nerdiness is a somewhat recent phenomenon, and the Internet is helping the bespectacled and pallid among us finally convince the world that knowledge is actually pretty cool. There’s a whole slew of webcomics out there celebrating, and not apologizing for, their creators’ love of periodic tables, quadratic equations, obscure art history, and all other kinds of fancy-pants book-learnin’. Here’s two of them:
While there is no shortage of interest in the album cover medium, there’s no obvious web page out dedicated to the world’s first record cover. I’m apparently I’m not the only one looking for it (See: “Anyone have a scan?“) I’ve seen scattered images from articles about Steinweiss but I’ve not found anything resembling a Shrine.
The recent Madonna news, while intriguing as a tale of industry tumult, has next to nothing to do with undependence. She has signed up to receive $120 million from one of the largest (and oft reviled) music companies on the planet. In addition, she may yet see traditional distribution via a music label. See this Forbes article for great context and analysis.
It turns out that Madonona wants maximum money and doesn’t care about Undies, which is of course quite fine. She’s just, err, expressing herself.
Live Nation, formerly of Clear Channel, is about as far away from undependent friendly as you can get. They are co-Dependent central.
For more info on Live Nation / Clear Channel, please see:
Undies can now thrive in all kinds of exciting ways. As always, new opportunities present new challenges. We will continue to discuss trends, developments, industry structure and economics, and related topics of interest to Undependents. The seismic shifts in music reveal lots of cool stuff; Madonna, though, lives in another world.
From Entertainment & Media:
Yet Radiohead are singularly about to demonstrate the true paradigm shift taking place in the music industry, and it has little to do with technology: that the artist is, and always has been, the most powerful player in the business.
Simply put, only the artist has a direct relationship with their fans! Everyone else is simply along for the ride.
Of course, for a long time the cost of recording, manufacturing and distribution was prohibitively expensive; marketing remains so. While digital technologies have changed that paradigm what is becoming clearer is that the relationship between the artist and fan is a quantifiable, valuable asset.
Something that Despair, RoosterTeeth, and Undependents could have told ‘em.
Also: Radiohead are plural?
Radiohead started something. Diverse folks are following. Where do we go from here?
The music industry has its own unique characteristics and severe issues. However, many lessons can be learned by following it.
Lefsetz Letter on Madonna/Live Nation
Bottom line, the majors have lost their clout. Their monopoly was always distribution, and they used this to get talent to sign. Eventually they owned EXHIBITION also. So, if you wanted to play, you had to sign with them. The fact that they weren’t hip enough to know this wasn’t going to last forever is astounding, especially since trends come and go so quickly in the music business.
You can’t make a TV show by yourself. Certainly not a movie. Not that anyone can see. But you can make a record all by your lonesome, it doesn’t cost that much. And you can say exactly what you want, you don’t need to clean it up for Wal-Mart. And, you can distribute it yourself online. That’s what Radiohead is doing.
Will they make a deal with a major for physical distribution? Will they do it themselves? Or will they leave ALL that money on the table?
Undies are already very familiar with saying what they want to say. And they already distribute themselves online.
If you can attract a growing audience for what you create, you hold a massive amount of power in this emerging space. Use it wisely. Learn how to make the most of these new opportunities.
“Rather than renewing her contract with her longtime record label Warner Bros., the Material Girl is signing a 10-year, $120-million deal with a concert-promotion company,” the WSJ Biz Blog reports.
All these music industry moves comes at the expense of the former financial and physical infrastructure intermediaries between Artist and Audience.
Labels provide either (usually both) start-up capital and the physical distribution network for musicians. Both those come at an extremely high price, naturally.
But when the internet enables digital and physical distribution, and musical publishing tools can be bought off the shelf for lawn-mowing money, labels lose their monopoly on access to Audience.
From their own website: (no permalink)
It goes without saying the music industry proper sucks. Everyone knows it, it’s a cliché to even point it out. But occasionally something happens that’s worth getting excited about and this definitely qualifies.
Radiohead has decided to self-release their next album and allow fans to pay whatever they want for it. It think it is safe to say that they’re going to make a killing in both real and social capital (”Not that that’s why I did it…”, “No God forbid you should lose your standing as a cult failure…”,”You think I’m a failure George?”,“I will NOT get sucked into this conversation.”)
From Wiki: “The band are currently without a record contract, having fulfilled their six-album contract with EMI in 2004. In interviews in 2006, they admitted that “for the first time, we have no contract or release deadline to fulfill - it’s both liberating and terrifying”
Others Musicians have gone down the Internet-as-Road-Less-Traveled path but few have done so have been this big at the time of their “departure. “
Radiohead to give away new album - Telegraph
Radiohead, the internationally renowned band, has taken the unusual step of telling fans that they can pay as much or as little as they like for the band’s new album In Rainbows.
Undependent™ tracks the emerging class of self-sustaining Internet-based artists. By artist we don’t mean artiste. We mean those content creators whose self-expression originates in and emanates from the Internet itself. The compelling ones attract audiences and in so doing are capable of creating completely self-sustaining businesses with total artistic control. (Read more here)
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