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David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

Fantastic optimistic article in Wired by David Byrne about emerging music models: David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars. His conclusion:

No single model will work for everyone. There’s room for all of us. Some artists are the Coke and Pepsi of music, while others are the fine wine — or the funky home-brewed moonshine. And that’s fine. I like Rihanna’s "Umbrella" and Christina Aguilera’s "Ain’t No Other Man." Sometimes a corporate soft drink is what you want — just not at the expense of the other thing. In the recent past, it often seemed like all or nothing, but maybe now we won’t be forced to choose.

As someone doing the 100% DIY thing for years, I’ve been scouting around for the low to midrange music biz services and been fairly disappointed with the options. Hopefully that’ll improve.

Posted to , , by Brad on 12/19/07 @ 9:17 am |
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One Response to “David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars”



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    The business is all in distribution, not in creation. (Alas.) Even the copyright laws have morphed into a reflection of this. So I’m not sure things will change much; it’s still a lottery system as far as the DIY folks go, and at that you still have to be photogenic, young(-ish), and be totally focused on a demographic.

    This internet era of culture strikes me as being a lot like the cassette [DIY] scene that spawned early industrial and “basement” electronic music (Third Mind records, et al.). Seminal, landscape-altering, experimental, but ultimately destined to serve only as feed for the next generation of stadium-rock heros.

    So there will be changes to the game in the near future that reflect new business models and consumer trends. We won’t be the ones to cash in on it, babe.



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