On August 2nd, 2014, a guy from Ohio got $55,492 in donations to make a batch of potato salad. His elevator pitch? “Basically I’m just making potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet.”
On November 28th, 2014, a lifelong friend got his groceries delivered to his bed by a stranger with Postmates. He found a complimentary cookie in the bag next to a bag of frozen tater tots.
On December 1st, 2014, I got a complete stranger to pick me up in a Mercedes E-350 in less than one minute with Uber. She drove me 5 blocks while I ate free Starburst and sipped a chilled miniature water bottle in the back seat. I didn’t feel like taking a walk.
Thirty minutes ago, I tried to order a live concert from one of my favorite musicians with my iPhone. I have not received that concert. It was a complete and utter failure.
At age 18, Canadian soul/pop singer Alexz Johnson signed to Capital Records. After a lifetime of singing, and the right mix of talent, promise, and “it,” she had made it. At age 21, she switched to Sony’s Epic Records. She was on the fast track to a successful career as a pop singer. Or so it would seem.
After five years of navigating record label organizational structures, dealing with studio exec politics, and weathering record label staff reorganizations, she had not gone on tour with her music.
She had been signed to two major record labels, and by anyone’s intuition, she was set for fame. But her big break was more like a corporate purgatory, where she watched her career stutter and stagnate at the hands of representatives that didn’t take their client seriously.
On March 24, 2012, she raised $67,140 from 939 backers to bring her music on tour. It took her less than 24 hours.
She raised more than twice the original $30,000 she had intended to raise money for her tour. What did it take? Logging onto Kickstarter, creating a campaign, telling her friends and family, and waiting one day.
iTunes brought music to my pocket. Soundcloud brought me free music directly from my favorite artists, the minute they publish it. Hype Machine brought me a curated feed of quality music and a plethora of music blog publications. Spotify brought me all the music I could think of for a few dollars a month.
Before an enterprising musician like Alexz Johnson hacked her way to a world tour, nothing brought real touring opportunities to musicians in less than a day. Before a few companies endeavored to bring live music to the fans that demand it, no one brought musicians in the flesh to fans that want to listen.
There’s no shortage of talk about the music industry’s slow rate of adaptation to change. There’s surely no shortage of talk about “the Uber for (insert industry arbitrarily).” This post is not about the next Uber for bringing Bossa Nova-themed Mariachi bands to sing at your dinner table. And it’s not an exposé on why record labels deserve to die.
But there’s a growing gap in the music industry, and a growing desire to address it, that’s worth taking a moment to consider.
With the plethora of music streaming services available, music is becoming a more accessible commodity for everyone. Artists are given the power to reach millions of fans with enough crowd appeal and without a label.
But the democratization of digital music that these new technologies mediate has another side effect.
As music becomes more open to the public, it’s less common to pay for a song or an album. Artists can no longer rely on a hit record to make their careers. They’re expected to make their own luck with an ambitious amount of live touring, a strategy that yields higher returns than the royalties from a digital album release.
It’s about the user.
Technology companies everywhere are revolutionizing quality of life by bringing business concepts to the market with a focus on the user. Even a brilliant business idea won’t succeed without a healthy amount of user research and customer insights. Success comes from a deep and focused understanding of the market, the ideal users, and the true nature of the problem you aim to solve for them. Companies like Kickstarter take the user-centric approach to the extreme by allowing ideas to be pitched directly to their potential users.
With crowdfunding, the user pays directly for the product he desires. He’s more likely to pull out his credit card because he’s incentivized by the opportunity to play a real integral part in bringing an attractive idea to fruition.
Why isn’t live music using a similar approach?
Several companies are making early endeavors to adapt this type of strategy to the live music space. We Demand and Eventful attempt to give fans a way to rally behind a request to bring a musician to their city. An early-stage venture called Audienced aims to adapt Kickstarter’s crowdfunding model to live events. At Tixr, we empower music fans by giving them a beautiful and intuitive way to discover and buy tickets for live shows from their favorite artists and in their area, and we give venues and industry pros a powerful and easy way to sell tickets.
But the system has not adapted yet. Live music is still reliant on a complicated network of studios, labels, managers, and venue staff to bring musicians to the fans that don’t really have a way to get to them by themselves.
How do we adapt?
The successful execution of crowd funding for live music will depend on a few simple insights.
- People are willing to pay more when they know their money is empowering an idea they care about. Crowd funding gives the average person an easy way to play a part in creating something they want.
- Kickstarter is successful because it streamlines funding by bringing ideas directly to their potential audience.
- Musicians and fans have a real desire for a system that successfully allows them to collaborate in organizing shows.
- It’s about the user. Just like you would do market research and user testing to find the right consumer base and problem for your product, musicians should be able to find the right audience for their music.
Getting the things we want is so easy nowadays that we don’t even have to get out of bed to buy groceries, eat, do laundry, rent a house, 0r get a massage. Shouldn’t live music happen just as easily?
Article written for Tixr by Jake Doering
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