The Platform Dependency Audit: Could Your Music Business Survive If One Company Disappeared Tomorrow?

There is a strange little habit in the music business that we have somehow learned to accept as normal. Artists spend years creating music, building audiences, selling tickets, gathering followers, uploading catalogs, collecting customer information, and developing relationships, and then they store enormous pieces of that business inside companies they do not control.

That arrangement can work beautifully right up until it doesn't. A platform changes its pricing, removes a feature, sells itself, changes its algorithm, modifies its licensing program, restricts an account, changes ownership, decides your favorite feature was apparently not as beloved inside the quarterly earnings meeting as it was inside your business, and suddenly you discover exactly which parts of your career you actually owned.

This is why every independent artist should perform what we might call a platform dependency audit. The idea is simple: identify the outside companies your music business cannot comfortably operate without, and then figure out what would happen if one of them vanished tomorrow.

Not because every platform is evil. Not because the internet is collapsing. Not because you should unplug your computer, move into a cabin, and begin selling hand-carved CDs to passing hikers.

Platforms can be incredibly useful. Some of them are responsible for enormous amounts of discovery, sales, distribution, communication, licensing, ticketing, and creative work. The problem begins when an artist mistakes access to a platform for ownership of a business.

Those are two very different things.

http://www.makingascene.org

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(600)

Gerry Casey's Interview with Jovan Webb

Jovin Webb did not find the blues. He was born into them. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Webb grew up surrounded by gospel music, Southern church culture, Gulf Coast grit, and the kind of real-life...

29 Aug 28min

Interview with Leslie Waugh

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Leslie Waugh Leslie Waugh is a Texas-based Americana singer-songwriter whose music tells the kind of stories that country music was built to carry: not the gl...

28 Aug 54min

The Song You Already Own May Be Your Best Investment

Making a Scene Presents - The Song You Already Own May Be Your Best Investment The Music Business Has Finally Discovered Something Artists Should Have Known All Along For most of the history of the r...

27 Aug 24min

Direct-to-Fan Platforms Are Becoming Discovery Platforms. Don’t Make the Same Mistake Twice

Making a Scene Presents - Direct-to-Fan Platforms Are Becoming Discovery Platforms. Don’t Make the Same Mistake Twice There was always something pleasantly old-fashioned about the original idea behind...

26 Aug 23min

Don’t Close the Session Yet: Build the Revenue Package When You Finish the Master

Making a Scene Presents - Don’t Close the Session Yet: Build the Revenue Package When You Finish the Master The Song Is Finished. The Business Asset Is Not. There is a wonderful moment in every recor...

26 Aug 26min

September 1 Is a Warning: Build an Exit Package for Every Music Platform

Making a Scene Presents - September 1 Is a Warning: Build an Exit Package for Every Music Platform There are certain phrases no musician wants to see in the subject line of an email from a company hol...

25 Aug 20min

Interview with Hugh Pool and Jon Ragusa of Mulebone

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Hugh Pool and Jon Ragusa of Mulebone Mulebone is the long-running blues and roots partnership of guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and producer Hugh Pool and ...

22 Aug 1h 21min

Gerry Casey's Interview with Bright Black

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Bright Black Bright Black is a Midlands alt-metal band from England, bringing together the force of modern hard rock, the emotional weight of metal...

21 Aug 40min