When I read this, I was trying to map "record labels" and "music" onto "big 5 publishers" and "books."
The Big 5 are not quite there yet, but you can almost feel it gestating in the minds of those executives: "publish your book yourself, and if it's a hit, then we'll reprint it and do your next one."
In the other article by Ted Gioia (the talk with Rick Beato), Ted said, back in the old days, half the people in the record business were Mafia, and Rick said "literally Mafia." I don't think ethical standards in the music industry have risen materially since then.
Ricks youtube video with Brian May was so good I sent it to friends.
Try to find him doing one of your favorite songs if you want to hear stuff like "here they go from an F sharp into a diminished 7th and that shouldn't work but they make it work." I know nothing about music but I love to hear master craftsmen, no matter the craft, talk about their trade and not dumb it down.
You might like McCartney 321 on Hulu. He basically sits at a sound board with Rick Rubin isolating tracks and talking about how the songs came together.
I agree a lot with that. I see advice from famous writers saying how you need to do your own marketing even if published by famous firms. Go to events, podcasts, interviews.
I created a “Substack for fiction” because I wanted to publish myself without having to beg for attention of a few gatekeepers.
My #1 favorite thing to do at Google was hosting authors (search "bob's author talks" on YouTube, although it didn't work for me just now). The thing about those talks is: they were almost 100% authors with a publisher behind them. The publisher would pay for their book tours. A self-published author might manage to give a talk at Google or the 92nd Street Y in NYC, but it would be tough.
They can also get your book reviewed in the few publications that still review books, and they can send their catalogs to bookstores. But yeah, they take more of the money than a self-publishing arrangement will take.
A popular “musician” is just a front person for an entire organization of producers, videographers, lawyers, promoters, that can get you into venues, choreographers etc.
It still takes a lot to produce a hit and the money is still made from concerts
I can imagine a lot more stories like the one of Billie Eilish and Finneas producing her first album at home...
> This is no humblebrag bedroom studio that turns out to have been professionally outfitted. It’s just a regular bedroom, with a bed against one wall, where Eilish sat to record her vocals, facing a desk and bookshelves and O’Connell’s modest production setup: Apple Logic Pro X, a Universal Audio Apollo 8 interface and a pair of Yamaha HS5 nearfields with an H8S subwoofer
On social media, the common story is bedroom producer because it is so easy for a major entity to promote anyone they want to stardom with a solid budget behind them.
Many of the most popular influencers on social media are corporately backed with songwriters and million dollar production units behind the bedroom cameras. You can usually only tell this when you search BMI and see how many songwriters and engineers names are listed on hit songs.
The hit making "bedroom producer" with 50k+ followers is now mostly smoke and mirrors...
In the indie video game world, you can work on your game for a few years, then once its done, tested and polished, a publisher will want 30% for doing a few months of organizing the release. They value their time at perhaps 1000 times more valuable that your own. Its outrageous.
They spend 1,000 times more than you to build out a network. 30% is lower than what Walmart would charge you if you were lucky enough to get listed. Most people raise prices to cover these and advertising costs. If you tried to replicate that network the time/effort would outweigh the costs.
Spending years on an indie game was never going to be that profitable. I hope you build the game for other reasons aside from profits.
err.. no they don't. An indie publisher is typically one or two marketing dudes sitting in an office somewhere and pretty good at writing press releases. Walmart is a massive retail chain with.. like.. millions of employees and like.. thousands of brick and mortar stores.
Oh, perhaps you thought I was talking about the platforms like Apple, Google, Steam and the like. I don't begrudge them their 30%
What he said in the interview was that back in the day the criminals that ran the industry actually liked music.
Now it's owned by Chinese technology companies, hedge funds, and regional telephone monopoly conglomerates and run by musically deaf accountants that only care about next quarters numbers.
The Big 5 are not quite there yet, but you can almost feel it gestating in the minds of those executives: "publish your book yourself, and if it's a hit, then we'll reprint it and do your next one."
In the other article by Ted Gioia (the talk with Rick Beato), Ted said, back in the old days, half the people in the record business were Mafia, and Rick said "literally Mafia." I don't think ethical standards in the music industry have risen materially since then.