Category Archives: markets

AI Will Help and Hurt Music. Here’s How.

Posted on October 16, 2022 by ratpie

Computers have been helping us make and store music for many years. Music AI is not so new either; already by the early 1990s there was widely available software runing on consumer grade desktop computers which could generate and regenerate … Continue reading →

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Hypercompetition. How Platforms Destroy Markets.

Posted on May 21, 2021 by ratpie

The first rule of platform business success: increase supply as far beyond the market’s ability to sustain the suppliers as possible. It doesn’t really matter how – and many tactics have been tried. It doesn’t matter what it costs either … Continue reading →

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Three Conditions for Independent Music to Survive

Posted on July 17, 2017 by ratpie

My biggest mistake was to assume that major labels would not want to buy margin-shrinking and inherently weak independent distribution companies. Since 2015, several ‘insider’ distributors (the kind whose founders and owners sit on trade association boards) have been sold … Continue reading →

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My Platform, Right or Wrong!

Posted on May 5, 2017 by ratpie

It was an early hero of the United States navy, Stephen Decatur, Jr., who gave the world the dubious chant of nationalist zealots, reportedly in an after dinner toast to, Our country – in her intercourse with foreign nations, may … Continue reading →

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A New Social Contract For Music

Posted on February 19, 2017 by ratpie

Music, in its various forms, has done quite well in the age of copyright. Digital technology has brought with it many tipping points, when old certainties give way to chaos before finding new stable states. Any new stability will rely, as … Continue reading →

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Record Labels! Beware of Fake Independence!

Posted on November 1, 2016 by ratpie

Giant corporate groups are a fairly recent development in the music industry. The most extraordinary and wonderful music has always been produced outside the city walls by innovative and committed independent record labels. Around 40% of recorded music industry value … Continue reading →

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A Fair Way to Bridge the Value Gap

Posted on October 13, 2016 by ratpie

The music industry says that artists, labels, and songwriters are getting a raw deal from services that allow users to upload content. The beef is that user-uploaded songs, which may generate advertising revenue for the service and the uploader, compete … Continue reading →

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Pricing Music Fans in the New Data Economy

Posted on May 13, 2016 by ratpie

In 2003 digital artist Angie Waller released a wonderful project she called ‘Data Mining the Amazon’. Asked about it by art community Rhizome Waller offered the following: I was surprised that books about military battles and corporate takeovers pointed to the … Continue reading →

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The Simple Maths of the New Music Industry

Posted on April 25, 2016 by ratpie

The pre-modern music industry could be navigated with some very simple maths. Bands made records, record labels sold them to shops. Wholesale revenue wasn’t that much more complicated than units x price. And what mattered to most bands was the size … Continue reading →

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The Sadness of Crowds

Posted on March 20, 2016 by ratpie

Marillion’s 2001 release, Anoraknophobia, was a pun for a different age. Singer Steve Hogarth told the BBC in May of that year, “In those days everyone was pointing and laughing and calling us nerds. Now it’s the trendy thing to do.” They … Continue reading →

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