El viejo negocio de la venta de cajas de plástico (con un CD dentro)

En eso se ha convertido la pomposamente autodenominada “industria musical”. O al menos eso indican todas las evidencias objetivas. Un sector que se hace llamar “industria” debería entenderlo por que es pura realidad económica, pero en su mayor parte siguen su ruta hacia la extinción empeñados en utilizar formas más propias de oligarquías y mafias. Enrique Dans explica esta creciente brecha entre “industria” y realidad en La industria de la música ha muerto (que enlaza con su columna del mismo título en Libertad Digital), y que a su vez continúa el artículo de MTV, The year the industry broke.

El primer número de 2008 de Wired, de la mano de Thom Yorke y David Byrne, analiza el futuro de la música, de los creadores, de los negocios asociados, y de lo que quedará de la actual industria musical que consiga entender el presente y adaptarse rápidamente. En una entrevista de Byrne a Yorke, David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music, analizan las motivaciones, totalmente pragmáticas, estrategia y resultados del experimento que Radiohead realizó con su último disco In Rainbows:

It turns out the gambit was a savvy business move. In the first month, about a million fans downloaded In Rainbows. Roughly 40 percent of them paid for it, according to comScore, at an average of $6 each, netting the band nearly $3 million. Plus, since it owns the master recording (a first for the band), Radiohead was also able to license the album for a record label to distribute the old-fashioned way — on CD. In the US, it goes on sale January 1 through TBD Records/ATO Records Group.

Pero lo más relevante aparece en David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars, que se podría leer como un manual para autores de todo tipo y condición, algo que Byrne ha vivido en primera persona:

Full disclosure: I used to own a record label. That label, Luaka Bop, still exists, though I’m no longer involved in running it. My last record came out through Nonesuch, a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group empire. I have also released music through indie labels like Thrill Jockey, and I have pressed up CDs and sold them on tour. I tour every few years, and I don’t see it as simply a loss leader for CD sales. So I have seen this business from both sides. I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I’m not the only one who can say that.

Y fruto de esa experiencia concluye que la “industria musical” ha acabado convertida en en el negocio de vender cajas de plástico con CDs:

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

Pero esta es solo la parte “triste” de la historia (por desgracia, la única que conoce una parte de la sociedad, por ejemplo la inmensa mayoría de políticos). Existe otra historia, que se escribe ahora mismo, y que está llena de oportunidades (y por suspuesto de nuevos riesgos) para creadores y usuarios y, por tanto, para la cultura. Por supuesto esa historia se escribe desde  Internet que ha transformado ya irremediablemente la creación, producción y distribución cultural. Byrne identifica 6 posibilidades de negocio para la distribución musical, donde antes solo había una, en función del nivel de autonomía del artista. Si sigue el modelo de máxima independencia, una forma de DIY, los beneficios potenciales se pueden maximizar pero los riesgos también. En el otro extremo las ganancias siempre serán menores pero la seguridad se incrementa. O sea, las mismas opciones con las que se encuentra cualquier otra persona que tiene que optar entre la seguridad de un empleo por cuenta ajena y el riesgo del emprendimiento.

1. At one end of the scale is the 360, or equity, deal, where every aspect of the artist’s career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. The idea is that you can achieve wide saturation and sales, boosted by a hardworking machine that stands to benefit from everything you do. The artist becomes a brand, owned and operated by the label, and in theory this gives the company a long-term perspective and interest in nurturing that artist’s career…

2. Next is what I’ll call the standard distribution deal. This is more or less what I lived with for many years as a member of the Talking Heads. The record company bankrolls the recording and handles the manufacturing, distribution, press, and promotion. The artist gets a royalty percentage after all those other costs are repaid. The label, in this scenario, owns the copyright to the recording. Forever…

3. The license deal is similar to the standard deal, except in this case the artist retains the copyrights and ownership of the master recording. The right to exploit that property is granted to a label for a limited period of time — usually seven years. After that, the rights to license to TV shows, commercials, and the like revert to the artist…

4. Then there’s the profit-sharing deal. I did something like this with my album Lead Us Not Into Temptation in 2003. I got a minimal advance from the label, Thrill Jockey, since the recording costs were covered by a movie soundtrack budget, and we shared the profits from day one. I retained ownership of the master. Thrill Jockey does some marketing and press. I may or may not have sold as many records as I would have with a larger company, but in the end I took home a greater share of each unit sold.

5. In the manufacturing and distribution deal, the artist does everything except, well, manufacture and distribute the product. Often the companies that do these kinds of deals also offer other services, like marketing. But given the numbers, they don’t stand to make as much, so their incentive here is limited. Big record labels traditionally don’t make M&D deals…

6. Finally, at the far end of the scale, is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. CDs are sold at gigs and through a Web site. Promotion is a MySpace page. The band buys or leases a server to handle download sales. Within the limits of what they can afford, the artists have complete creative control. In practice, especially for emerging artists, that can mean freedom without resources — a pretty abstract sort of independence. For those who plan to take their material on the road and play it live, the financial constraints cut even deeper. Backup orchestras, massive video screens and sets, and weird high tech lights don’t come cheap.

Como plantea Byrne, estos modelos no son absolutos ni eternos para un artista. El creador debe saber moverse entre al libertad y el pragmatismo, aunque parece que si se podrían definir algunas reglas generales:

I would personally advise artists to hold on to their publishing rights (well, as much of them as they can). Publishing royalties are how you get paid if someone covers, samples, or licenses your song for a movie or commercial. This, for a songwriter, is your pension plan.

Increasingly, it’s possible for artists to hold on to the copyrights for their recordings as well. This guarantees them another lucrative piece of the licensing pie and also gives them the right to exploit their work in mediums to be invented in the future — musical brain implants and the like.

Estos nuevos escenarios se acompañan, tal como explica el mismo artículo, en el negocio “directo” de la música, aquel derivado de las ventas de música, acompañado de un cambio de soporte. El CD seguirá siendo aún mayoritario unos años pero con una tendencia claramente decreciente en favor del soporte digital. Chris Anderson explicaba hace unas semanas como esta tendencia era la única negativa en el negocio de la música (Everything in the music industry is up! (except those plastic discs)). Todas las fuentes de ingresos crecen excepto la venta de CDs:

• Concerts and merchandise: UP (+4%)
• Digital tracks: UP (+46%)
• Ringtones: UP (+86% last year, but probably just single-digit percent this year)
• Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and videogames: UP (Warner Music saw licensing grow by about $20 million over the past year)
• Even vinyl singles (think DJs): UP (more than doubled in the UK)
• And, if you include the iPod in the music industry, as I’d argue a fair-minded analysis would: UP, UP, UP! (+31% this year)

Only CDs are down (-18%). They’re around 60% of the industry not including the MP3 players, but just around 25% if you do include them.

Por todas estas razones, lo interesante del futuro está en como se recompondrá el ecosistema que se origina alrededor de la producción musical y cuales serán los futuros papeles de creadores, usuarios, la vieja industria y los nuevos canales e intemediarios (las redes P2P, las compañías de telecomunicaciones, los buscadores en Internet o iTunes). Mientras que en el mundo occidental, como explicaba David Byrne, la industria pierde y el resto de actores ganan, Chris Anderson presenta datos que muestran que en China son los nuevos intermediarios (como Baidu o China Mobile) lo que se están apropiando de la práctica totalidad del negocio. Por tanto, el futuro está abierto y lo definirá la inteligencia estratégica de los diferentes actores y puede que, por desgracia, las decisiones políticas que traten de mantener artificialmente el viejo modelo ahogando las oportunidades de los nuevos actores y especialmente de los usuarios y los auténticos creadores.