Forget massive CD production costs and printing in-store promotion materials; Warner may be ready to transform digital music.
House money. That’s where a business can make big profits. Eliminating the middleman, or in the case of the digital music world, the middle application provider, and a publisher like Warner Music Group can keep that middleman money in-house.
The Mercury News cites a keynote given by Warner Music CEO/chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. in Colorado at the Aspen Summit, the annual Progress and Freedom Foundation conference. He disclosed the development of an “e-label” to debut this fall.
“At Warner, we believe we can create a digital-only label,” Mr. Bronfman stated in the keynote. “(The e-label) will transform the process for artists, young and old, and possibly give the stories of artists struggling to be heard a new, and happier, ending.”
Warner sees the opportunity to bring lesser-known acts to the public without incurring the massive costs of making that music available via traditional CD distribution and promotion methods.
Ideally, the arrangement would represent greater earnings for music creators. Via the e-label, artists with a small following could find themselves benefiting from the marketing savvy and electronic distribution capabilities of Warner Music. Lower costs for the label should mean better profitability for artists.
Also, the e-label could distribute a body of work in smaller units. Instead of forcing an artist to place ten or twelve songs on a CD to make it marketable, a practice that has given rise to innumerable complaints about a CD containing only two or three decent songs, this e-label could deliver just those two or three excellent tracks.
In turn, new artists would not face the pressure of tossing out extra tracks that don’t fully demonstrate their songwriting vision. Artists would release “clusters” of three or more songs every few months, and more importantly, “artists retain ownership of their masters and copyrights while signed to this label,” Mr. Bronfman said in the address.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
