2013-11-08

You Cannot Devalue Music

This from Tim Quirk, Head of Global Content Programming at Google Play. It was the topic of a speech he gave at the Future of Music Summit last week in Washington D.C. The full speech can be accessed from Digital Music News here.

I was standing up and cheering when I read the speech. Tim was pointing out that, even in the good old days, music was worth different things to different people at different times. The online / digital revolution has only made that position glaringly obvious.

He really gets to a point I've been trying to push since we started this Adva Mobile business. Who are your super fans. Your "1,000 true fans", or whatever. There will always be more fans who don't care about your music than there are fans that care about your music. And, Artists will always start at the bottom of the pyramid. The goal for every Artist is to climb the pyramid, where you have fewer and fewer listeners but those that remain are happy to give you more and more money. These fans will bu anything - alternate versions, deluxe editions, every show, etc.

There's a lot more in the speech, it's really worth the read. And he closes with insight and advice that we here at Adva Mobile also want to promote:

"Capturing people’s attention and holding on to it is the fundamental challenge for artists and labels and their managers in the 21st Century. ....

But if you want to embrace the new ability to engage different types of fans in different ways, people like are here to help however we can."
Amen.








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