I'm sure we well on our way to coming up with 100 ideas as far as I understand
more than 50 were generated on that theme alone and let us not be any less
ambitious with the second theme which is how to develop talents apart from the
the first the first theme we difference in the way that usually there's all of
this going to be three keynotes from each theme but this one has four two of
them are question-and-answered sessions but let's start with a keynote from a
person who probably knows more than most people about how to develop talents in
the digital world please welcome from the orchard Scott Cohen
thank you so I was asked to talk a little bit about the album cycle and what
it means in in the modern world really like this kind of short attention span
ADD kind of presentations you got 15 minutes or less to say everything you
will you want to say so it make the decision to cut out information or speak
fast so I'm going to do a little of both releasing in the 21st century I mean
it's interesting we're talking about it also from the artist perspective where's
the music because these two things go hand-in-hand the business side of it as
well as from the artist because if you don't have participation from the artist
doesn't matter what plans we develop here but I would also say that technology
is always driven creativity particularly in the music business I mean
everything from a music video which drove Michael Jackson into a whole new
realm of his artistry to the three-minute pop single I mean this was
because that's what you could put on a 45 if you could put eight minutes on it
it would have been the great eight minute pop single but when you can only put
three that's what the artist did they wrote for three minutes and give them
70 minutes guess what they do they fill it up there's even another example I was
reading Miles Davis's autobiography was talking about the the origins of jazz
music and he and Charlie Parker and all these guys were in these big bands you
know think Glenn Miller Orchestra kind of music and as they were writing
this new jazz music they found that the technology got in the way and in this
case the technology was the size of the stage because when they decided that they
wanted to go perform these new compositions they went to see where they
could perform them they said oh right here in this little corner of this
downstairs little room so they have to rethink everything they did said oh well
if we can only bring in a piano upright bass a couple of horns and a drummer
then we're going to have to write that way so in that case the technology the
stage drove them to create in a whole different way and now what do we have we
have recording power in the bedroom of every kid across Europe and this in
North America and they're connected to the internet the problem in this case is
only amateurs seem to be able to take up over the power of this and it's our
industry that's the problem that's not letting it go the way it should go that
we're holding it back and keeping it in the old world release cycles that you
have to make a record we'll go out and promote it we'll release it when the
technology now exists for amateurs to do it and if you can look at my space with
five million unsigned bands on there you get a sense that they're putting out
stuff all the time so let's look back at the origins of the single I mean this
is industrial revolution stuff you manufacture your warehouse you ship and
you spend a little money to promote it in our industry it's music and other
industries it's toothpaste or neckties or shoes it's irrelevant it's about an
old process that came from manufacturing and selling lots of units of one thing
that was how the industry was we then come along with the album which was
great and people wrote to the format and made amazing concept albums but really
the cost of manufacturing warehousing shipping and promotion all about the
same doesn't matter whether I'm promoting a CD cost the same amount to manufacture
whether that's one song or ten manufacturing a 45 or CD it's all
about the same the process is about the same the big difference is the amount
of money you generate from it unfortunately it never worked that
great I mean as far as industrial revolution industries went the music
business wasn't that good at it even at our height the average consumer in North
America and Europe bought two to three units a year that's it which means most
people bought nothing if you take the people in this room that are probably
the most passionate people in the music world we were buying 10 20 30 40 50
records a year the other people were buying them for gifts for birthdays
Christmas gifts but most people bought nothing ask your families ask your
parents when's last time they bought a record people just don't do it and they
never have so we really need to rethink what we're doing here and it's time to
change and now finally adapt to what's available to us now through the internet
and expanded through mobile through all the digital means and it came across some
really interesting research from Eric Garland from Big Champagne and he did
this research last year you guys know Big Champagne they're the market research
company in the States they do those things where an album's leaked to the
peer-to-peer networks they're the ones that tell you about it and tell you how
many downloads guns and roses had yesterday when the album was leaked
that's them well they did some some research and they compared the buying
habits of people that bought physical records with the buying habits of people
that bought downloaded music and the most shocking thing that they discovered
was it was equal that if you used to buy five or ten records a year you're now
buying five or ten downloads a year it was quite amazing the big problem was
the value because in the old world when you went to buy that record you were
buying the album and unfortunately now it's a 99 cent transaction so even though
from a transactional perspective there's the same number of transactions the
value was so low that we don't have a sustainable business and hopefully
everyone in the room recognizes that just putting out albums and putting out
music the way we have digital does not make up for the loss of physical and
never will as long as we continue to operate the same way so what's the
first and most obvious thing we need to do if we're only gonna get 99 cents per
transaction then let's increase the number of transactions you know that
picture of the of the studio in the bedroom that the amateur is able to
write record release music all in the same day why is it taking us as an
industry a year or two years between albums to set these things up we need
to do a lot more in terms of releasing the next thing is we need to increase the
value of that transaction because let's say they're only going to make one
transaction then let's make it the biggest fucking transaction we can do
it's the concert ticket it's the t-shirt it's the album it's everything all in
one or if you even think of it from the album if you want to sell that big
ticket item which is the full album then you better get them to buy into the
artist not the song the last 50 or 60 years of the music industry was all
about making the great song but if you live or die by the great song that's
only 99 cents live or die by a great act and they buy everything so I'm going as
fast as I can so we're gonna do a one-minute case study and then I'm gonna
wrap it up and this is on the Ravenettes which is a band that's near and dear to
my hearts because I manage them for one thing and they put all their music
through the orchard and they put out the first three records on Sony and then
they went independent and we could finally test all the things that we
believed all along and the first thing was that people would buy into them as
an act you know they weren't trying to spread to the world but they were saying
those people that kind of love sex drugs rock and roll read Bratowski but
actually don't live it they just like reading about it you know maybe that
they're 40 year old kind of balding maybe a little belly those people bought
into the band and what we looked was in the trend we're seeing is 90% of the
people are taking the individual track when given the choice and only 10% are
buying the full album but in this case we had almost a 50-50 split which meant
that people were not just taking the single track because they believed in
the band and what they stood for the next thing we did was in 2008 was we
released four EPs all in the same year the first idea was let's let's have the
artist experiment I mean putting out a record putting on a full album is an
enormous amount of pressure on an artist so this allowed them to experiment
they each for the EPs had a different style to it and that was so liberating
to them as the artist because they weren't worried that if they put this
out and it failed that was the end of their career they wouldn't get the
next record this gave them a chance artistically to grow and to do things
that they wouldn't normally have done if it was made for their album the next
thing is we were able to increase the number of transactions because this
wasn't this wasn't advertised and promoted to the to the world this was
just to their audience so everyone that had bought the first or the last album a
subset of those people then made additional transactions so we increased
the transactions second is we substantially increased the value of
those transactions because what we found was with those EPs more than 90% of the
people took the whole EP so instead of taking the 99 cent track they were
taking a 399 product we could ruple the average revenue per transaction by
four that's huge so so it was as if we sold a lot more music and in conclusion
if we're still gonna just do this the same old way of make an album promote it
I don't care whether you're promoting it online or promoting it to radio wait 18
months or two years and then do it again it is not a recipe for success it is
guaranteed for failure
