RSS feed
I’ve been thinking a bit about what the music industry will look like in the next 10 to 20 years. Although I’ve talked about the coming revolution before, and sites like Downhill Battle do a great job talking about why things will change (see the section Crucial Readings on their site) and how to drive the change, not many people seem to be talking about what will replace the current 50 year old money making machine that is the recording industry.
Last night I saw a bunch of noise rock bands play at The Kirk, an old little church which is now used as a specifically secular art and music space. The bands were Rand and Holland from Sydney, because of ghosts from Melbourne, and Faun Fables from San Francisco in the U.S. While I was primarily there to see because of ghosts, who venture up this way far too infrequently, I ended up being more amazed by Faun Fables and their show.
To call it cabaret would be doing them an injustice, but there are certainly elements of it, especially when the show started. There is no seating at The Kirk, so people tend to sit on the floor, being more docile and appreciative than your typical rock crowd, and because there’s no bar, there’s no need for the long pauses between bands. The audience tended to forget this when they were scattered around the room and outside on the street when Dawn McCarthy walked to the front of the room, facing the stage, and sang her first song unaccompanied. She then walked to the stage, small suitcase in hand, and she and Nils acted out 4 minute existentialist scene set on a train station, before proceeding into the main part of their musical set.
For their last song, a rather subdued and unaccompanied song by Dawn, also included theatrics, sitting at what looked like a gypsy fortune telling stool, showing photos of her life to the audience as she sang. The video in this post is of that song, which was shot on my camera phone, so my apologies for the really bad visuals, although the audio is as haunting as the original.
Again, all three bands were selling merchandise, CDs, t-shirts, badges, and in the case of because of ghosts a hand etched limited edition vinyl recording of a live gig in Sydney earlier in the year. The packaging is recyclable screen printed cardboard, with hand stiching, a photo of which is also included in this post.
Artists like Faun Fables, although the main vocalist Dawn McCarthy does have a cabaret, folk and circus sideshow background, are defining new ways for artists to extend their work into other domains and mediums. Not for much longer can big recording acts simply record mass consumable music, provide a simplistic live show, and expect to make millions. With the Napster generation, the audience may not be as pedantic about sound quality, but the audience for different styles and genres of music is starting to explode.
This is co-incidentally the direction marketing and productisation has been heading over the past few years, targetting a niche, or even the individual consumer, with what they specifically would like to hear. In many ways iTunes Store provides the technology for this, being able to construct or produce your own compilations and playlists, and the artists will very soon I feel follow suit.
How about a customised feed by an artist? Instead of selling albums, new songs are drip fed to the public, and sound matching technology or better use of metadata allows consumers to pick the tracks they want to hear, or even purchase, if there’s still such a thing. Perhaps we’ll say goodbye to albums, and instead embrace the serial song list.
Anyway, I don’t have to say it again, but I will, the music industry is changing, and I think it will be a change in the extreme…
Here’s some more info on Faun Fables. The video clip is in 3gp format, so you’ll need to right click or control to save it, depending on your legacy platform, and a recent version of QuickTime to play it.