The Geeks Shall Inherit the Music Revenues
posted by Frank Pasquale
Musician Jonathan Coulton made over $500,000 last year by cutting out the middleman and selling his songs directly online. (The zombie ballad “re: Your Brains” is one of his classics.) The NPR Planet Money team featured a debate on whether Coulton’s success was a fluke, or presaged a new golden age for artists. Skeptics argued that Coulton’s goofy geek-pop was the Snuggie of music, unreplicable by other creators. Optimists opined that the sky is not falling for content creators, who could learn a thing or two from the fan-cruise and internet presence of the Coulton empire. I liked their hopeful views, though I wonder if revenues like Coulton’s were already accounted for in the Bain music revenue chart:
Will singer-songwriters like Coulton, or iTunes-inspired impresarios, capture the bulk of future music revenues? Only time will tell.
May 23, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Posted in: Intellectual Property
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Responses (2)
Logan - May 24, 2011 at 8:43 am
You can have this level of success and more with better/more well known groups but probably not of his level. Though, to be fair, I did purchase the Kaynes v. Hayek rap songs done by EconomicsTV, so maybe it is possible.
Eric E. Johnson - May 25, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I don’t know, but I can’t believe so many people ever spent that kind of money on pre-recorded cassettes. That is truly awful. I owned a lot of cassette decks in my day, but that was for my own Memorex or TDK dubs. (And I can say that now without fear because the statute of limitations has run,) I never bought a music on pre-recorded cassette unless was some impulse buy out of the bargain bin.
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