Mantic Media

Today’s Lefsetz letter is sensational (subscribe):

Despite repeating the mantra that content is king, the major labels never believed this. Nor did the movie studios. Distribution is king. If you can’t find something in the store, in the theatre, it’s like it doesn’t exist. And the major labels controlled the store just like the movie studios controlled the theatres. Sure, they had to compete with each other, but there was no issue of renegades entering their domain, until the Net flattened distribution, made it available to everyone. Any act can sign up with TuneCore and get its wares on iTunes. Giving up a hell of a lot less in the process than they would if they made a deal with a major. And getting paid too, assuming they sell.

And secondary to distribution was marketing. That was the driver in the nineties. That’s what Tommy Mottola was all about. Working the media into a frenzy, driving the public into the record shops. Once again, it was a limited universe. The individual, the so-called indie, had no access to major media. Couldn’t get on the “Today Show”, never mind Top Forty radio or even MTV. Labels would pick their priorities and hype them to high heaven. They were good at this. But now they’re flummoxed, how do they reach a public that’s not paying attention?

First the strategy was street teams. Not only at the gig, but online. Thought was if you just paid enough kids, they’d spread the word on the Web. The audience is stupid, it can be influenced.

Only one problem, it can’t.

Have you visited a message board recently? The hypesters and trolls are usually outed in one post. Fake hype just doesn’t work on the Web. The culture of the Web is to out fraud. Pulling the wool over the public’s eyes is a failed strategy…

And look at the biggest success online. Google. It does essentially no hype. Google triumphed because it was good. Be good and the public will spread the word, users will flock to you, you’ll reach critical mass.

Success on the Web is predicated on quality. Sure, train-wreck value is important too, kind of like a novelty record. But those sites don’t tend to last. Unless they’re all train-wreck all the time. Then there are the MySpaces and Facebooks. Those are like new music genres. They don’t have to be executed perfectly, they just need to be new and different.

So it’s about the idea. And, ultimately, the quality of that idea. It’s not about distribution and it’s not about marketing. And the old guard doesn’t like this.

Go read the whole post. This is true of all art, not just music. I’ve got ideas and will share later.

So Nine Inch Nails has pulled a Radiohead and released some free music for download (get it here) and they aren’t even pretending people will pay for it! (It was released straight to the BitTorrent clients.)

But there is a catch. They’ve only released the first 9 tracks of the album, to get the rest you need to pay.

A slightly different model than the Radiohead release, so it will be interesting to see who makes more money. Either way, I think this a good decision by the band and likely more big name acts will follow suit. If nothing else, it’s a tremendous PR coup. It won’t get the buzz Radiohead did (since they were first) but it should still send tons of traffic to their website and get people talking about the band again.

It will probably even win them a few new listeners and bring back many old ones. I for one wouldn’t have downloaded the album (free or otherwise) if the news hadn’t been on every major tech news site this morning.

Update: SAI reports that the album led to $1.6 million in first week sales, all of it going to Reznor. Not too shabby!