The new Music Business model

Following on from the previous post, UK manager and ex-accountant, Brian Message reveals a lot of his thinking on how investment from companies other than record labels can give artists a different route to success.

So that means that we now have three routes:

Direct to Fan - and do it yourself.

Direct to Fan - done with the backing of someone else's money.

The Old School way - get a record deal with a record label, but now that will be the much vaunted '360' deal.

....or any combination of the three.

“Under the new way of doing things, you’re a chief executive of an artist’s business with multiple revenue streams that go across multiple countries,” he says. The accountancy background used to make him feel awkward, but in today’s volatile music industry it’s proving invaluable.

Message, a dab hand at business plans (“It’s not something I’m proud of”), is pioneering a new model for the music industry. With companies struggling to adjust to a steady decline in their primary source of revenue, sales of recorded music, he argues the industry is suffering an investment crisis. But this crisis is also an opportunity for the likes of Message to enter the game as investors.

Read the whole thing here.