Ignite member Paul Mumford gives his views on the music industry – a topic recently explored by at the October Ignite Social. 

Our county has a rich musical heritage with musicians like Charli XCX, Blur and Depeche Mode all starting their journeys in Essex. Chelmsford’s thriving live music scene has always played an important part in nurturing new talent, but we face a problem. In order for our music community to continue, do artists need to start thinking differently?

You know I’m no good

We need to start with a history lesson. In 1989 Karlheinz Brandenburg, a postgraduate student at the University of Erlangen in southern Germany changed everything. You may not even know what Karlheinz did, he doesn’t get mentioned much. He invented the mp3, a way of compressing digital music to make songs easy to store and, crucially, easy to share.

We all know what happened next Over time we began sharing and listening to digital music in the mp3 format. It was all a bit illegal at first with the help of Napster, Limewire and others, now above board via streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes (although it can be argued there’s still an element of robbery going on – more on that later).

Streaming music is now the norm and buying it is not. 67% of total music industry revenue comes from streaming vs just 16.1% from physical sales (Exploding Topics). This, combined with other technological advances has created a perfect storm for musicians. Although there are many benefits to this new way of publishing music, there’s one noticeably big problem and we’ve only just started to see the effects.

You’ve got a problem

Making music is too easy. Anyone can do everything from writing to recording and even releasing a song from their own bedroom. You don’t even need to be talented. What used to take weeks or months at great expense can now be done in a few hours for free! That may not seem like a problem but trust me, it is.

Before the streaming explosion the only way to get your music published was via a record label. If you were lucky enough to get signed, your label would give you a nice advance on sales and do pretty much everything to help you succeed, from production to promotion.

Now, with the ability self-release, artists no longer need to rely on prostituting themselves to the labels for their music to reach the masses. Savvy artists are now setting up their own labels, protecting their own publishing and taking control.

Hard to handle

It’s now so easy to publish music that more people are doing it. Consumers have more new music to choose from … a lot more! Around 100,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every single day (and 20% of those never get played).

As a result, if you’re an independent artist, it doesn’t matter how amazing your music is, you have 99,999 other songs to compete against on any given day.

Back in the days of physical sale there were a lot of record labels to choose from, big names and independents. Now there are three, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. They have pretty much gobbled up all the smaller labels and now control 85% of the industry.

That means everyone else gets to fight amongst the scraps. 15% of the market share.

Money’s too tight to mention

Let’s see how that all stacks up if you’re an independent musician and you want to actually earn a living (good luck with that).

Pre streaming it was the record label stumping up the cash and to a degree taking the risk. If you were lucky and had the right people behind you, you could earn a living.

Now you have to be incredibly lucky. With the cards already stacked against you, the streaming services are about to pay you a pittance for your hard work.

Spotify pay around $0.005 per stream. That whopping sum then gets shared between the publisher, songwriter and whoever owns the master. If all those are you happy(ish) days! (dittomusic)

However, before Spotify starts splashing the cash you have to reach over 1,000 streams. Oh, and to count as a stream someone needs to listen to more than 30 seconds of your song.

Therefore, if you’re an unsigned artist – even a bloody good one. It’s unlikely your published music is even going to buy you a cup of coffee.

To make any money at all, most musicians have only one option, playing live but with so many small venues closing even that’s also getting tricky.

Being boring

In my experience there are some really exciting things happening in the world of independent music. Even in my mid 50’s I still get excited about new music and there’s plenty out there pushing the art form. But can you name a big musical shift since hip hop? That stuff exploded 40 years ago.

In my opinion, the music being published by the big three labels can be pretty homogenous and ‘safe’ at best. I very rarely get excited about it. Take the biggest grossing musician right now, Taylor Swift. She’s really doing nothing that wasn’t done 50 years ago. I’m sure she’s a nice person and everything but she’s really not pushing new ground at all.

There are countless other musicians getting decent exposure who pretty much sound the same. The big three are just playing safe and selling what sells. Meanwhile the people with less to lose are making bolder steps and taking bigger risks.

Since 2021 I’ve been involved in a project to help expose unsigned artists (The Jam). Last year alone I filmed over 100 independent
artists and every year I make a music video for one of them for free (see more here).

This is where the really exciting stuff is going on. But my fear is the real innovators will eventually be lost because they can’t get the exposure or make the money they deserve.

I know there’s an answer

In theory a solution is easy but in practice it’s much harder. Independent, unsigned musicians are having to do everything that a record label would have done for them. This means musicians are literally running small businesses.

So, they need to step up and learn all the things they didn’t need to know 20 years ago. The biggest part of that is marketing. Without it, nobody hears their music, and nobody pays them money.

The problem this creates is that some artists are better at selling than they are at making music. Sadly, they wind up being more successful than others who may be super talented but couldn’t sell a jumper on Vinted.

Of course, the other solution is the big three start growing some balls and taking some risks but that’s less likely to happen. There is a future for new music but it’s a very different one to the world we were living in when I had a wall of CDs in my living room.

Heal the world

If you’re an artist, it’s time to learn some new skills. If you’re a music lover, it’s time to do some digging. Don’t rely on Spotify’s algorithm to serve up music for you. Get out there and start looking for it. Visit small venues and support unsigned artists.

Follow them on social media and encourage them. Pay them for their talent and start supporting them.

Without them the future is filled with Taylor Swifts.

Paul Mumford is a film maker specialising in projects for the music industry. He’s produced and directed numerous promo and live music videos as well as commercials and documentaries. He’s currently producing documentary about the big changes faced by the music industry in the 21st century.