Charvolant

I remember agreeing with Stefan Herwig in an email a few weeks ago that record labels provide an important and valuable service to musicians. And they do, but I want to point out that this still doesn’t mean bands need record labels. Bands just need the services the labels provide for them. It’s important to make this distinction because these services can be done by anyone, it doesn’t have to be a record label. And there are more businesses and people who can provide these services now than ever before. So the challenge for record labels is really that they are going to have to change their practices enough so that they become more attractive to musicians than anyone else who can provide the same services with greater satisfaction for the band. Sure, I’ll agree that the record label as a concept isn’t dead, but it does have stiff competition for the first time in its life and needs to adapt to the changes.

Back in the day, the military would use rifles to shoot down birds that would make their home inside of large aircraft hangars. It was easy, and they were used to shooting things down, it was what they knew. But what’s the problem when you start shooting birds inside of buildings (besides killing animals if you’re from the ASPCA)? That’s right. Soon enough, the roof of a hangar started looking a lot like Swiss cheese, filled with hundreds of holes. All of those holes had to be repaired, creating more work and taking up lots of time and money.

Their “solution” to one problem just created another one. It didn’t actually eliminate the fact that there was a problem, it just changed what the problem was (and in reality, it created more problems because not all of their shots actually hit the birds). The moral of the story: You can’t always use the solution to an old problem, or what you know already, to solve a new one. Instead, it would be worth a little bit of time to think creatively and come up with a real solution that perhaps nobody has thought of before.

Lots of people have been saying that old corporations still practicing “business as usual” will not be able to learn the new(ish) ways of the internet market/conversation, but I, for one, seem to be a bit more optimistic. After all, the Mythbusters did prove that, contrary to popular belief, old dogs can indeed learn new tricks. And because people are (generally) smarter than dogs, I think corporations will have no problem adapting to this new environment. It’s just a matter of time, patience, and repetition. Kind of like training a dog. Because as Leo would tell us, it’s more about developing different work habits than actually learning anything new.

Lack of motivation to begin changing their habits seems to be the only thing holding the corporations back. How do you motivate them? Well, dogs are motivated by food, but most companies will only develop new habits when things start to go terribly bad. However, in many cases, the old way of doing things hasn’t fallen apart enough to the point where they are panicking (like it has in, say, the music industry), so most corporations don’t see the need to change yet. But really, it’s just a matter of time.