✘ All music is media - on value capture
And: Budapest Pride Ban; Hunting down AI songs; TikTok launches Fan Clubs; Algorithms killed discovery; Anthropic's use of copyrighted books ruled fair use
For a while now, I keep hearing that music and its economies will change again. Over at MIDiA, research shows that the streaming economy has peaked and new forms of licensing are changing the game. Dan Fowler and Kat Bassett showed what it means that we are indeed moving into a two-tier system that will only serve to widen economic and broader market inequalities. In the world of broadcast and TV, there’s been a similar change happening for years. While music went into the streaming economy, TV also had to deal with the rise of Netflix and niche video streamers. Wrapped around all of this is what’s often referred to as the creator economy. A wholly different and alternative model for broadcast and distribution centred around social media and individual influencers. While music entered the era of the bedroom producer and Soundcloud Rap, broadcast TV entered the era of Mr. Beast and Charli D’Amelio. This is a story of production value as much as anything else. And right now, all this is coming together as we once again redetermine how we value music now that all music is media.
The cult of the star
Music is no stranger to adoration. Stars have existed since before recorded music, but that certainly helped fandom collide. Since the 1950s, we’ve been on an upward trajectory of global superstars. Although, the internet has also caused fragmentation, which shows in shifting headliners at festivals. Think about the more old-school acts (Missy Elliot at Coachella) or the pop stars (Olivia Rodrigo at Glastonbury). But also, shifting genre definitions (Lil Wayne at New Orleans Jazz Fest) or genres stuck on repeat (Sleep Token being the only recently formed band headlining Download Festival). All of this points to an ingrained culture where people come to see the biggest stars. Even if these stars are more and more distributed among different channels.
And this is the point, it is now possible to become famous through a specific medium and break through. This has been the case since the birth of social media (from Myspace and the Arctic Monkeys to Soundcoud and Playboy Carti to TikTok and Lil Nas X). It is possible to breakthrough to a form of mainstream awareness, and thus festival headlining ability. There are, however, more and more artists, or creatives more generally, who have an audience specific to a medium.
This is the world of podcasters, comedians, musicians, and others who fall into the bracket of influencers. Sometimes, these people are defined as ‘alternative media.’ Especially when they bring political or current events style work, such people are seen as an antidote to established media. This is a slippery slope where it’s easy to get lost into the weeds of discussions around misinformation. This is not what I’m aiming for here. These people are simply broadcasters with audiences that are ‘alternative’ only in the sense that they are not connected to major broadcasters such as ESPN, Disney, or more local and national versions of this. (Perhaps I should have chosen a different word than alternative)
I mention ESPN, because in sports it is quite common for anchors to also have their own podcasts that also generate revenue. These people have massive audiences, yet see the benefit of remaining visible through the old-school format of TV broadcast as well - and the paycheck that comes with it. Of course, in music this would be artists the size of Ariana Grande remaining with a major label instead of striking out on her own backed by her millions of fans. The star attracts audiences and audiences is where the value lies.
Capturing fan value
Musicians, like artists more generally, find themselves beholden to others determining the value of their work. In visual art, this is mostly gatekept by institutions and individual collectors. In music, there are labels, publishers, CMOs and a long history of recorded music caught in zero-sum games. The value of music, however, is inherent to it. It mainly expresses itself in non-monetary fashion: through the value of the fan. It’s up to the fan to decide how much to spend on a concert, merch, digital audio, etc. Labels pride themselves in being able to extract this value, but more and more this is up to the artist herself. Like a podcaster, they need to build their own audience before any label is interested to pick them up and help them out with more resources.
This begs the question where the value sits. Is it the music? Is it with the fan? Is it in the interaction between these two? Joshua Citarella said it beautifully in his recent New Creative Era podcast with Yancey Strickler:
“The point of sale is the point where the value gets captured.”
We can talk about value all we want, but what it comes down to is that the moment we sell a subscription, a t-shirt, a record, we determine the value of it. The fan thinks: “Do I want to spend 40 bucks on this t-shirt?” Or: “Do I want to spend 35 bucks plus shipping on this record?” Or: “Is it worth this money to see this artist live?” When they decide, yes, the value has been captured. Previously to that, the value is basically dormant in economic terms. There’s other types of value like social or cultural capital (Hi, Bourdieu), but the economic value pops up in the transaction.
Value captures differently
In that same conversation between Joshua and Yancey, they talk about the new notion of the A Corp. It’s a very American-based format for a business that is better suited to artists and collectives with diversified revenue streams. Listen to the podcast or check Yancey’s TED talk for more info. In the podcast, Yancey gives a brief overview of different methods of capturing value:
Crowdfunding was patronage
Substack/Patreon provides salary
A Corp provides equity
There are more methods to add here, of course, but the point is there’s different forms of economic value. These all serve different purposes and contain different moments of value capture.
Crowdfunding is based on putting it our there in the world that you want to do or make something. The fan believes in you enough to pay upfront to allow you to make or do this thing. There could be more perks involved, but that’s the gist. You get money to do something you want to do and can’t do without the upfront cash.
Subscription business creates a recurring revenue stream based on fans’ eagerness to support and the artist/musician/creator continuously delivering value.
Equity is different again. It basically says: we know that this thing costs money to make or do, but we also think that the value might change over time - most likely accrue. To be able to capture that value in the future, we need to structure our work now to share in the spoils when this happens.
It’s that last step of equity that really only is interesting when enough revenue gets made - when enough value gets captured.
Changing media
The media world is changing. What I just labelled traditional and alternative media is colliding. If you have an audience, or if you draw an audience, you have the power to influence the value capture moments. And, you don’t just have this influence for yourself, but also for major broadcasters or labels. There’s a reason Lucien Grange talks about UMG as a place that develops artists into global brands. This is the level of audience and fandom that allows for the broadest spectrum of value capture. Shifting media trends, create shifting stardoms. When’s the last time Rihanna released music? Why doesn’t Taylor have her own clothing brand? These superstars do things on their own terms. They are global brands.
They are also unicorns. We can’t have fifty Rihanna’s or Taylor’s. But there are many pockets with plenty of audience to also push the capture of value. And, considering the colliding media landscape of traditional broadcasters and alternative ones, there are more ways to capture this value. Patronage could be expanded, equity doesn’t have to live in the future but could be captured in the form of a loan. Projects can be defined in time and scope to help achieve this and create clarity around what value needs to be captured to first make something happen and then share any spoils.
Now that all music is media, there are many different games that can be played. We can look far beyond music and think about how traditional and alternative media are generating opportunities for individuals and collectives to capture their value. Everything starts with having that audience to create potential points of sales. But there are more points than what we’re traditionally used to in music.
LINKS
🏳️🌈 When diversity troubles the powerful: Hungary and the Budapest Pride Ban (María Cuéllar)
“In the middle of the angst and existential crises of today, personal essays of introspection are a key part to understanding those who were scared and hiding in the 80’s, or even before. They were supposed to not exist and, despite the passage of time, we are finding ourselves living in the same version of reality they were in those times, a suppressed society looking for alternatives to show that their mere existence is not a crime.”
✘ The point this author is making her, for me at least, is the need to journal and to archive. History is continuously unfolding, but in order to learn from it later, we need texts - in the broadest sense of the term. Then, those texts need to be shared.
🏹 The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs (Jack Buehrer)
“In the scramble to respond, a new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that’s built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery. The goal isn’t just to catch synthetic content after the fact. It’s to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system.”
✘ This is the way. Some would say. If there’s no way to stop genAI music, we may as well control it. I wonder if this will be the same cat and mouse game as we see with fraud.
🪭 TikTok launches “Fan Club” feature (Emily Howarth)
“Currently, Fan Club is free to join, but many industry observers expect TikTok to eventually explore ways to link it with monetization tools like digital gifting, Tips, or even future paid membership tiers. For now, the emphasis is on loyalty and engagement. However, for creators hoping to increase their revenue streams on TikTok, Fan Club could lay the groundwork for nurturing their most active supporters, who are often the first to engage with future monetized content.”
✘ Of course this will be a paid feature. Publish it, make people use it, then get them to pay for something they already use: this is the playbook. It makes sense, too, considering my piece above. It’s all media, and anywhere value can be captured it doesn’t get lost.
🪤 Algorithms killed music discovery (Prarthana Sen)
“We could be doing more to actively discover, listen to and share new music with our community. So we set ourselves a challenge to kickstart our playlisting initiatives again, and this time we are relying on good old-fashioned curation by the team (who have to actively listen to new music to share it with others), while also welcoming submissions from artists releasing new music across India because of the sheer volume of new releases everyday!”
✘ Love this. Instead of complaining about enshittification and algotraps, the team at Neon takes action. We need more curation.
⚖️ Court rules Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train AI is ‘fair use’ – but it may not have much bearing on music rightsholders’ case against platform’s Claude (Daniel Tencer)
“The judge rejected some key arguments that music rightsholders have made in arguing that AI companies need to license the material they use – for example, the argument that it’s fundamentally unfair for tech companies to use copyrighted works so that they can create AI tools that compete with human creators.”
✘ There’s a lot here, and we’ll need to see where this all ends up, of course. For now, what I take away from this ruling is that it’s highly likely this will push LLM developers into licensing deals - they are most likely cheaper than statutory damages. However, in those negotiations, the AI developers now also have some precedent that they’re not fully in the wrong with their copying activities. The dance keeps going.
MUSIC
Bambii released a new EP, Infinity Club II. I know them for their relentless genre-mixing in live sets. The EP has a bunch of vocalists and definitely showcases the variety and breadth of Bambii’s take on electronic music. It feels like a trip into the fabric of Bambii’s musical brain on the dancefloor.