The music industry...

"Industry rule # 4080 record company people are shady, so kids watch your back 'cause I think they smoke crack. I don't doubt it look at how they act."

- A Tribe Called Quest, Check The Rhime (one of my favorite songs)

Now that I am tangentially working in the music industry I feel justified to comment on the industry as a whole. In the past week I have seen and heard some interesting things that are very telling on the state of the industry. John Mellencamp was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and he said something interesting when he was questioned about letting Chevy use his song, out of context, as an anthem in their commercials. He said it was an experiment for him, which he was disappointed in mainly because of the way they used the song but he said he thought Chevy was a better record label than than any label he has dealt with because they delivered everything they promised. This is a sad statement on the way the labels treat the artists which ultimately translates to how they treat consumers.

The other interesting thing that I saw are kind of related. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails did this really interesting interview with Digg's Kevin Rose for a show Digg recently started called Digg Dialogg. The interview overall is pretty long but there are 2 questions (the first and the 3rd) that really get to the heart of the irrelevance of the major labels assuming you are not trying to be a huge pop star. Rezner offers up different ways for independent artists to make the labels obsolete.

NIN has offered up their music for free and experimented with lots of other distribution models. Now they are coming out with an iPhone app that looks very interesting if you are an NIN fan (see video below).

This seems like something an really smart way for a band to engage with their fans. This is something the labels should be doing on an aggregated basis for all their artists or better yet collectively create a singe app so that people can fully immerse themselves in their favorite music. But sadly I don't think the labels are even close to thinking along these lines.