» Aloha, Mr. Hands: What I would do with EMI’s new music business
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[re posting my comment on the original article]:
I think Ian’s point about label brand equity is much deeper than a backwards look at “remember when you could rely on label X for Y genre”.
The argument that the main differentiator for labels is their ability to market (production and distribution being commodities) is right on. However, the main issue is EMI’s ability to promote artists in the era of reverse markets…not in an era of abundant attention and mass media outlets.
By “reverse markets” I mean listeners looking for artists…instead of labels looking for an audience.
Investing in organizing genre/psychographic-specific communities that attract and retain listeners (instead of identify and intercept them) around label “names” (Capitol, et al) is probably the highest ROI strategic move that EMI can make.
What’s a concrete example of what I’m talking about?
Google any of the following terms: “shoe gaze music” “indie rock” “miles davis”
At the top of the SERP will be [roughly]: a Wikipedia entry, a video, and a Last.fm tag. The reason why is that these “trusted info sources” have the [objectively] best information around these subjects. As Umair might say, they’ve created an enormous amount of context for listeners, who can engage further with a very VERY high return on time/attention.
Wouldn’t it behoove a record label to “own” that SERP? (e.g. shouldn’t Capitol.com be THE best information source about keyword “OK Computer”?)
EMI needs a simple heuristic to guide it’s strategic direction. My suggestion is that they continually ask themselves: “How does [whatever action] help fans of artist/genre X find EMI artist Y”?
