Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 198
- 4
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If you're a record executive who has been given a 1 million dollar budget to develop an artist that the label expects to have a hit, what do you think is the better strategy?
Scout someone whom you think has potential and spend the 1 million signing, recording, and promoting them.
Sign 100 bands more or less at random and spend $10,000 signing and recording them, and just release the music and hope it promotes itself. You're going to pay them up front for the rights to the recordings so they're just making an album for hire and aren't under contract, and you won't even bother to keep their phone numbers. What they record now is it.
The artist you spent the whole million on might make the money back and might not, but the chances of that happening are much better than assuming that one of the hundred albums you just threw into the market with no promotion is going to be a big enough hit to recoup the costs of all the others is practically zero. The calculus doesn't get any better if you can record 200 artists for $5,000 apiece, or 400 for $2,500 apiece. At that level of investment it's akin to a lottery, and lotteries don't become better investments just because the price of tickets is cheaper. It's actually worse than a lottery because at least the lottery has calculable odds and a guaranteed winning number.
Acquiring the rights to potentially popular music and gambling on it in the form of promotional dollars will remain a viable business model, but that's really all we're talking about here. The "record company" of X years from now may well be one guy with a squad of AI agents trying to get his hookiest AI songs into the right TikTok cat videos.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link