We’d always thought the CEOs of music corporations would look something like Cerberus, the three-headed dog: devouring artists, drinking up their creative talent, and vomiting mass-appeal. At Berklee last Friday, though, Terry McBride appeared as something slightly more than the complete opposite. McBride is the CEO and co-founder of the Nettwerk music group, the company responsible for breaking Coldplay and managing the Lilith Fair. But also for allowing hip-hop-phenom K-OS to release artist and fan mixes of his new album, and tour under a “pay-as-you-leave” model similar to how Radiohead released In Rainbows.
McBride spoke to a group of Berklee College of Music faculty and students last Friday, predicting that developments in smartphone applications will revolutionize the music industry within the next eighteen months. By opening their software to third party developers, companies like Apple and Blackberry open the door for “literally, unlimited possibility.”
Post contributed by Nick Curran.
“Anyone with a good idea can create an app,” said McBride. “And the best will be socially filtered to the top. It’s not about what they do, but what they allow you to do.”
Although he didn’t offer many specifics, McBride did indulge in abstractions. He wants to see apps that organize all the music on his computer, but from his Blackberry. Or an app that drags music from the digital ether surrounding his iPhone, and streams it for free.
But what about the copyright laws that labels hide—and sue—behind? Well, McBride says they got it all wrong.
“As soon as a personal connection between the artist and the consumer takes place, then that song belongs to the consumer,” he said. “Suing didn’t stop anything, it just made people more creative.”
Music is becoming social again, and McBride sees an opportunity to capitalize on that. Music went through a too-cool phase through the late nineties. Now it’s just the right amount of cool again. Bloggers writing about bands they love—offering not critiques, but unadulterated emotion—make possible successes like that of Fleet Foxes, a band with no major label or marketing support.
“The future has everything to do with monetizing the emotional connection between consumer and artist,” he says. “Music is a social unifier.”
McBride wants to build his artists through authentic brand recognition, a platform that emphasizes the fans over the artist. With the new K-OS tour, where fans will be asked to pay what they want as they leave, McBride hopes to create a night for the fans.
“If you can imagine it, you already know what it looks like,” he said. “Everything we do here is about imagination.”
McBride seems to believe in the creative process, the art as well as the success. Weird.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
