Scarcity in the Music Industry

Seth Godin, a well followed and innovative marketing expert, offers a very simplistic point of view about about 'free' in a recent blog post here.  As it applies to the music industry, particularly to the recorded music industry, I think his first line says it all

"I think it's dangerous and often fatal to put free on top of an existing business model. Things fall apart."

Unfortunately for the recorded music industry this has already happened, very difficult to put a price on a recording that once it's made available to a small few becomes very abundant to all.  So what really is scarce in the music industry?  Well one we know for sure and will always be is talent.  Artists that for what ever reason make their fans react in ways that from a business standpoint, makes them spend their money on things that are not in abundance (tickets, merch, etc.).   The labels move into tying up all the rights of an artist (360 deals) is just another way of them saying that we can't get a return on just recorded music so we need to get the return on other avenues as well.

But in doing so I think we are beginning to recognize other scarcities as well and until we fill those voids we will continue to see a decline in the number of artists that break through to the masses.  Major label efforts are continuing to be reliant on the fact that radio is the primary place for which people consume their music but recent studies have proven that this is not the case and every day becoming less so.  So now we see the scarcity on the label side being in marketing.  When I worked for a label (which my last employment was 5 years ago) they had at any given time an entire promotion department working a single track by an artist with only one product manager overseeing the marketing efforts.  I know this has changed a bit since then but I believe there is much room for improvement.  The label that steps up and starts offering marketing tools and services that become the focal point of the artist campaigns and do so in a successful way will not only start to see their return much faster but will have a line of artists looking to be a part of a company that can offer services that are so scarce that they can't find the execution anywhere else.