Comments on: Pete Townshend – John Peel lecture

By: Tom Green

Tom Green — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:33:30 +0000

Just a quick heads up on margins etc. I get about £3 per CD sold to my distributor, who then sells it to indie record shops (the few that are left) for about £5. Most of them now punt them out at £7.99 (to match iTunes) but they used to (and want to) sell them at £10-12. So the mark up on retail used to be about 100%. And, of course, if it didn’t sell they’d shove them back to the distributor, who shoved them back to me. There was no way the shops could lose.

iTunes is different, and it has a different set of costs (PRS+PPL royalty payments on all those test plays, for starters, income that does go back to the artist), but as a proportion of the full retail price, their cut is significantly less than what the retailers used to get – though now retailers are forced to charge less. Not always, though – some indie retailers will still charge you a ‘specialist’ price of £12 for some obscure CD released by labels like mine.

As for Pete …. well, I suppose iTunes could set up some kind of ‘exposure’ system, and in some ways that’s what Ping was supposed to do, if not by top down ‘listen to this’ suggestions from some gatekeeper, but by ‘likes’ etc- the opinion of the ‘public’ lifting good stuff to the top. But he forgets that the power of Peel came from his position- he was just about the ONLY place you could hear unknown, weirdo, and generally out there music, apart from your odd friend who never had a girlfriend’s turntable (or more likely copied cassette)

Now you can hear it anywhere, and there’s a lot more of it, since all that music that used to stay on people’s four track cassette decks now gets ‘released’. There may or may not be more music being made than before, but it does seem as if ALL of it, good, bad, and sometimes utterly appalling, gets ‘released’ somewhere, and then ‘promoted’ using social media.

So the issue is not only ‘how to we get paid?’ in a world which doesn’t have to, but mostly ‘how do we get HEARD ?’ in the first place.

Even if iTunes did help expose those some committee thought were good (here we go, payola scams, anyone ?)- would it make any difference ? When was the last time you paid any attention to what you perceived as ad, on any page ?

In the end, the only recommendations I pay attention to are those from the online equivalent of my 70s weirdo friends. And so does everyone else- and that, Pete, is how to shift product these days.

By: adrian

adrian — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:08:07 +0000

Hmm… not sure what I’m “blatantly” failing to listen to (is it possible to be in a blatant state of non-action?) but I’ve listened to the lecture three times and I’m still getting a washed up old fart yearning for the days when the entire marketing process (and practically all of the profit) was out of the artist’s hands.

I don’t think Apple’s commission is relevant… they’re a download service, so they have a whole different set of overheads from Tower/HMV/etc, and their figures were agreed with the record labels (also not sure where you get the 75% from… their share is falling, and I’ve seen 25-26% overall, 66-70% for digital-only). Don’t get me wrong, I really dislike the iTunes Store, and there are much better ways of buying digital music out there. However, there are also much worse ways, and Townshend’s accusations just come across as outdated and caricatured.

By: Andrew Wales

Andrew Wales — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:51:35 +0000

Maybe Townsend could have stated his point with greater clarity, however… surely the point about iTunes is that it *cannot* be compared to any record shop that ever existed. The profit margins made by Tower, HMV, Virgin etc etc at their height were but a tiny fraction of the commission that iTunes makes on sales of downloads. Even more importantly of course is the fact that at no time in their history did any of these companies commanded the virtually monopolistic position that iTunes does i.e. a market share of some 75% . Of course more established artists can find other ways of distribution but they can do so because they have already established a fan base. However, it is important to note that Townsend was referring specifically to *new* artists and his point was that in the UK John Peel at least gave these artists that initial bit of exposure that would connect them with the wider public and thus allow them to rise and fall on their relative merits. Townsend is thus saying that given the way it is able to exploit it’s position and given it doesn’t actually make any music itself wouldn’t it be nice if Apple could use it’s position to take on a “John Peel type role” and at least provide musicians who are starting out with that vital bit of exposure something which will not only benefit the development of new music but in the long term maybe even benefit Apple itself. I speak as no great fan of Townsend but given he does mention at the beginning of his lecture the importance of listening I find no little irony in the fact that this is something you have blatantly failed to do (Although the poor man seem to carry a bit of a chip on his shoulder re: Led Zeppelin).

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:50:58 +0000

Well said. The Townsend sound bites have been churned by zombie media all day… it’s refreshing to read others who agree he was an embarrassment. Mark Mulligan also said something similar on R4 PM today but I fear 6 Music will just be chuffed they got a “big name” and repeat the gaffe next year.

By: Scoop

Scoop — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:53:32 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly, Adrian. Poor choice of speaker who made a poor choice of subject and was as incoherent as Victor Meldrew articulating ideas by Rik from the Young Ones.

He struck me as insincere; his concepts were outmoded, his arguments outdated; his grasp of the reality for young musicians was non-existant; but most of all he was just plain wrong and not just on the issue so eloquently highlighted by Steve Lawson.

Very poor.