PROMOCOPY, Indie Rock & Hip Hop Demographics

You never really know how well someone reads a text until they read yours.  I recently posted briefly about a blog called PROMOCOPY that focuses on criticizing indie music promotions in order to "remind people that Indie can mean something in terms of character and credibility and respect for an audience."  That's an important thing for indie promoters to hear, in part, because of issues raised in my previous post on niche markets.  Speaking to people in an honest human voice is crucial if one wants to move beyond fly-by-night activity without making the mistakes of major labels.

So PROMOCOPY responded with a textual expansion on a few brief sentences, an approach that I can appreciate.  The key theme seemed to be my statement that PROMOCOPY is "mostly an indie rock thing which means you will get some of the standard rappers that indie rock consumers tend to dig cause that's the promotion P. will encounter."  Although PROMOCOPY reads my statement a bit differently than I would, the author, who's unidentified because s/he works in the industry, does a nice job of unpacking a sentence that's full of subtexts and references.  In fact, I think it's the first time I've alluded to the topic and I'm happy I did it in relationship to a writer that could actually pick up on the fact that there's a lot being referenced.

First, I should say my comments are more of a general impression about indie rock critics who occasionally write about hip hop and the kind of hip hop that I see getting a white college kid and SXSW hipster audience.  That's an unfair package to leave at PROMOCOPY's doorstep since I used that underlying hidden narrative for a quick take on a blog that I've read only sporadically.  But it's a topic I would like to address because it's an interesting phenomenon for a variety of business reasons.

I started following online coverage of hip hop over at my personal/political blog, Hip Hop Logic, a few years ago and eventually started checking out alternative newsweeklies on a regular basis because many of my favorite hip hop writers would appear in their pages.  I quickly noticed that certain artists would get picked up by multiple papers, in addition to pieces that were reprinted across networks, and that they seemed to follow a pattern that related to the kinds of hip hop I saw represented on mostly indie rock sites or that caught indie rock reviewers' eyes.

To really dig into what's going on, one has to recognize the role of editors in this process, the demographics that various publications serve and who's on publicists' radar, among other issues.  I'm not going to do all that here, but I do want to point out a couple of things.  PROMOCOPY mentions Nas, The Roots and Jurassic 5.  I would put all three of those acts on the indie rock critics' list.  Notice that these artists all have either an old school or a conscious hip hop identity, although that's only part of the picture.  I believe that one could make a fairly strong case for specific kinds of hip hop artists appealing to indie rock fans if one were willing to do quite a bit of work looking at past trends.  While I'm not up for doing that on my own at the present time, it would be the sort of research that would be quite useful to marketers, and I am available for such commissions!

I directly experienced who's on the list and who's off at a SXSW Murder Dog showcase.  SXSW is indie rock oriented and hip hop acts that don't appeal to an indie rock crowd don't do well there.  I should clarify that the indie rock crowd was my scene in the 80s, a great time for stuff like that and I saw some amazing acts in tiny clubs in North Carolina.  So I know that indie rock fans range from incredibly sophisticated listeners who build early audiences for difficult music to frat boys who help turn acts like The Roots into stadium players.

Murder Dog doesn't fit that demographic, though they cover some artists that do and their showcase crossed over into it because it closed with one of Dizzee Rascal's first U.S. appearances.  However, it opened with Swishahouse and multiple artists that I was hearing on local Austin radio everyday.  I'm not sure how regional this phenomenon was but it's the kind of thing my indie rocker friends would tend to refer to in jokes featuring "sizzurp" or "grills" and the like.  But that's not an absolute.

Nevertheless, I considered Swishahouse major and expected that part of the showcase to be crowded.  It was a good audience, interracial with a lot of stereotypical hip hop style, but not so big.  However, right before Dizzee Rascal hit the stage, people started filtering in and it suddenly became a packed house with lots of stylish indie rock fans in distinctive hipster garb.  I've never seen dancing like the dancing I saw at Dizzee's show at a hip hop club or concert before, but I don't get out all that much.

In any case, these and related experiences caused me to develop this image of hip hop acts that have a special appeal to the indie rock crowd, broad strokes that are useful to marketers but can be readily unraveled by a close textual reading or examination of the available evidence.  That unraveling doesn't undermine the usefulness of those broad strokes but it is an important task for critics and it can be used by marketers who are interested in such things or by writers like me who seek to connect these diverse worlds.

I'll stop there but I intend to revisit issues related to the demographics of hip hop that are currently treated in a fairly limited manner by marketers.  I also look forward to seeing where PROMOCOPY goes in the future.  The author raises excellent questions in his or her response to my brief statements and, even if s/he is not addressing hip hop that often, I belief the motivations and the concerns of the author are of great importance to hip hop artists and business people.

Niche Markets and the Future of the Music Industry

Recently, Ritch Esra & Stephen Trumbull, publishers of the Music Business Registry, put out an open letter to a music industry whose major labels have a "real commitment to maintaining & keeping a broken, malfunctioning business in place rather than seeing what can be done to creatively re-invent it in a new way." Though its initial focus is the effect of changes in the music industry on A&R professionals, their message is much deeper. They believe that the "future of this business will be thousands of niche artists selling fewer records much like cable television, which has a fraction of the audience, but is profitable!"

Furthermore, they maintain that major labels are actually detrimental to album sales for all but a handful of artists. For example, they cite a broadening of the market for artists who reach their audience in novel ways, asking:
"How else could Ray Charles sell two million copies of a CD via a coffee chain or James Taylor sell over one million Christmas CD's via Hallmark without his CD even being available at retail? If either of those artists were at a Major Label . . . they most likely would not have sold more than 200,000 - 300,000 copies- tops!"

I can't speak to the issue of Ray or JT, but the fact that many artists languish when they leave independent labels to go the majors is certainly not a new phenomenon. And the majors are clearly moving from artist development to promotion and marketing for a shrinking pool of artists while outrageously rewarding executives, even when they fail. For example, with Warner cannibalizing its infrastructure with big payouts to investors and management in preparation for an IPO, their long term health remains in doubt.

Yet, with the amazing growth of the Internet and digital music technologies, the possibilities for indies are immense, from new distribution channels, including Snocap, to experiments in podcasting and the resurrection of indie radio. These examples, and so many more, suggest that the future of the music industry will increasingly focus on niche markets or the long tail rather than superstars and behemoths. This news is good if it means more musicians can make an honest living and bad for those who will only settle for divahood.

Special thanks go to Billboard PostPlay for such great links and Wired for such great coverage of emerging trends in music and media.