music industry

Native Instruments sent a big F.U. to the music trade industry today, announcing that it will no longer appear at NAMM, Musikmesse and other trade shows:

Berlin, July 7th, 2009 – Native Instruments today announced that it will no longer maintain a booth presence at industry tradeshows like the NAMM Show, Musikmesse or AES in the future. The company has decided to instead prioritize online communication channels to engage with customers directly even stronger, and to allocate budgets accordingly.

This shift in priorities is exemplified by the new sophisticated rich-media website that Native Instruments launched recently, and will be continued through the establishment of further innovative online channels and other means of direct communication in the future.

“Times are changing and we have seen tradeshows become increasingly less relevant for our industry,” says Pablo La Rosa, International Marketing Director at Native Instruments. “By focusing our efforts in online communication and direct-to-customer events, we reach out to today’s musicians and producers in a way that we believe is more efficient for us and more engaging for them.”

This is bad news for music trade shows, because if Native pulls out, others are likely to follow. This may make sense for individual companies, but may be a loss for the music industry as a whole.

The announcement is a sign of the decline of the music trade show as an event to get excited about. It’s always been fun to see the smorgasbord of announcements that come out of an event like NAMM, and also to get the perspective of seeing and hearing a huge variety of gear in one location. It remains to be seen whether something new will emerge that can match the excitement of huge trade events.

It’s puzzling, though, that Native Instruments cites its new website as one of the reasons for the move.

Native calls Native-Instruments.com a “new sophisticated rich-media website”.  Synthtopia readers, though, call the new site “rubbish” and “a post-apocalyptic view of Flash hell”.

Native Instruments new site seems amateurish, as if the company paid no attention to usability, accessibility or findability in creating it. They’ll need to fix the site quickly if they expect it to be able to take the place of their presence at trade shows.

What do you think about the announcement? Are music trade shows dead? Or do you think this is just a cost-cutting measure for Native Instruments?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Waxy’s Andy Baio has taken a statistical look at how the record industry has changed in the last fifty years, and it looks like there’s a good reason why you hate so much mainstream pop music: the variety of pop music is less than half of what it was in the sixties:

According to Billboard, the late 1960s were the peak of musical diversity in popular music, with 743 different songs appearing on the 1966 Billboard Top 100 chart. It’s fallen consistently since, hitting an all-time low in 2002 with only 295 songs.

Since 2002, it’s improved only slightly, with 351 unique songs appearing on last year’s Top 100.

Is it any wonder that people are listening to less radio, buying less music and, instead, turning to blogs and podcasts to find new music?

Clash Music has an interesting interview with synth music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre.

It touches on some very timely subjects, including the role of the Internet in music:

The Internet isn’t the only answer

I think that the Internet might become the ultimate marketing machine, but I also think that in maybe five years’ time, what will be cool will be not be on the Internet. I’m pretty sure that the next generation, or the next punk attitude will be not being some kind of Internet freak, but instead finding something else. I think we’re in a very ambiguous situation. When you have fantastic tools such as web TV, digital radio, YouTube and iTunes type of systems – they are not THE answer, but they do enable you to stay in contact with your fans. In my opinion what Radiohead did with the download of their album for whatever price you chose wasn’t that positive for music. I think it’s something very dangerous, it wasn’t necessarily fair on young artists. When you’re a band the size of Radiohead you can afford to do that, but for new artists these days it’s very, very difficult.

Recognise that record companies are absolutely necessary

I think it’s a cynical attitude to think that musicians can survive as artists without them. Within the labels and record companies there are some really good guys who work 15-16 hour days to try to make things happen. It would be naïve to think you can just launch your album on the Internet in London and someone in Auckland would immediately know what your music is about if you don’t have the necessary distribution network. Although it’s very difficult to accept that the people that invented pirate radio in the ’60s are now the people who want to put today’s pirates in jail!

New York Magazine has an interesting interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. While the focus is on Reznor’s collaboration with Saul Williams, Reznor also cuts loose on the state of the music industry.

“It’s just an awkward time right now to be a musician,” says Reznor. “The reality is that people think it’s okay to steal music. There’s a whole generation of people, that’s all they’ve known.”

“I used to buy vinyl,” adds Reznor. “Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks — if not two months — before it comes out. There’s no real way around that. I’m truly saddened because I think music has been devalued, so that it’s just a file on your computer, and it’s usually free. But we can’t change that. What we can do is try to offer people the best experience that we can provide them. Will it work? I don’t know. But I think it’s a great way to get music out to people who are interested.”

“At the end of the day, all I care about is the integrity of the music, and that the feeling of those who experience it is as untainted as possible. I’d rather it not be on an iPod commercial. I’d rather it not be a ringtone that you have to get with a free cell phone or any of that bullshit.”

“How long before [record companies] are irrelevant? Who knows? They seem to be doing everything they can to make sure that happens as quickly as possible.”

Nine Inch Nails announced at its site that it is going forward without a major-label contract.

I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008.

With no major-label contract, Nine Inch Nails is more likely to experiment with free downloads, using MP3s as promotions and other tactics that the mainstream industry has been avoiding. NIN’s move follows a similar announcement from Radiohead.

While the announcement is likely to generate a lot of this is the end of mainstream music industry posts, the labels don’t make their money from aging singer-songwriters – they make their money from young bands that make a splash before they have the clout to get decent contracts.