Competing with free? Are there lessons from other industries

The current state of the record industry and the literal free for all of downloading has plenty scrambling and trying to figure out what to do - how to retain some value in recorded music. A recent post on Halifax Locals from a young graphic designer has renewed my own thinking on such matters.

More experienced designers [and other creatives such as photographers] made comments regarding the issue of the new designer advertising such low rates [$10 for a logo!!] devaluing all designers’ work. This is nothing new and an ongoing debate in creative circles.

While I stand by the experienced designers point(s), and I can see the new designer’s perspective [works with young bands, considers himself relatively inexperienced etc.] I am more interested right now in considering what musicians can do to have their music perceived as worth paying [more!] for than others.

The design and photography industries [just two examples for the sake of this post] have a wealth of both professionals, who have been trained, schooled, self-taught or various combinations thereof and then a large number of amateurs who no formal training etc.

In many cases an inexperienced designer or photographer can compete with the pro - I’ve seen examples. But yet people will still pay hundreds, if not thousands for design work. Even though you can get much reduced work.

So what makes one designer worth $10 an hour [or logo] and another $150/h or more and is there anything there that musicians can employ [leave a comment for suggestions as I’m just thinking out loud here]?. Some things that crossed my mind:
Experience
Reputation
Past Work
References
Skills
Affiliations/Memberships

Experience/Skills
Combining experience and skills as they can both help, but at the same time neither are necessary for success in music. A musician with the ability to play his instrument better than the next guy doesn’t ensure any greater success. While experience may help with matters related to being in a band or the business side of things, unless you’ve picked up on specific things that can grow your fan base - most music fans won’t care if your next record is your first or tenth. Nor will they care if you play 3 chord punk or classically influenced metal.

Affiliations/Memberships
In a talk last night with Chr!s Sm!th it came up how there are no such things as hobby lawyers or accountants. There are set requirements you must meet to be a member of either profession that are not present for creative types, including musicians.

Would the formation of musicians guilds work in this manner, ensuring the quality of bands that are members? Would the bands you want to be members ever join? Would any means of imparting some quality control whether in live venues, on radio work? If so how [fyi: never gonna happen].

Past Work/Reputation
This is pretty well what bands rely on in the first place for the development of their fan base - what they have released in the past, what they are known for playing, their live show [becoming ever more important]. Outside getting press and good word of mouth though, how can one improve their reputation?

The Silver Lining
Clearly there are numerous differences between the design industries and music industry from the perspective of working musicians, with few direct comparisons possible. However, if nothing else though the talented artists writing music out there should take comfort that in a very competitive field overburdened with cheap and free work [much akin to the net’s massive, freely available collection of music], the talented are still able to find the means to charge what they are worth and make a living [while picking up their own fans along the way].

Anyone else have ideas, industries that may serve as an example for the new way to do things with music?
I’m interested in looking at the book publishing industry and seeing what can be gleamed from that. How they, with some releases, target the die hard fans first with the hardcover release before releasing the soft cover edition, multiple printings and so forth. The book industry has built success around relatively small sales numbers [as compared to million+ CD sales] where 20,000 copies sold can be seen as a great success, much as it would be for an independent musician. Is there more there that an indie label can learn from??

*Free Kittens pic: I could have paid a photographer friend to get a pic, or even paid for a stock photo from one of dozens of online stock photo sites. Instead I used a free one. Go figure

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