Once upon a time, aspiring rock stars sent dozens of demo tapes to record label bosses in the hope of getting signed. Now, in the age of MySpace, SonyBMG is scrapping that system - the label has partnered with blog software maker Six Apart to offer artists sites that, from next Monday, will be its primary method of hearing unsigned new acts in the UK. “If you want our A&R team to hear your music, then don’t send a CD, REGISTER A BLOG,” the world’s number two record company says.
The company will instead direct budding acts to ColumbiaDemos.co.uk or RCADemos.co.uk, each of which is a landing page for Six Apart’s easy-to-use Vox multimedia blogging software that, upon registration, automatically joins new members with a corresponding “neighborhood” for each of the two label imprints. Label bosses including Columbia MD Mike Smith and SonyBMG Europe CEO Ged Doherty have started their own blogs, one of which says: “We don’t want demo CDs anymore, it takes ages for you to do, they get lost and it’s a waste of plastic.”
But the reason for the launch is more than just eco-friendly. Doherty, in this morning’s Times: “Digital sales are not going to make up the decline in physical CD revenue. By 2010, income from CDs will be down 50 percent. The old world is gone forever; we need to enter into a new relationship with our artists, where they see us as partners rather than the enemy.”
It sounds like a sea change for the music business. It’s also a coup for Six Apart; its colorful new Vox platform has scored plenty of new users in the last couple of months thanks to several other promotion tie-ups, including one with DMGT-owned British newspaper Metro. For SonyBMG, the end of the demo tape was clear, but one question remains - was it better to build a new A&R network, or should it have just gone scouting on MySpace, still the site most commonly used by new acts? News of the launch appeared to break on the News Corp-owned site last month when the daughter of one SonyBMG staffer announced her dad’s latest project - a person with the same name in Doherty’s Vox neighborhood is no longer a Vox member.
- End of royalties: “By 2010, we want joint ventures with all our artists,” Doherty said. “We have just signed our first ‘50-50 on everything’ deal.”
- EU merger inquiry: “It’s in the background and I cannot influence the decision. I’m just getting on with changing the shape of our business.”