CNET News Article By Pat Faucher
Nimbit CEO Pat Faucher Confuses Music With Business
A recent article on news website CNET saw Pat Faucher discuss the role of the internet in promoting music. But was this merely a plug for his own company Nimbit?
- Date: March 15, 2007
- Type: News story
- Source: CNET
- CNET
Old News?
There have been many articles discussing how the promotion and distribution of music has changed; with the upswing in popularity of sites like MySpace and YouTube, unknown bands have found it much easier to reach a bigger audience. However, a recent article by Pat Faucher, CEO of new media company Nimbit, has created a bit of a stir since being published on news website CNET.
In the piece in question, Where Did The Music Industry Go So Wrong?, Faucher suggests that record companies no longer have the sway and power that they used to, and that smaller labels now have the upper hand when it comes to finding and promoting new bands. And with the advent of MySpace et al, this has now made it a better market for these bands to survive.
However, Faucher also goes onto mention that it's not just enough for bands to have the songs and the small label behind them - he also says that for bands to truly succeed, they need to be a brand that separates them from all the other similar bands out there, and to "conduct themselves as entrepreneurs engaged in building a business" (source: CNET article). I disagree.
Survival Of The Fittest (And Others)
Yes, it's true that bands need to make money to survive. But they've always done this, with live shows, merchandise, EP's, etc, so even before the internet became as popular as it has, smaller labels and unsigned bands were still competing with the bigger boys of the major labels. The best type of any advertising is still word-of-mouth: if someone you trust tells you about something, you're more likely to check it out. Even if it is online today, via email or your MySpace or Facebook account, or even here on Suite101, it's still word-of-mouth recommendation, just in a different manner. How do you think A&R executives hear about bands in the first place?
Faucher goes on to mention that no longer can the big record companies throw money at someone in the hope that they'll receive that one big hit, and that they're now looking at a wider distribution model. But this has always been the case in the past and continues to be so today. For every Elvis or Beatles that made record labels millions in revenue, so you always had the likes of Scott Walker or Electric Flag - great artists in their own right, but nowhere near as successful as Elvis and other similar successes. This is true of today - where U2 or Radiohead may be huge, there are the bands such as The 88 and Wilco who are happily enjoying success without major backing.
More Questions Than Answers
The main crux of Faucher's points, however, is that new artists need to treat everything like a business. Some of the key phrases that he uses are brand, entrepreneurs, economics, etc. Yet this is fairly conflicting - in his article, Faucher blames the record companies for getting too greedy as the cause of why the music industry is stagnant today, yet at the same time goes on to mention the artists need to focus on economics, brand and value. But this is exactly the same kind of greed that he was complaining about in the first place!
Although it makes some interesting points, the overall feel of the article in question is pretty confusing and there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to it. Unless it's a marketing technique to lead artists to Faucher's company Nimbit, that is, to help them promote themselves in the very way that Faucher says doesn't always work in the first place... Read the article for yourself to see what you think.
