Subscribe to feedFast Company: Way Behind The Music
January 17th, 2007 by Michael KreidlerI was reading the latest issue of Fast Company. It’s an innovative business magazine. You should check it out. The cover article is about one company’s creation of an ongoing disruption in the business model of major record labels, venue agencies such as Ticket Master, bands, fan clubs, and sellers of band related merchandise.
There are some lessons to be gleaned regarding podcasting. I have included the first bit below. You can read the entire article on the Fast Company site:
“If there’s any musician who can make sense of the tectonic upheaval in the industry, it’s John Legend. Before teaming with Kanye West and Snoop Dogg on his major-label debut, Get Lifted, the ultrasmooth R&B singer-songwriter worked as an associate consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (under his given name, John Stephens). When the recording sold north of 3 million copies worldwide–and snagged a trio of 2006 Grammys, including best new artist–John Stephens the consultant had some cautionary words for John Legend the musician: Protect your brand. It was some of the best advice he’d ever gotten.
Backup Player Coran Capshaw rarely steps from behind the curtain.
He built his company to help artists like John Legend supercharge
their brands and businesses.
Unsung Masses Just some of Musictoday’s 200 employees.
Many are musicians themselves, including Nathan Hubbard
(at lower right), who runs day-to-day operations. All of them
are rabid fans.
people would be lining up to take a piece of every dollar he could pull down, and that if he went the traditional route, there wasn’t much he could do to stop them. After all, it was the label, retailers, and ticket companies in the sweet spot at the center of every transaction with his fans. “I can’t let someone else have more control over the relationship people have with my music than I do,” he says.
So Legend took control in a way that would have been unthinkable for a new artist just 10 years ago. He still releases music through a major label, Sony BMG (NYSE:SNE), but last fall he formed John Legend Ventures with two friends and began researching how other bands were creating their own businesses and increasing their leverage in the market.” [More…]
.This is a more ‘hard-core’ business podcast. Still, they have a great deal of creative energy and have a way of cutting through the clutter. 
