Tag Archives: Ian Rogers

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Ian Rogers says: Fuck the Police

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Internet music guru Ian Rogers challenges the hit-making aspirations of the traditional music industry in his latest post on FISTFULAYEN: Does The New Business Of Music Change The Way Music Sounds?

I was on a panel at Bandwith Conference last week and the “Who is going to play The Staples Center in five years?” question came up again. I answered (again), “Who the fuck wants to see a show at The Staples Center?” Do we judge the health of the music business by how many people are pulling half a mill in a single show at a terrible venue? I don’t. Let me be clear, unless your sole source of music discovery is network television and Radio Disney, I hope you never have to see your favorite band at The Staples Center. I saw Bob Dylan there once. It’s a bummer, only fun for the people counting the money.

Rogers calls up Radiohead, the Dandy Warhols, Rod Stewart, and Paul Westerberg as examples of what happens when artists make music for their fans vs. “making it for a hit in the limited radio marketing channel.”

Niche vs. zeitgeist, I guess. Will there ever be another band that appeals to everybody, both the casual radio listener as well as the discerning music snob? Does it even matter?

MP3: Dandy Warhols – “The World Come On” from Earth To The Dandy Warhols.

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How to Make the Major Labels Relevant

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In a post called Aloha, Mr. Hands, former Beastie Boys/Nullsoft/Yahoo Music general manager Ian Rogers tells Guy Hands what he would do to change EMI’s new music business:

With the disappearance of advantaged label competencies such as superior production, distribution, and marketing, reconfigure your labels to be based around affinities and focused narrowly enough to serve roughly the same audiences from release to release. The labels would be very small teams responsible for fan cultivation, focused and direct marketing, and A&R. They would rely on EMI for service, support, and tools (generic marketing would happen on the EMI mothership, for example).

Rogers asks the eternal question: “What do Daft Punk, Meat Loaf, KoRn, and The Stooges have in common from an audience perspective? How is there any efficiency in the same marketing team working all of those records (and scads of others just as unaffiliated) in the past year?”

The solution: “I would break these old labels up into new labels which can concentrate on and build the trust of like-minded audiences, post-haste.” There’s more to it than that, of course, and the proposal is well worth reading.

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Ian Rogers Talks to the Music Biz

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Ian Rogers, who helped found Nullsoft, creators of Winamp, and moved on to Grand Royal, where he shepherded the Beastie Boys onto the internet, is now General Manager of Yahoo Music. He was invited to talk to the music industry at their big convention in Aspen in December, and now he’s got his presentation, Talking To The Music Industry Again, The Aspen Live Conference online:

Our kids are going to watch exactly what they want to watch, not necessarily what’s marketed to them. I understand this is threatening to large media businesses which are accustomed to owning the means of distribution, but I am certain it’s very good for our kids and for culture writ large. We’re all in the same business now, the business of making things people really love.

Like David Byrne, Rogers is optimistic. How about you? How are you feeling about the future of music?

Previously: Yahoo Lyrics Database (2007); Yahoo selling DRM-free MP3s (2006).

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Yahoo Lyrics Database

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Lyrics By The Pound – Yahoo Music’s Ian Rogers talks about the first legal lyrics repository on the internet.

It’s far from comprehensive, but it’s a start. No pop-up ads or virus scares, either. The UI is a bit goofy, since I searched for “Pogues” and got no results even though there definitely are some Pogues lyrics in the system. No “Waxy’s Dargle” though…

MP3: Ian Rogers’ interview with Mike D where the Beastie Boy talks about lyrics.