Steve Meyer on the Music Industry and the Internet

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2010

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Steve Meyer, music industry veteran and publisher of the Disc and Dat Newsletter, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolution of the music industry and the impact of the digital revolution. After discussing his background and experience in marketing at Capitol Records and elsewhere, Meyer argues for the virtues and potential of the internet in enhancing the music industry. He points out that the internet allows numerous artists to make money through their music and particularly enhances revenue from live performances. He describes the challenges facing record companies as a failure of imagination and suggests that the full potential of the internet as a distribution channel has yet to be fully exploited.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is March 8, 2010. My guest is Steve Mayer. He has a long time veteran
0:44.3	of the music industry, particularly experienced in the area of marketing and promotion. He now
0:48.7	runs his own consulting business, smart marketing, and publishes the Music Entertainment newsletter
0:53.4	Discandat. Steve, welcome to Econ Talk. Welcome. I'm glad to see you too, my friend. So I'm going
0:59.2	to start with the past, and then we'll move to the present. Then finally, if we have something to say,
1:03.4	we'll talk about the future. In the past, the record business, the music business was very different.
1:09.0	So I want to get your thoughts on who made money in that business and how did they make it, in
1:14.2	particular, what did record labels provide that made them profitable? As far as labels providing
1:22.8	what they provide for the artist, I don't think there's too much difference between what they do
1:28.7	today, and then I think what's different is the structures of how they do it, and that's what's
1:34.0	changed dramatically. The old model, the traditional model that we had for years, when I came into
1:39.3	business, and I came into business in 1970 for capital records. I worked there 14 years
1:46.1	before I went to Universal's MCA records in 1983. The labels were based on a model that was very,
1:54.1	very strong, marketing and promotion, was basically reliant solely upon one or two things.
2:03.0	That was either you had an established artist that was in the public light previously, and literally
2:11.0	from the 50s, let's say it was Elvis Presley or Frank Sinatra somebody, and they were still selling
2:15.2	records or B, everything was established via radio play. Radio really was the forefront and the
2:24.4	strategic partner with the record industry and this radio grew and the top 40 format grew and
	...

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