Style and taste are subjective, but excellence isn’t. Musical excellence involves honing your skills on a particular instrument, working on timing, tuning, phrasing, vocal pitch, etc.

Timing and phrasing and the importance of tuning and vocal pitch are largely matters of style and taste. It’s not hard to think of artists who don’t meet typical expectations in those departments who are nonetheless pretty successful. And of course, those expectations (and matters of style and taste) vary widely across genres – and artists ultimately compete for attention from new audiences across genres, especially in an increasingly levelled marketplace.

But for the sake of argument, let’s agree that excellence, however you define it, is necessary – the key phrase in your original statement was “for starters.” Because it’s certainly easy to think of artists who are or were excellent (however you define it) who nonetheless struggle or struggled to find a sustaining audience. And isn’t that the main point?

Really? So this artist (Joe Purdy) is successful because of “old model” success? Nope. So I guess that means it was “just dumb luck” then? I bet Purdy doesn’t think so. I’m sure he would tell you that he worked hard at his music before that song was ever chosen for the TV show.

He might, but that’s not the point. The point is that his success was unrelated to either “old model” or “new model” – it resulted from something which can happen either way. His work was brought to the attention of large numbers of listeners because of, yes, dumb luck; it wasn’t the result of promotional efforts, it wasn’t the result of viral marketing, it wasn’t the result of a 360 degree deal, and it wasn’t because he was giving away music. It’s the same kind of chance that put Flatt & Scruggs’ music into millions of homes via the “Beverly Hillbillies” (as Neil Rosenberg puts it, Paul Henning “stumbled” across them) and again exposed it to millions with “Bonnie And Clyde” (Warren Beatty happened to attend a high school presentation on bluegrass by a classmate – Pete Kuykendall – that awakened an interest in the music). The defining moment in his career (at least, so far), was model-neutral.

That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen again for someone else; it almost assuredly will, and at least a few small steps can be taken to improve the odds, like the inclusion in the IBMA’s new strategic plan of presentations of bluegrass to film and TV producers and music directors (and BTW, Brance, that’s a point that I proposed and lobbied for which you might think is helpful). But it does mean that citing Purdy’s subsequent “new model” tactics as though they alone were sufficient to bring him the fans he now enjoys is, to say the least, incomplete.

A lot of Rogers’ comments, while interesting, aren’t really helpful to bluegrass artists in particular. For instance, you say:

The idea being that increased profit margin from direct sale releases can increase an artist’s income even if they sell less than they might have 5 years ago via physical distribution. Digital delivery certainly lowers per-unit cost considerably and makes delivery easy. The artist/label can make the connection directly to the fan without a distributer, and a retailer in between. And the percentage of revenue kept by the artist will be much higher.

Well, most bluegrass artists are already selling most of their music directly. So if they sell less than they did 5 years ago, their income from music sales is going down; there isn’t a “much higher” percentage to be kept now than there was then. And moving to digital download sales can reduce income even further, as they’re priced lower. In many respects, the plus that Rogers alludes to – a more direct relationship between artist and fan – already exists in bluegrass, and he simply doesn’t address the negatives.

The music market is in a real flux, and there are a lot of folks out there offering advice. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, a lot of it is purely speculative, some of it is premature (like, for instance, declaring that the physical CD is “dead” when it still accounts for 2/3 of music sales) and almost all of it is hard to sort out when it comes to artists and others in the business making career decisions. For those whose involvement is primarily as observers, there’s little at stake in sorting it out, but for those whose livelihoods are (or might be) dependent on figuring it out, keeping facts – inconvenient and “negative” though they might be – in the forefront is always helpful. There is no substitute for both reading (and listening) widely and open-mindedly *and* evaluating what comes across in the light of reality.

And “excellence” is kind of subjective, isn’t it?

Not at all. Style and taste are subjective, but excellence isn’t. Musical excellence involves honing your skills on a particular instrument, working on timing, tuning, phrasing, vocal pitch, etc. A band that is excellent will have a much easier time gaining “some traction in a marketplace awash in new artists.”

…isn‚Äôt very helpful.

Just an observation, but I’ve seen you throw this phrase around quite a bit. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything you’ve written that is helpful. You seem to delight in tearing down any new idea concerning the future of the business, but you’re certainly not offering any of your own.

The truth of the matter is that everyone is not going to be successful. The system just doesn’t work that way. Pointing out that someone who is successful is different from those who are not, is pretty obvious.

every “new model” success story so far has been built on “old model” success first Рor by just dumb luck

Really? So this artist (Joe Purdy) is successful because of “old model” success? Nope. So I guess that means it was “just dumb luck” then? I bet Purdy doesn’t think so. I’m sure he would tell you that he worked hard at his music before that song was ever chosen for the TV show. He may be a humble guy and try not to take the credit for it (maybe, I don’t know him), but I think he’d be offended at the suggestion that his efforts to excel as a musician and businessman, had nothing to do with his success.

Instead of disregarding the lesson because he’s successful, maybe we should learn how he got there and take a lesson from it.

I was a fan of the jamband Phish for many years, starting when they were a local band. Over the years, I saw them play in rooms with a dozen other people, and at self-produced multi-day shows with 80,000 people in attendance. And they never really had a hit record (though some of their albums went gold over time). They were successful because of their excellence, and the bond they created with their audience. They practiced endlessly, played hundreds of shows a year, and played everyone differently. They were one of the first bands to have an internet newsgroup, and they encouraged their fans to tape and trade their shows. These things created loyalty among their fans, so they didn’t need hit records. When they signed to a label, it was totally on their terms.

The big labels these days seem to be run by MBA’s who are more interested in moving units of product than in promoting great music. Most of what they put out is total lowest-common-denominator crap, and frankly they deserve to go out of business. With digital recording and distribution technology readily available, they really serve very little purpose.

And equating the observation that virtually every “new model” success story so far has been built on “old model” success first – or by just dumb luck – to advocating that we pay no attention to the changing environment isn’t very helpful.

But you’re right Jon, all the questions aren’t answered so we should just ignore his ideas and keep doing what we’re doing, which isn’t working all that well anymore, but at least it’s not unknown.

He tells the story of a relatively unknown artist who has done this and enjoyed great success.

What he doesn’t mention is that this relatively unknown artist had a song placed on a popular network television show; as allmusic puts it, “his song “Wash Away” became synonymous with the 2004 season of ABC’s Lost.”

Rogers’ presentation is an interesting one, but it doesn’t really come to grips with some fundamental questions, most notably the one about how a new artist gets enough attention to gain some traction in a marketplace awash in new artists.