Stefano Senardi – record producer – moderated the panel as part of Medimex 2024 “Artist Centric Model and the importance of the catalog in contemporary music business” held at the Taranto headquarters of UniBa. The intoxication of views, for the producer, gave rise to careers that ended before they even began. To understand the proportions of the phenomenon, on Spotify there are 50,000,000 songs that have never been downloaded and around 450,000 songs have reached 10,000,000 views. Senardi questioned the value of all these views, considering that companies listed on the stock exchange need guarantees of growth of artistic careers and economic solidity that allows them to make credible budgets. This doesn’t happen with the millions of views. Once again the discography arrived late, as he did in the past with digital and the internet. The discography itself has gone so far as to claim that the catalog is the new frontline.
Francesca Trainini (Impala) spoke during the panel, arguing that rather than proposing solutions we should understand what the problems are. The problems are linked to the multiplicity of algorithms and methods used to pay artists, labels and to remunerate the music they use which is the only thing that keeps these platforms alive. However, the attempt by music platforms, such as Spotify, to focus on other contents as happens with podcasts and audiobooks represents a timid response to the real problem. In most cases, users are looking for music.
“The mechanisms – continued Trainini – behind the distribution must start from the reasoning that the record industry, understood as the creative class in general, has not gone to the tables where the negotiations were done but it is time that we start doing so”. Impala then carried out studies which showed that 80% of the artists who are in the charts, as they are considered important artists, come from independent record companies. If as a result there is no possibility for independents to invest in these new promises, 80% of the music market will be missing.
For Leonardo Bondi (Woodworm) the problem today is that there are also no parameters to judge which artist should be developed. Previously, record companies based their activities on the development of live shows, they didn’t think about how well an artist could perform on the platforms. The concerts were organised, from there the loyalty of the fan was born who then bought the physical album, therefore these were the parameters for developing the artist’s live career. Today, however, they find themselves working with artists who have important numbers in terms of streaming but are often ephemeral phenomena.
To understand how powerful the streaming function is, the example reported by Dino Stewart (BMG Italy) was emblematic. Mariah Carey she is perceived by thirty-year-olds as the singer of the song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” which just thirty years ago was never at the top of the charts. In recent years, however, you have regularly returned to it not thanks to the fact that it was printed on a physical disc but thanks to the streaming.
Senardi then touched on a sore point for him relating to the sale of advance tickets to the San Siro for emerging artists who have become popular for single songs compared to entire unknown albums. It’s a sore point as it recognizes the lack of small places to play. He gave the example of clubs that tend to close in every city in the world but at the same time it seems obligatory for everyone to go and play in Sansiro. A stage that most of the time, in these cases, is filled by gifts granted to sponsors such as Banca Intesa and American Express.
Toe in the sore in this regard he expressed the artist’s point of view by stating that all this happens to always have something to tell. It doesn’t matter that the stadium isn’t filled, what matters is the story that is told about it even though it isn’t relevant to reality.
