David Byrne's Wired article is a couple of weeks old, but worth a blog for those following the recorded music industry or ven other industries faced with the digitization of IP. I think it's interesting to note that some of the most insightful articles around the music business in the last 2 years has come from Wired magazine, and not the more obvious publications like Billboard.

In the article David Byrne rehashes a brief history of the recorded music industry and the distribution of money in the sale of a song (Which mirrors some posts I made on the topic). The major thesis of the article points out that today musicians have choice in how their music is distributed and that this represents a great opportunity for today's artists.

These include:

1. The 360 deal, or equity deal, where every aspect of the artist's career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. The label or management company gets a piece from of everything produced by the artist. Artists with this type of deal include: Robbie Williams, Korn, and Madonna
2. The standard distribution deal, where the label The record company advances artists funds for the recording of an album and manages the manufacturing, distribution, and promotion of the album. In return the artist is paid a royalty after the entire advance is repaid to the label. David, makes special note to remind artists that in this scenario, the label owns the copyright to the recording forever.
3. The license deal which is similar to the standard deal except the artist retains the copyrights and ownership of the master recording. Labels are granted rights to promote, sell, and sub-license the recording for a limited time. Artists with this type of deal include Arcade Fire.
4. The profit-sharing deal, where there may be some small upfront payment by the label to cover recording costs, but all sales are split on a profit sharing basis with the artist. In this scenario copyright remains continually with the artist. David Byrne did a deal like this for one of his albums.
5. The manufacturing and distribution deal, where the M&D company only manufactures and distributes the album. The artist gets absolute creative control and maintains all rights. earning potential for the M&D company is very limited so major labels generally do not sign these type of deals. Artists with this type of deal include Aimee Mann.
6. The Do-it-yourself model (since it is DYI it's technically not a deal) where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. Artist doing this include Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) and obviously Radio Head.

I found the article very interesting, but I wonder about the value of any of these distribution models/deals when the value of recorded music sales are in a complete free fall. Intriguingly David points out that "in the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. " He should expand upon this thought, and I think explore how that social aspect of music can be captured in a recorded music context.