Teenage Dreams vs. Code Monkey

You've probably heard of Katy Perry. She's a big pop star, signed to EMI, with a bunch of No. 1 hits last year. In 2010, she made $44 million. You probably haven't heard of Jonathan Coulton. He's an indie sing-songwriter, self publishes all his music, and doesn't get any radio play. In 2010, he made almost $500,000. That's a huge difference, but twenty years ago the Jonathan Coulton model was impossible, while the Katy Perry model was thriving.

Is this man a Snuggie?

Katy Perry's Perfect Year

A comparison of the two artists and the different systems they work under is a direct illustration of a point in the Anderson reading: that "moving online...is a better way to make money. It allows the makers to shift from a hit-or-miss 'point of sale' revenue model to one based on an ongoing relationship with the player." Anderson was talking about video games, but the idea still stands. Coulton is able to make $500,000 without label support and promotion, because he can connect with his audience and his success isn't tied to making the one hit song that can appeal to people from all kinds of demographics. I first heard about him in a 2007 New York Times Magazine profile, which discussed his "Thing A Week" experiment. Coulton released a free song every week for a year. He wasn't looking for a big hit that would get him signed. He was just looking for people to listen.

Compare Coulton to Wale, J. Cole, and Mac Miller in Jon Caramanica's article. They, too, are smaller artists hoping to get noticed. They do most of their promotion for free online. But they're not success stories, because they've tied themselves to the Katy Perry model, where artists work with a label to produce hits that hopefully get launched into the mainstream. Coulton is quirky and niche and he embraces that. More importantly, his fans embrace that.

The NPR Music contributors, Frannie Kelley and Jacob Ganz, point out that Coulton got a lucky break when his song "Code Monkey" got featured on SlashDot. It's true, but the same could be said about any artist on Top 40 radio, which is something Coulton himself points out in a rebuttal to Kelley and Ganz's critiques. At the end of his rebuttal, Coulton brings up some questions really worth asking about the state of the music industry:

How much money is actually being made in this space that never gets tracked as part of the music industry? What percentage of full time professional artists are making a living, and how does that compare to the old record biz? From an economist’s perspective, is filesharing/piracy hurting artists, or just labels (or is it hurting anyone)? How can the people who used to work at labels continue to have careers bringing valuable services to artists now that the landscape has changed? What are the efficiency breakthroughs that we have yet to discover, who’s going to figure out how to profit from this shakeup? How can we rethink antiquated intellectual property laws in a way that continues to “promote the progress of science and useful arts?” And finally, how can I keep my arms warm without putting on a sweater, which is apparently such a huge burden to so many people?

It's difficult to decide if Katy Perry or Jonathan Coulton comes up as a winner in the end because of the lack of data. YouTube is full of people making a living by following the Jonathan Coulton model, but the world only knows about success under the Katy Perry model.

Coulton also provides a perfect segue into the class's coming discussion on copyright, piracy, and content management. Katy Perry's albums have probably been pirated millions of times online and I'm sure EMI has plenty of lawyers worrying about that for her. Jonathan Coulton is a victim of piracy as well, but he's less concerned. He started his "Thing a Week" project hoping that "Free makes Paid more profitable" would prove true, and so far it has.

I'll leave you with another debate between old and new, one that carries us into the territory of copyright. In this discussion between Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel to NBCUniversal, and Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, things get a little heated. (You might recognize Fred Wilson's name from his quote in the Anderson reading.) The debate doesn't break any new ground. Cotton wants piracy to end, while Wilson argues that piracy is just a symptom of a more serious disease. What is interesting is the interaction between the two. Cotton and Wilson almost characterize the groups they respectively support. Cotton is cool and detached, while Wilson is hot-headed and argumentative. The video is long, but I think it's worth a watch. (And if you're a nerd like me, the Paley Center has a whole series of videos like this on their Fora.tv page.)

Paley Center: Protecting Content & Promoting Innovation from The Paley Center for Media on FORA.tv