Back to the OMD thing, and getting closer to the point...

Anyone who drops by to see what cud I'm currently chewing, will notice that this blog doesn't follow a precise pattern, but, nonetheless, pattern lovers, there is a pattern of sorts...to paraphrase Winnie the Pooh, who was explaining the vagaries of his spelling to Piglet one day, it's a good pattern, only it's a little wobbly. The pattern works like this; I pontificate on a subject, usually in small chunks, guess you could call them sort of blog quanta, and intersperse little pieces on other subjects among the main theme... The idea is to present a slightly different way of looking at things of importance to the Independent Musician, in bite size chunks...to provide a different perspective from the conventional wisdom... and break up that dry old stuff with other bits and pieces, sort of random noise, from my life and the Universe at large, to try and keep this place a little more interesting and alive.

The current main theme, (he says, recognising that you may soon lose the will to live, if I don't get on with it), is Marketing Music on the Internet... where I am, at the moment, is looking at the role of OMD's, Online Music Distributors, and what I think they really mean to Independent Artists, rather than what most Independent Artists think they mean. Follow that? Good, almost confused myself...

Ok, if you read my previous posts on this subject, you'd have seen that I am making a couple of points. They are: If you are an Independent Artist and you put music on the internet, you will almost certainly be doing that through an OMD. The OMD hosts your music and provides you with a number of facilities, in order to help you gain 'exposure' and market your music and act, maybe even get 'discovered' and get a record deal. At least, that is the impression they give you. The truth is, they want to host your music, need to host your music, because that is the way in which they attract visitors to their website. By attracting visitors to their website, gaining a high internet profile and visitor hit rate, they enable a number of income streams, in order to fulfill their actual objective, Income Generation. So, far, so good, nothing wrong with that. The Independent Artists relationship with the OMD is simply a business relationship, and all good business relationships produce benefits for both parties... You get your music played, you get your exposure, they get Listeners and more Artists, their website 'hit rate' rises, they get advertising and other income...Like I said, nothing wrong with any of that. It's legal, it's moral, it's ethical...and I have no complaint with any of it, as far as it goes.

Here's the 'however'. However...the problem with OMD's is that most Artists actually derive little real benefit from this arrangement. You will note that I say most Artists. There are some Artists who benefit a great deal, but they are very much in the minority; the vast majority of Artists derive little real benefit. The real winners in the OMD/Artist business arrangement are the OMD's, themselves. They are, in the main, achieving their objectives. If they weren't, they'd all be paraphrasing Hannibal Hayes and Kid Curry... 'There's one thing we gotta get Hayes', 'What's that?' 'Outta this business!'

There are many reasons why the current situation is as it is, and, in the next couple of days, I'll be working through that aspect of the OMD/Artist relationship, and pointing out what I see as the core of the problem with current Internet Marketing strategies for most Indie Musicians...