Ari Herstand – “The music industry changes every year”

Interview with Ari Herstand on the future of music, streaming platforms and the professional path of musicians

Is love for music enough to become a successful musician?

– The short answer is no. You need much more. To build a career in music, you must live and breathe it, it must be part of you. No doubt it is very difficult. That’s why I wrote the book: to help people a little, because now there are no clear paths to success, as there were 15-20 years ago. It’s a completely different industry these days.

— What difficulties can newcomers face today?

— The most significant problem that most musicians face these days is the lack of understanding of what exactly to do. There is no longer one single way to build a career in music. Now it is based on your strengths and weaknesses, what drives you, your hobbies, your own career vision. For example, if you love making music at home, in the studio, or in the bedroom and don’t want to perform live, you don’t need a tour. There are ways to make a career in music without touring. If the performer understands that he just wants to perform, and what is happening on YouTube does not respond to him, there is no need to force him to engage in social networks. The main thing is that the musician should be inspired and enjoy the process.

— What exactly has changed in the music industry over the past five years?

“It changes drastically every year. Five years ago there was no Spotify in our country, you only launched it a year ago. There was no TikTok in the States three years ago, and last year it generated incredible traffic and most of the biggest stars have accounts there. Billie Eilish’s journey began when she posted a song on SoundCloud. Now people almost don’t publish singles there anymore. It’s getting harder today to apply strategies based on what someone did five years ago.

– There is an opinion that Spotify, Apple Music and other similar services reduce creativity, because musicians have to adapt to algorithms in order to compete for the attention of listeners. What do you think about this?

“What really sets the industry apart from what it was even five years ago is that we no longer live in the era of downloads where you have to pay a dollar to download a certain song. Now you can listen to the music you like by simply clicking “Play” on a playlist and hear a lot of songs, often without even knowing who is playing them. But these artists get paid every time their song is played.

A few months ago, Spotify revealed that the number of artists who earned more than $2020K in 50 is about 14K, and if I’m not mistaken, 70K musicians made more than $5K in a year on this platform alone.

Therefore, the situation is twofold: there are many artists who release music, but they do not listen to it, and there are those who do not have fans, but they receive millions and millions of streams. So I think the main thing is to create music that will be honest to you, that will resonate deeply with you, that you will love and that you will be proud of, and you should not worry about the algorithm.

— And what about the influence of social networks on the promotion of musicians? How big is it?

— I distinguish between subscribers and fans. Subscribers want to be entertained for free, fans support musicians financially. Musicians can have huge followings on any social network, but they don’t always become fans.

I think we have become obsessed with the numbers, the number of subscribers. But I know people with hundreds of thousands of subscribers who rarely play gigs. They don’t even make money from all these followers who want to be entertained for free. Subscribers don’t pay musicians anything.

In any case, it is very important to understand what your goal is as a musician. Are you trying to get a million followers on Instagram or become famous on YouTube? I hope not. I guess the goal is to have a successful music career, to make a living with music.

— It’s hard not to mention the pandemic and its impact on music. Isolation has helped many people to discover their creative abilities and, in particular, to start making music. Do you see any repercussions from this burst of creativity?

Of course, on all platforms. Firstly, the boom of live broadcasts on the Twitch platform – it used to be mainly used by gamers, but during the pandemic, musicians also began to stream. I had a Twitch music director on my podcast and he said that musicians alone have made over $50k from just 183 people! Live is a different kind of communication, people are more excited and more willing to pay musicians.

Also on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, there are new trends and new stars. I know a lot of musicians who became popular because of TikTok, before that they had no audience. First of all, because they create really creative and interesting videos. In addition, when we were all left at home without much resources, it was simply necessary to think creatively in order to release content.

— How do you feel about the fact that technology is used to create music? For example, artificial intelligence that writes melodies, or singers that exist only as a hologram.

It’s creepy, I’m not a fan. I know that these things are popular in Japan and Korea now. I think there will be room for that in the future, but technology will never replace real authentic music based on human experience.

— Will labels still exist in the future?

“The major label model is changing rapidly. It has changed more in the last two years than in the last 50 years. Major labels are losing market share every year: in 2020 they had only 65% ​​of the global record market, and 20 years ago it was 90% or even more. The market is gradually conquered by independent independent artists.

The big labels’ little secret is that 98 out of 100 artists they sign with fail, meaning their first album doesn’t generate enough revenue to record their second. So a label deal is no longer a safe bet for a musician. But I think there will always be a place for labels in one capacity or another, because there will always be those who want to quickly become a superstar.

– Will it be important for musicians to get on radio and television in the future?

Radio is no longer as important as it used to be. Now it rather helps forty-year-olds discover new music. When it comes to TV, shows and commercials need music and are willing to pay for it, so it’s still big business. I have friends who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by putting their music on movies, TV shows and commercials.

– There is an opinion that it is now difficult to come up with something fresh in music, because all the melodies have already been invented, and there is nowhere to get new themes. Do you think there will be a musical crisis in the future?

“Music has been around for hundreds of years in the traditional sense of the word. Musical instruments gradually appeared in our country, music was created for these instruments and for various environments. Beethoven and Mozart wrote their compositions for live performance in the hall, and they lasted approximately 30 minutes. In the era of vinyl records, most albums were under 44 minutes long because each side of the record only held 22 minutes of music. Then, thanks to streaming services, these restrictions were gone, and, for example, 50 Cent released an album with about 50 songs. Now the opposite is happening on TikTok: there are only 30 seconds to record a video and we have 30 second songs. There will always be creative people, and they will create music based on the technologies of the era in which they live.

So the music will constantly evolve. That being said, there will always be people creating and recording orchestral compositions, as Beethoven did, but there will also be people who also create big bands, like Duke Ellington in the early 1980th century, there will also be people who create punk, like the Ramones in the 1990s, or pop punk, like in the late XNUMXs. This development will be ongoing and I don’t think we’ll run out of ideas. One might say that there is already so much music and so many words, but that is like saying that many people have already fallen in love with each other, so there is no more love left. People will fall in love and write songs about it.