New routes to market

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But there is a new disruptive voice in the industry that getting louder , it’s from a tech startup called Kobalt and they’re using the same digital revolution to rewrite the rules .

Across the word old industries are facing on an unprecedented scale . Confronted by ever changing technology the pressure to adapt has never been greater .

[Where there is threat there is also opportunities]

The music factory

In the music industry it’s always been survival of the fittest . After decade of technological change , today just three major record label own well over half of the western word music .

Music business is a ruthless business , it’s a very though business to succeed in . the biggest label of them all is universal .

Nick Rafael runs their UK imprint of capitol records and has helped sustain their success ,by investing heavily in new talent : like grammy awards winner Sam smith.

The most important thing for record company is to find talent and to find repertoire (the A&R process) it doesn’t matter whether we are in streaming , downloading , vinyl , CD’s it doesn’t matter which areas we are in , the truth is the way Capitol records succeded is by signing and having great artist and they invest millions upon millions to find the next superstar , trying to find the next brilliant artist , trying to find your wedding song , the songs that will make the soundtrack to your lives .

That soundtrack might have been created by the artist but it’s the label who retain the rights to the music : they make all the investment in term of skill set and money and they take the risk .

*Established artist

Model that artist have being questioning for year including the biggest rock bands in the planet

Radiohead :

ED O’BRIEN (radiohead guitarist ) : “Artist contract were so heavily weighted in favour of the record companies , it was just hugely unfair and I don’t think that anyone in the industry will dispute that . they might put their head on and go well you know what we’ve put lots of investment . yeah you have but you know let’s talk about something that’s truly fair , let’s just seat for what it is .

We didn’t have the choice , we wanted to make music .”

The rapid rise of digital music gave Radiohead an opportunity to challenge the status quo (the norms)

At the end of their contract with the label EMI in 2007 they released their new albums “in rainbows” over the internet themselves and they allowed fans to pay whatever they liked .

If your in a camp of being excited by innovation and change then you loved it , clearly with in the recorded music business there is people who are not that way and arestill not that way so that kind of change is a little bit of a threat .

Radiohead pioneering move proved a critical and commercial success . “In rainbows “ earned them more digital income than all the other albums combined and stunts the entire industry .

That resonates today, Speaked to a lot well established acts they will quote back that if radiohead can go and do that , a bunch of us can to .

While radiohead were publicly challenging the music establishment , a small technology company was busy behind the scenes , developing a system that would enable more artist and writers to a have a place and challenge the traditional industry model .

Kobalt is the brainchild of Swedish musician, an entrepreneur Willard Ahdritz .

*Internet breakthrough/digital labels

Kobalt has a big mission is simple but it’s a big mission to take the music industry in to the digital the digital age , they had transparence and trust , they wanted to make everything transparent and fair which doesn’t sounds like a big things but in the music industry that quite a revolution .

Kobalt opportunity came when music download started to give away to a proliferation of streaming sites likes deezer and Spotify . for artists it was becoming virtually possible to keep track of who was consuming their music . kobalt was one step ahead of the industry whit it’s technology and the appealing prospect it offered artists of getting paid .

Suddenly here is a company that actually going to tell you what you earning , help you earn more money , help you earn your own money quicker and handle those billions of transactions from billions of different sources and make sure the right to get paid every percentage of a cent they should have been paid .

Kobalt represent over 8 000 artist and songwriters . and the technology has been been embraced by the biggest names in the industry including mutli millions album selling band snow patrol .

Not only does kobalt systems monitor every digital download of a song, but it’s able to collect the tiny micro payment artists and writers get from every play on a streaming site .

This very transparent and really easy to understand they’ve been able to collect money that no one else been able to see through their software.

Today kobalt has a global turnover of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and the confidence to take it’s revolution to the next level .

The company now want to challenge the entire structure of the industry by taking on the vexed issue of music ownership . Four years ago kobalt starting offering services to help artists record and distribute their music similar to a record company . But unlike a record company kobalt lets the artist retain the rights to their music . they simply charging them fees for the services the artist want them to provide .

That whole idea of owning your own record and getting someone to market and distribute it for you , is the biggest threat to traditional major record labels .

Kobalt say to people you can be the master of your own destiny you don’t need to give away your rights to earn your money , in fact you will earn more money if you don’t give away your rights .

10 years ago if you were a new artist or a new band , the first step on a the ladder was to get a record deal , now that is just an option that you don’t have to take .

Koablt new model might work for established artitst such as Paul McCartney