OtoRevo creates a music industry first?
The OtoRevo team has created history last week. For the first time a music label has created a online contest in which the winner gets a record deal. Not a interview, not a meeting, not a chance to be heard. But a record deal. More importantly the judges were music fans on the internet. Its a truly special moment that unfortunately will attract little attention in the USA.
From 1,000 artist internet music fans selected the top 10. Of the top ten, last week on the final day of voting they selected the #1 artist. Watching and building this process is special.
The other week I met with one of the top 10 artist. During the meeting the artist cried tears of joy for the opportunity that has been given to them. For me this project has always had a emotional significance. I love to fight against the bigger foe. For the other people attending the meeting I think they realized for the first time the importance of what we are trying to do.
The concept of giving the power of releasing artist to fans may seem obvious but I’ve had to fight for every inch needed to make this project happen. Now we are negotiating to turn the DVD project into a 13 episode TV show and other labels in Japan are interested in the OtoRevo project. That’s all great but I’m honestly a little exhausted. Now we are building a stronger management team of marketing and support staff to lighten the load on the original OtoRevo team. Hopefully it will enable me to take some time off.
We are also planning phase 2 of OtoRevo which features a long tail business model using digital distribution and on-demand CD printing. The new business model was covered in a fairly detailed article in Nikkei Shimbun (the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal in JAPAN). OtoRevo as a business will be successful, but what really keeps me pushing are the commitments I’ve made to the top 10 artist and the need to change the old way of thinking that risks crippling the music industry. Creating a business people care about has been both fulfilling and exhausting.
December 9th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Hi Ejovi,
Congratulations on an industry first and looking forward to the next step!
It’s been interesting following your thoughts over the length of the project. Very impressed with what you managed to do here in Japan.
I feel particularly close to what you are trying to do because of one of our projects TokyoArtBeat.com, a non-profit, partly volunteer-powered project to list all of the art and design events of the Tokyo area in English and Japanese to let people choose for themselves and recommend to other users the best cultural events that are on offer.
I hope you manage to take a break and relax. And if you happen to come to the kudanshita area, it would be a pleasure to invite you for lunch.
best,
Paul
December 10th, 2007 at 7:45 am
That sounds really cool actually. BTW I’ve got an idea for something which may or may not connect to OtoRevo, If you have some time I want to talk to you about it. Unfortunately I cant find your keitei number, if you have my new one give me a call when you can.
December 25th, 2007 at 12:31 am
I think that if you like to continue Otorevo then your next challenge might be this: “to change the way how much share of sales an artist can get”.
actually while I was trying to cook up Otorevo proposal further I stumbled on this. because there were stories about Radio Head and Amie Street, now there’s even Amie Street Japan started, but this project not tackling this issue yet. if the selected artist’s record deal could give then same old 10% around royalty share, that’s indicate there has been nothing changed from the old way of record industry. if you can assure the artist deal containing 30% share for CD or physical material sales and 50% share for download sales it could be revolutionary.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:00 am
OtoRevo creates a music industry first?
or
“if you can assure the artist deal containing 30% share for CD or physical material sales and 50% share for download sales it could be revolutionary.” says GT?
I think I’d have to side with GT.
I applaude what you are trying to do, trying to innovate inside the belly of the dying beast that is the old paradigm record industry, but if there is any first it may just be that it was outsourcing A&R to the community a la SNS Idol.
Now if you had a data mining bots trawling the web to do statistical quant analysis across the data cloud of indie music communities playlists, auto downloading the demos for audio fingerprinting and input into AI taste recommendation systems you could get rid of the time wasting user voting part completely! That would be a first!
[Not quite joking though, as people are working on these components already]
Back to the story->Has anthing else changed for the artist(s) in this record deal? or is it more of the same as GT implies, or a varient of the new 360 deals that no artist in their right mind would sign in todays environment?
Best of luck, though. At least you are trying something, which is way more than some of the lables.
I fully agree with your final point of “and the need to change the old way of thinking that risks crippling the music industry.” but I think it’s the record industry that is dying, not the music industry;-)
I look forward to reading more about phase 2, it sounds interesting.
Would you have a link to the Nikkei Shimbun article?
Cheers,
Paul