In March 1993, I submitted my undergraduate thesis on the digital distribution of music. So far as I am aware, this was the first time anyone had written at length about digital music.
In 1993, websites and MP3s were not a thing, mobile phones were clunky bricks, and Daniel Ek was ten years old. CD sales were booming, but as a student, I stuck with vinyl because it was cheaper than CDs.
I managed to write 30,000 words (which was a lot for an undergraduate), and, as very little had been written about the subject, I had to go out and meet people rather than sit in a library quoting from textbooks.
Peter Scaping of the BPI suggested the subject. He had a deadpan sense of humour and said, “Some people seem to think in the future music will be beamed into people’s homes. Why don’t you go away and think about that?” In addition to Peter Scaping and Chris Green at the BPI, Steve Redmond (Music Week), Hugh Goldsmith (RCA), Glen Ward (HMV), Ray Cooper (Virgin Records), Tony Wilson and Yvette Livesey (In The City) all helped me.
I was a twenty-one-year-old kid whose music business experience was formative at best. I had helped promote a Nirvana show, interviewed Primal Scream, DJ’d, and written for various student magazines, which gave me a grassroots understanding, but writing my thesis pushed me to learn more about the music business and how technology might influence it.
The language was a little quaint in places, particularly the title “An Investigation of Interactive Broadcasting (Armchair Record Store) As a Means of Reaching Passive Music Listeners.” Although my thesis has had pride of place on my CV for over three decades, and I have often referred to it, it remained buried at the bottom of a cupboard. I finally unearthed it a few months ago.
Re-reading it with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight reminded me of the lessons learned, determining what is important and what is not, and how unintended consequences often dictate what “is” over what “could have been.”
A central strand of my thesis was the importance of what was then termed direct marketing. In other words, using technology to develop personalised, long-term relationships with music fans rather than relying solely on radio, publicity and above-the-line advertising.
In the early 1990s, the music industry was just beginning to embrace direct marketing. Hugh Goldsmith told me how RCA used direct marketing to break an unknown boy band called Take That. Radio didn’t want to play them, and the teen press was not on board either, but the band played packed shows at under 18 nights across the country.
The solution was to gather the names and addresses of fans who attended the shows, put them in a database, and send them a postcard promoting the band’s new releases. The strategy worked, and the band charted. All of a sudden, radio and the teen press came on board.
The direct marketing strategy did not stop there. Not only did RCA develop a deeper understanding of Take That fans, but RCA’s then-parent company, BMG Records, used the Take That database to better understand fans’ broader tastes. This enabled BMG to introduce new artists such as M People, Natalie Imbruglia, and Five.
Direct marketing grew during the nineties and formed the foundation for digital marketing in the twenty-first century. Almost a decade after writing my thesis, I launched one of the first artist ticket pre-sales for Feeder. We sold 30% of their UK box office through the artist’s website thanks to their mailing list. Even today, despite the prevalence of social media, I always advise artists to build their own mailing lists, and that holds true whether you are Beyoncé or on Bandcamp.
The technology I described in my thesis, interactive cable and satellite, pivoted. It taught me not to be fixated on any one technology because the underlying principles I was describing did not change; only the method by which they were deployed did.
In late 1993, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark announced a deal between his company, Silicon Graphics, and Time Warner to develop interactive television hardware. ‘By enabling people to perform a variety of services from their living rooms, the system will empower cable television viewers to tap into digital video servers and access new worlds of information and communication,’ said Clark at the time. He was describing exactly the same technology I detailed in my thesis.
Clark was ousted from Silicon Graphics in January 1994. A month later, he met computer science graduate Marc Andreessen, who had developed the Mosaic browser. By the end of 1994, Clark and Andreessen had teamed up, and Mosaic was renamed Netscape.
With the invention of the internet browser and the emergence of websites, the technology turned on its head. Things took a different direction for the next two decades. It was only in the 2010s that web-based platforms combined with TV and radio in the way Clark and others originally envisaged.
I noted that there would be a debate about whether digital distribution would be considered a broadcast or a conventional means of distribution (i.e. a reproduction). That debate has continued ever since.
Another prediction I made was that it would take between ten and fifteen years (from 1993) for digital distribution to become a reality. This was broadly correct, although Napster and other file-sharing services would unleash a blizzard of unintended consequences before iTunes Music Store finally launched in 2003.
The student in me threw in various music references, which, admittedly, was a little gauche. Most of them were my own, but one belonged to my Dad.
While writing my thesis, Dad took me to see British jazz stalwart Chris Barber. From the stage to an audience of mostly tweed-wearing gentlemen of a certain age, Barber complained that few record shops stocked his music, but his new album was for sale in the foyer during the interval. This was perfect direct marketing. Selling music at the merch table is what most bands do today, but Chris Barber was doing it over thirty years ago, when most bands of that time did not.
Thinking about music and technology today, or at any time since then, the same principles I learned back then still apply. Two conflicting truths can be true at the same time; no solution will work for everyone; stay open and flexible to find the best outcomes for any given set of circumstances; and complex problems often require multiple solutions, with no one fix or saviour for all.
If you are interested in reading my thesis, you can download a copy here.