Slicethepie Might Save Labels? Might Save Itself!

Wired.com just dropped a nice piece about Slicethepie's new SoundOut webservice, to be popped on Wednesday. Apparently it will crowdsource not A&R, but A&R-type ratings of music. Think of it as a market-tester for your music.

Now the article goes on about how this could save labels from disaster because they have a 5% success rate. This new tool will enable labels to (ha ha ha ha)...test the market prior to signing/recording/releasing an artist. Let me tell you this: Labels have a 5% success rate for three reasons: 1) it's impossible for 1 person to predictably predict success on an ongoing basis across such a broad spectrum; 2) A&R people- those people historically responsible for selecting future "success" stories - are people that may have found 1 band 15 years ago, and in most cases are no more aware of what will be successful than any other monkey running around (Except for the one person I've met in the 'biz' who actually has a demonstrated sense for success across a broad spectrum: Larry Little); and 3) just because labels act as gatekeepers doesn't mean they should be (and the music-blogosphere demonstrates they no longer have any credibility in this arena anyway).

So like the TuneCores, CDBaby's, and similar services of years before, will this company uncover a star? Sure. And if you believe that, please submit your CD to me with a check for $50...for all we know, you might be a star ;). Otherwise, keep in mind that of TuneCore's purporteldy $10,000,000 payout in royalties...how much of that money went to how many people and for how many songs? The average TuneCore user gets what? $2 per year? Yeah, there are sure to be artists rolling in high value on CDBaby and TuneCore, and I'm sure SoundOut will eventually be the platform for a future success story, but come on.

Like I've said in the past. The business model is pretty interesting, but let's get real...it's not going to save the music industry or labels or anyone important. It's going to make investors in Slicethepie pretty happy that they can get 100,000 "labels" (cough.."indie" artists...cough) to each spend $50 on maybe 5 songs each- That's $25,000,000, baby. Now that's saving the music industry, one pocket at a time.

Enjoy your latte,

Brock