Focus on Attention, not Copies

There is an important article on Gerd Leonhard’s blog about the difference between attention revenue and copy revenue, and how media will change as we move into the future. Don’t be scared if you don’t immediately understand what that means. What he talks about could have a lot of implications for musicians going into the future.

Gerd envisions:

A Future where many content creators of all kinds, in all locations, and within all levels of accomplishment will make more money based on what their brand stands for, based on their fans aka users having real, meaningful experiences with or through them, and based on who pays attention to them, when and where.

What this means is that the dominance of the hit-driven media companies (which rely on selling millions of copies of something) will fade. It’s now a creator’s market. For the big media companies, this will be a difficult shift; for you musicians, this is your time to shine.

How does this impact the future of your career as a musician?

Most musicians and songwriters will make more money with performance-related activities (i.e. concerts, web-casts, life-streams, on-demand and regular Radio, TV, synchronization, sound branding, music in public spaces, etc) then with selling copies of songs or albums.

As we move forward, you will rely more and more on your reputation or brand than you will your product. This is pretty much in line with everything we’ve been talking about recently here on the blog.

Gerd’s bullet point list really brings the point home for me.

We see evidence of this already as the live gig has become increasingly important over the last few years. Gerd believes, and I would agree, the shift will continue. How can you start shifting your focus away from selling digital downloads and towards building a brand that is attention-worthy? It’s at least something to consider moving forward, as this may soon become the reality of music careers.