A Year of Music

When I was reading Billboard’s article about recent wrangling over publishing deals and digital streaming (an arcane bit of legal business that is far more complicated than it is interesting, unless this stuff is your day job, like it is mine), I also noticed another story about ADA – the Alternative Distribution Alliance – purchasing quasi-independent online record store turned quasi-independent download store Insound (here’s a Tiny Mixtapes summary of the subscription-only Billboard story). The ironies compound faster than I can explain them (starting with ADA’s very name), but the aspect of this deal I bring to your attention is the way the line between label, distributor and store is growing more scribbly and smudged by the day. Amoeba Music recently started its own label. Aquarius (last mention of them today, I promise) basically is a distributor, given the number of things it sells that are so scarce and self-released that they basically don’t exist (not to mention how much of their stock they get through direct deals with various tiny-label owners).

“Independent” distributors (almost all of whom are now owned by the four major labels) still play a vital – and largely unseen – role in mainstream music distribution. They’re how much-hyped indie bands like, say, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or Wooden Shjips have any chance of getting into Best Buy or Amazon, which is where most people buy their music today. It’ll be interesting to see how they decide to move into the digital sales business themselves, and how that will affect the ever-shifting balance of power between the labels, Apple, subscription music services, and retailers.