Lady Gaga and the Pop-repreneurs

Lady Gaga, Ke$ha and Beyonce. What do they have in common, besides millions of albums sold, #1 singles and crazy outfits? They're part of a new generation of young female music entrepreneurs who are taking control of their entire public persona -- and shaping pop culture around themselves in the process. In fact, they may be the only chance "pop" has to survive.

The music industry is one of the most command-and-control, resistant-to-change industries in the world. Throughout its existence, the industry has succeeded by monopolizing the means of recording and distribution. Indeed, what is "popular" has tended to be driven more by agency executives deciding what will be "accessible" than by people listening and deciding for themselves. (One exception to that rule is country music, whose popularization across America can be traced in part to a 1940s radio station boycott of popular music launched in response to increased license fees. When the station couldn't play the pop, they turned to local and regional performers to fill in.)

Now, though, the power is shifting. The cost of music production has dropped dramatically, and the cost of distribution has effectively fallen to zero. No wonder the Recording Industry Association of America is fighting tooth and nail to keep the cost of music up, and fighting so-called piracy at every turn.

One of the dominant trends in the 1990s was the explosive popularity of micro-genres. Ska, a style that combined fast punk stylings with Jamaican rhythms, had entire festivals dedicated to it. Nu-metal, combining hip-hop vocals with hardcore metal beats, sold millions of records. These weren't new genres, but sub-movements that still had incredible traction.

And their popularity was an early indication of the Internet's effect on the music industry: lowering the cost of discovery for the average listener. The combination of file sharing that makes "sampling" new music free, plus the anonymity of listening, has produced dramatic silo bending. You're no longer a pop or metal kid -- you can be both.

The 2000s accelerated this trend, and as new companies like Lala, Rhapsody, Mog and Spotify promote subscription services with unlimited access to record catalogues, sampling to find what you love -- and the further fracturing of the market -- will become even more common.

To use an analogy, imagine if hamburgers were all that was available, and all that anyone ate. What would happen if 30 new restaurants opened up, offering different kinds of food? Obviously, people would eat fewer hamburgers.

Gradually, "popular" is taking on another meaning. In today's music industry, sales are down. A few years ago, a huge debut on the Billboard sales chart would sell 500,000+ units. Now, though, you can claim #1 album status with a little over 100,000 sold. As much as the industry would like to blame that trend on piracy, those numbers have also changed because of new niches' proliferation, and growing access to alternative listening experiences.

To be sure, pop radio still has massive distribution power, and the industry can still produce megastars. Yet the new pop sensations are increasingly female stars who exert more control over their music and image than was the norm even a decade ago, in the era of Britney and Backstreet.

Take Lady Gaga, one of the biggest stars in recent years. She's sold three million records, had number-one hits in a half dozen countries, is an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights and has a wardrobe that combines Freddy Mercury, Madonna and 1980s Sci-Fi. Or Ke$ha, the new "it" thing right now, whose album Animal is racing up the charts. Unlike most pop stars, though, she wrote the whole album. Before she was Tik-Toking her way across America, she got a 1500 on the SATs. And Beyonce -- well, Beyonce is perhaps the biggest female force in pop music today.

These women aren't setting out to challenge the industry's mode of production. But they've each vertically integrated their public personas to include their sonic stylings, fashion sense and even social messaging to reinforce a personal story. As fans connect to those stories, they're demonstrating it may be smarter for the record industry to let artists shape their own music and messaging.

The record industry doesn't have to be a (fame) monster. It doesn't have to spend all of its time trying to preserve its dying business model. Instead it could be innovating, and reinventing. But first it needs to understand that fans are evolving, and that their artists and strategies need to do so, as well.

Photo Credit: Domain Barnyard