The Platform Dependency Audit: Could Your Music Business Survive If One Company Disappeared Tomorrow?

The Platform Dependency Audit: Could Your Music Business Survive If One Company Disappeared Tomorrow? There is a strange little habit in the music business that we have somehow learned to accept as normal. Artists spend years creating music, building audiences, selling tickets, gathering followers, uploading catalogs, collecting customer information, and developing relationships, and then they store enormous pieces of that business inside companies they do not control. That arrangement can work beautifully right up until it doesn't. A platform changes its pricing, removes a feature, sells itself, changes its algorithm, modifies its licensing program, restricts an account, changes ownership, decides your favorite feature was apparently not as beloved inside the quarterly earnings meeting as it was inside your business, and suddenly you discover exactly which parts of your career you actually owned. This is why every independent artist should perform what we might call a platform dependency audit. The idea is simple: identify the outside companies your music business cannot comfortably operate without, and then figure out what would happen if one of them vanished tomorrow. Not because every platform is evil. Not because the internet is collapsing. Not because you should unplug your computer, move into a cabin, and begin selling hand-carved CDs to passing hikers. Platforms can be incredibly useful. Some of them are responsible for enormous amounts of discovery, sales, distribution, communication, licensing, ticketing, and creative work. The problem begins when an artist mistakes access to a platform for ownership of a business. Those are two very different things. http://www.makingascene.org