kidmercury

So I was recently contacted by Aimee Allen's record label and invited to play my song for Aimee Allen before her show on April 10 at the Roxy. I asked for more details, but haven't heard back, so I don't know what happened there. Perhaps a good thing since I lost my voice earlier this week and am just now recovering. Though that would potentially have been a blast.

But that got me thinking about what the future of touring is, particularly for those who start out as bedroom rock stars -- meaning writing, recording, and distributing their music from their bedroom. To understand the future of touring, we should also consider the other trends that are happening in music:

1. Movement towards free music
2. More independent media; a proliferation of self-publishing via the Internet
3. Musicians actively using social media (i.e. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc) to deepen their relationship with fans
4. Move towards 360 deals suggests greater focus on monetization of brand

The end result of all these trends will be the rise of the "share of wallet" business model for music. Rather than seeking $1 from a million customers via record sales (the current approach), the share of wallet approach will rather focus on developing deep relationships with a small audience, and then using the trust earned this relationship to maximize the revenue earned from each customer. Sales of instruments, as well as virtually any product/service used, as well as co-branded products/services, will be used to maximize the share of the customer's wallet that the musician is getting. As futurist Kelly Kelly observed, 1,000 True Fans is all you need.

Which brings us back to touring. In the world proposed thus far, in which share of wallet is the business strategy and thus a small but passionate fan base is the best way to economic durability, touring becomes more valuable if it can serve this strategy. For instance, small club shows might actually be MORE economically viable in the future economy of music, as such shows are often more conducive to a deeper connection with the audience, and thus perhaps more valuable in yielding True Fans -- the economic pillar of the future of music.