Multiplatinum, multiplatform … then what?

This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising, advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else their advisers can come up with. Rare indeed are holdouts like Bruce Springsteen who simply perform and record. The usual rationale is that hearing a U2 song in an iPod commercial or seeing Shakira’s face on a cellphone billboard will get listeners interested in the albums that these artists release every few years after much painstaking effort.

So writes Jon Pareles in the NYT today, in an article about the business of Prince. Who, he argues, fits the pattern in some ways, but is different many others. Still, he writes, Prince “doesn’t have to go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.”

Well said. What I wonder is how multiplatform models will get built in the future. Prince, U2, Sting, even Shakira and 50 Cent, owe a good chunk of their brand equity to old-style big record company mass market oriented tactics (the kind that resulted in multiplatinum sales) that seem to be increasingly incapable of building new pop stars of similar stature. Maybe the American Idol creations have some of that stature, but it’s not clear to me if it will be lasting, and in any case it’s hardly a pure grass roots thing.

Seems like stars who made their name in the “old days” (that is, anytime up to a few years ago) have a lasting advantage in the multiplatform marketplace.