Signs of the Times - February 2018 - 8

OFFBEAT
HE music industry has
had its share of tidal waves.
Recordings first challenged
live performance. More
recently, digitization from services
like Napster rocked the industry by
providing music online - for free.
In "Having rescued recorded music,
Spotify may upend the industry again,"
an Economist author compared the
streaming service's current conflict
with that faced by Netflix, writing:
"The fight for who comes out on top
may have only just begun." Netflix,
which began as a partner to the major
Hollywood studios, is now competing
with them directly.
I wonder if the signage and graphics
market is so different. When I was
driving cross-country 18 months ago,
I passed an auto body shop advertising
car wraps. In a feature I wrote last year,
a signage installer and fabricator
termed her company a design studio.
Another company, Ramsay Signs in
Portland, OR, hired a theater designer
to help with creative projects.
Spotify knew listeners better than
the competition, combining the
immediacy of Napster with Pandora's
predictive algorithms. Today, the
service offers both ad-supported free
services and a $10-per-month option
with no interruptions. There's one
problem, which the Economist noted:
The more "plays" Spotify gets, the more
royalties it owes. Now, the company,
newly listed on the New York Stock
Exchange, must decide if it can be
profitable "at the expense of the labels
it has enriched: by paying them less
in royalties; by getting them (and
others) to pay for promotions and

T

8

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

FEBRUARY 2018

data services; and even by competing
with them directly, by making its own
deals with artists," or whether it has
the know-how to turn the industry
upside down all over again.
So, too, the sign industry is facing
disruption. I have talked to owners who
are sprinting toward digital marketing
services and website creation. It's
not news that many signshops are
adding digital printers and finding
ways of creatively using their old
machines (ask around at the ISA Sign
Expo, and someone will doubtless
be able to explain this). Everyone,
or nearly everyone, offers vinyl, and
installers have become so soughtafter that I've heard of companies
that hesitate to pay for training,
fearing their newly skilled employee
will simply open up shop down the
road. Kind of like how Netflix built an
audience of TV owners, then began
dropping studio content and producing
its own shows. Surprise, Hollywood!
What's the surprise, then, for the
sign industry? Perhaps it's that signmaking has come to mean so many
different things to so many different
people. There are certainly challenges
- just look at the contraction in the
retail industry, for starters - but I'm
looking forward to spending 2018
exploring this question.

ROBIN DONOVAN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
robin.donovan@stmediagroup.com

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