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The Music Biz Is the New Book Industry
jonerik writes "The new issue of New York Magazine includes this intriguing article by Michael Wolff which makes the case that the music biz will soon be going the way of the book industry. Arguing that larger-than-life characters such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Dorothy Parker were the rock stars of their time, Wolff points out that 'where before you'd be happy only at gold and platinum levels, soon you'll be grateful if you have a release that sells 30,000 or 40,000 units -- that will be your bread and butter. You'll sweat every sale and dollar. Other aspects of the business will also contract -- most of the perks and largesse and extravagance will dry up completely. The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone. Instead, it will be a low-margin, consolidated, quaintly anachronistic business, catering to an aging clientele, without much impact on an otherwise thriving culture awash in music that only incidentally will come from the music industry.' Wolff also relates a recent lunch he had at Sony Music in which a sort of paralyzed acceptance had set in; 'The recent past was very bad; the future was likely to be worse. All money earned from here on in would be harder to earn. This felt like acceptance to me: We simply don't know what to do.'"
Bling Bling here I come!
Their first mistake:
Screwing the customer by over-charging, over-producing and under-acknowledging the hard work of real artists as opposed to hyping studio-created filler.
Their second mistake:
Ignoring people TELLING them this
Their third mistake:
Continuing this trend by assuming it's actually creating long-term solvency as opposed to an embittered and irritated audience who will be willing to search for bands not under 'Collective Control'
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
I don't think it is quite comparable. There are authors who sell *tons* of books. Think of Silence of the Lambs which has sold millions upon millions of copies. Likewise the literary equivalent of the Beatles are books like Catcher in the Rye.
But the industry shot itself in the foot long ago and now that the shock is over, they are going to realize where they went wrong. As for going the way of the Book Publishing/Distro/Sales way, I doubt it. Unlike most publishers, Entertainment companies have a lot more room for imagination, and a lot more of a consumer base. Cetainily another advantage is that most people have to have book forced into their pocession, but almost everyone buys music, well unless your the RIAA, but that is a beast of another arguement, for another time.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
or all the large corporations will end up ruling the world and we will all be slaves serving under their tyranny listening to Nsync 24/7 with little advertising devices implanted into our eyes and ears.
Personally, I can't wait for my own personal add implant! I love Nsync, and where's my coke?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I've always wondered about the power of copyright to collect per-cd revenue.
In Germany, where I've spent some time, local bands are more influential than US/International stars. Although there is some influence, it's "in" to know someone who plays in a band, and bands are hired for gigs often.
I've always believed that the future of music was in Live music, i.e. performers must play to get paid. I think with internet distribution of music, this and the tone of the article, the future lies in performers doing actual work.
Torsten
Unless someone has done something to eliminate all future teens and more importantly pre-teens... Please you don't think the crowd that supplied NKoTB, BB, N*Sync,etc etc etc won't keep forking over the cash? The rest of the industry? Yeah I could see that, but the pre-teen market springs eternal, literally.
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
This is the same historically as radio play of music, cable playing of television, or library inclusion of books. There are other ways to do it besides canvassing the ISPs, but any way you look at it, it has to cover the vast majority of online users who could download music.
I really can't see what else they can do. From the technological standpoint, bits copy well.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
If I were an artist, I think I would be more than happy to sell 30,000 copies of an album... provided I got more than the $0.14 a copy or whatever the labels are paying their artists these days.
Authors don't make millions every year via concerts.
I'm delighted to be working with computers rather than coked up overpaid wankers pretending to be friends with musicians for no reason WHATSOEVER except that it might make them lots of money. The most evil people I've ever met, in person, were A&R. (and one of the nicest, too... but it's the Clive Gabriels of this world that stick in the memory.)( /.er could ever imagine. It almost makes me want to get back into management, just so I could steer yougn acts away from teh traditional industry, encourage them to use viral marketing, free mp3s etc etc and then sit back and grow rich. (But not quite: Perl6 is too interesting... =)
Oh and if this comment should happen to show up as a result from a search for Clive Gabriel of Chrysalis Music? He's pure scum. NEVER trust that man.)
The "biz" is actually worse than the average
We used to have parents deploring their children's taste in books, or that they didn't read at all, something I've always found distressing: many of my friends at university never seem to read anything; I don't know what they fill that gap in their lives with. We are already well on the way to parents deploring their children's taste in music and children who, as with books now, listen only to the sensational mega-selling singles, with no real loyalty or continuing interest in any one author/musician. And eventually, we will have people who don't listen to music at all, and don't miss it either.
I find that heartbreaking, but sadly plausible.
Being a musician the thing I find most wonderful about music is that it can cross all genre's. Every CD that is made (with the exception of spoken word in some cases) can be enjoyed by anyone anywhere in the world. With book sales there is often language barriers or even literacy barriers. You don't have to know anything to enjoy music, and that will keep the music industry alive.
That being said, I would have no problem with the "death of the rockstar." Have the musicians creating music out of passion, not out of greed. Maybe the only people to get hurt by this would be the big scary record companies.
perhaps, as with open source, the days of making large profits (value through scarcity) on a mass produced object are coming to a close. Is the service economy spreading to areas which were unanticipated in the past? and, does this mean that society at large will be wealthier for the fact? i imagine that the accounting for where (and by who) value is actually created will become more precise in the future, as a result of the network, and that the compensation will be redirected as a result. is value actually created by the music industry, or has it simply facilitated the manufacturing of rock-stars as opposed to music?
Imprision all the "* wants to be free" zealots and destroy the internet.
I hope high gas prices are depriving your children, you fucking dumbass.
Also in the future, shamed sensationalistic writers such as Jon Katz will have to use cheesy pseudonyms such as "Michael Wolff" in order to publish zeitgeist articles without being ridiculed.
who the replacements will be.... the game producers of course! lets hope they don't do the money thing....
I would say that the interesting thing that was overlooked in this article was the fundamental role that music has played during the existence of the human race.
:)
Music has an ability to reach places that words often fail. The book business of course fundamentally depends on earning it's money from a customer base that is at least educated to the point of having a base reading level. Music doesn't require this at all.
Music finds a way to tap into the inner feelings that humans have and allows us to communicate direnctly if even for only a moment. We have grown up with music as a component of our daily lives, we will continue to consume it.
What will change is the pricing for sure. Things will be more reasonable, which will allow for more and wider competition.
All I can say for sure is that those kids hanging out at MTV during TRL are buying into an image and a way of life driven by the music ( no matter how misguided that may be)
Saying that the music biz will be extinct is like saying that there will be no more kids who discover Dark Side of the Moon and imagine that they are the first people to discover this cool music.
Music is just too important to humans. If the record industry knew this and took the time to drop the prices, I think they would make even more money and people wouldn't want to "borrow" the next Eminem record off the net...
a) Screwing their customers by overcharging for stuff which doesn't hold up to the advertised quality in the first place. Think boy bands and CD's with 2 good songs and 18 filler tracks here...
b) Labeling their customers criminals by introducing copy-protected formats which do more harm than good. The DMCA. The SSSCA.
c) Failing to adapt to worldwide changes, such as the arrival of the Internet, home broadband, P2P technology. Attempts to fight the future rather than embrace it.
d) Pathetically holding on to their old business model, despite telltale signs that it's already outdated.
The list can go on for pages, and the four main points above can be split into several sub-points for those slow understanding the magnitude of this...
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
I don't know how you define "influence", but localism doesn't seem to have much effect on what is played in bars/nightclubs or in the shops. Some traditional pubs play older german music perhaps.
Of course live music is a different thing altogether. I do have a CD of Rosenstaltz (sp?) somewhere, and they gave a good performance.
The last time I checked, there were hundreds of thousands of musicians out there doing commercial work, weddings, bar-mitvahs, etc, etc in order to eke out a living. Maybe Sony Music will go the way of Penguin Books but the reality for most of today's musicians is not unlike that of the rest of the novelists and artists out there.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Interesting article! I think the most positive aspect of this turn of events is how the music will be much more dependent on its own virtue. Now FINALLY with mass distrubution of lesser known music, fans will be able to find what they really love to listen to
.....
This trend is a good thing. Most musicians make very little money from records--they get most of their $$$ from playing gigs. It's the big corporations that lose, not the creators of the stuff that we like to hear. Hilary Rosen and her bloodsucking friends at the RIAA do not have my sympathy.
... that's just not going to happen.
Music has been a part of society for litereally thousands of years. People will continue to want to purchase music (even if that means digital format). If nothing else, concerts will continue to be the true source of income for performers.
Look at how much classical music is still purchased, along with various music forms that range from decades to centuries old.
I would venture to say that music is a part of human nature as a method of creative expression. Books are as well, but they don't have the portability and the quick and powerfull effects that music can have on people. Music's portability is its greatest advantage. Being able to listen to music as you do pretty much anything helps with its pervasiveness. Hell, there are a number of activities that are more enjoyable with proper musical accompanyment.
I do believe the format in which music is aquired will continue to change and the type of music will continue to change, as it ever has. But it will always be a lucritive business.
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
Great, so all we have left to funnel MILLIONS of useless dollars into are flatulent, senseless Hollywood actors.
Fuck.
Hurray - this is the best news. The music industry will return to being about making music - just like the major part of the book industry is about making books that are interesting and diverse.
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Who gives a fuck if there isn't shed loads of money in it - who cares if there aren't evil media barons trying to turn your computer into
Bring back music and let them make money screwing up some other industry.
Seems like the "bleak" future described was also a fairly accurate description of the music industry prior to 1950. No real pop-superstars or bazillion-dollar promotional campaigns.
That's the way things were.. and we liked it!
Say, from about 1 decade ago?
Music is about pop culture nowadays, and that what sells the most. The oldies buy the older, more thoughtful remasters and the releases from the older artists, while the teen generation buys the music thats in and happening.
Parallel this to even one decade ago. Kids were buy the latest "Goosebumps" book, the latest pop fiction book, dealing with teen issues of love and friends (remarkably, like pop songs). The older people are buying the latest offering from the established authors.
It sounds EXACTLY like the music industry of today. The young buy the pop books and culture, and older buy the remasters and the established artists.
The only real reason that nysync are number 1, and not that latest michael crawford album is because of airplay. They both selling the same, but the airplay is a lot more for nsync, and billboards are 75% airplay (or marketing, if your prefer), and 25% sales.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
People will not stop listening to music. We haven't for some many thousands of years of human history. I really don't see any reason why we would now. It seems to me the only thing in danger are the music companies.
That being said, I personally have no remorse or sadness for the death of music companies. They once served a purpose, but now they are refusing to change their ways with the changing times and are repeatedly making it clear that they will stand in the way of any music technological innovation that doesn't receive their blessings.
It seems to me that you have three choices in the way of innovation--lead, follow or get out of the way. They are refusing to do any and thus will likely find themselves in serious trouble.
Just look back. Before books, we had Mozart, Beethoven, etc. The Greeks loved their musicians and gave them special status. So on and so forth. You can't look back at some point in time and go, "Oh, music wasn't a big deal during this time period". Except for some minor exceptions like droughts, famines and plagues (oh my!). The music industry has already outlasted the book industry by a couple millenia.
There will always be superstar musicians because music is one of the fundamental universal human likes.
1. U2, $109.7 million
2. 'N Sync, $86.8 million
3. Backstreet Boys, $82.1 million
4. Dave Matthews Band, $60.5 million
5. Elton John and Billy Joel, $57.2 million
6. Madonna, $54.7 million
7. Aerosmith, $49.3 million
8. Janet Jackson, $42.1 million
9. Eric Clapton, $38.8 million
10. Neil Diamond, $35.4 million
11. Matchbox Twenty, $28.4 million
12. Rod Stewart, $27.2 million
13. Jimmy Buffett, $26.9 million
14. Andrea Bocelli, $26.8 million
15. Ozzfest 2001, $26.4 million
16. Sade, $26.2 million
17. Tim McGraw, $24.9 million
18. Britney Spears, $23.7 million
19. James Taylor, $23 million
20. Tool, $20.4 million
No more glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs...Yeah right.
Even without concert sales, people are still buying CDs anyway. After all the crap about Eminem's album being pirated before it was released he still managed to sell 1.32 million copies in his first week. I think the reports of the death of the music industry have been greatly exagerrated.
Finally, innovative musicians can parlay their fame into dollars from other means. Just look at Ozzy Osbourne who's about to pull in 20 million for his reality-sitcom.
Writers, artists, musicians, programmers, and etc. should do what they love... To me programming is an art. And even if it won't pay the bills, I will write code. I belive the best music comes from those who actually love to write music. I think that musicians having to struggle to pay the bills will help filter out some of that trash they call "Boy Bands".
My case against this presented idea is that authors have been doing business less than the music industry.
Case in point: In the 15th century, such composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel became huge as composers, the musical "rock stars" of the time and their names are still well known. However, how many of you can think of an author from the 1600's? Even the classical literature section of About.com (which says it includes the 15th century) couldn't come up with any 15th century literature, much less well-known authors. Now check for 1600's composers/music at the same site here and note it's in a much more constrained time period and doesn't even include such names as Vivaldi.
So this might be a little far back to be considered a valid point. Then take, for instance, the fact that the newest Weezer album, Maladroit, is currently #3 on the Billboard chart even though every song on the album has been free to the public since two to three months before its release. And they're still becoming rich off of concert and album revenue.
Just a few thoughts...
Anonymous Coward: (n.) 1. nerd at school or library. 2. karmawhore in training. 3. embarrased prep.
And the outside promotion & creation of "megastars" The key to a succesful book in recent years has been to be deemed worthy Oprah's book club - analagous to the succesful promotion of Alicia Keyes by Rosie O'Donnell. This is unless your already a succesful megastar like Steven King - at which point your pulp will be forcefed down our throats.
Music is Free. For better or for worse, legally or illegally, music is now free. Period. I would submit it should be free, think of it as an advertisement for the tours. But whether or not people (including RIAA) think it should be free, it is. Improving technology and an archaeic business model based on control and scarcity has guaranteed that.
Famous musicians will earn less. Yes, Phil Collins and Celine Dion will probably earn much less than they do now. Instead of millions per year they might have to get used to earning incomes closer to what the rest of society does. Perhaps old Phil will have to scrape by on $200k a year... Then again, he sells out concerts which is where he make big bucks, anyway, so his income may be proportional to his desire to work (perform). I don't see a problem with that.
There will be more musicians. Although the most famous musicians will earn less, there will be more musicians because the barrier to entry will be greatly reduced. Eventually it will be eliminated. Some say that we'll be "flooded" with a bunch of untalented musicians and we won't be able to find anything good, but I'd submit that's the case now anyway.
The recording industry is obsolete. You used to need expensive recording equipment and studios to record quality music. A good studio is certainly still useful, but an amateur group can do a decent job at recording decent quality music that's definitely within their budget. They can burn CDs and sell them for $5/pop at concerts (pocketing $4.50 per CD), throw the music online (attracting more people to concerts). The recording industry is obsolete. Their legal attacks are, as the article mentions, a matter of squeezing the last dollar possible out of their business plan.
I live in Mexico right now. My sister-in-law is a 20-year-old Mexican young lady. She used to use Napster. That got nuked and now she has like 3 different P2P programs on her home PC connected to DSL. She has P2P programs that *I* have never heard of.
Last time I asked her she had downloaded 3200+ MP3s. That's more than 8 times what I, a techno-nerd, have downloaded. She doesn't listen to most of the music more than once, she just downloads everything she can because she likes to collect MP3s. She tells me her friends do too. She wants a larger hard drive for her birthday.
Believe me, the "music industry" is history.
American and international bands play a reasonably big role in German music, though not as much as it is here. However, local bands aren't that influential, as German pop stars such as Herbert Grönemeyer and Die Prinzen continue to stay on the pop charts continously as they have been for a while.
Anonymous Coward: (n.) 1. nerd at school or library. 2. karmawhore in training. 3. embarrased prep.
Except the retired rock stars that will have to work as hookers and drug dealers
You asked what replaced books in most peoples lives. Here's you answer: Television. Most of my coworkers can dialogue endlessly about the current status of Ally Macbeal, or Friends, or.... well you get the picture. They've replaced books with television - I have difficulty in naming those who've read more than a dozen books in the past year. Not that television is particularly different than most of the current literary drivel, but even the basest book requires more thought than watching a majority of the television programs available.
We can all sit here an argue until the cows come home that he's either right, wrong, or 'grey'... but one thing to note:
Just how much money are the music companies willing to burn on finding ways to 'copy-protect' their discs and spend in court fight after court fight?
Perhaps the first lesson they need to take is Accounting 101. Control the costs you can see, instead of fighting in court to, and here's the kicker, 'possibly' make them buy the records and increase revenue that you may, in fact, have already realized.
Some editing to avoid lameness filter.
ok... so this is what ive been saying all along... look at my signature line below:
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
problem with the 'catering to an aging clientele' comment is that writing a book is generally a pretty intellectual thing. Music, as we have it today, is chiefly emotional.
That's not to say one or neither doesn't need talent or skills or feeling, but each one draws from it's own discrete base.
Intellect is generally something reserved for the ages, and emotion is usually best witnessed in the younger crowd.
The music industry could start earning more income, perhaps, by improving the quality of the music it generates.
Sure, production value has improved, but today's music sounds much like a movie with great special effects but no plot; it lacks substance. The industry has concentrated so hard on vacuous marketing techniques aimed at various demographics, as well as absurd lobbying activities amongst politicians that it should truly come as no surprise that folks have become disgusted with today's music, by and large.
Truly, look at what they're coming up with these days; the better tunes are rehashed oldies (where they've taken advantage of improved production techniques to bring you better sounding copies of old tunes that folks are familiar with). And even some of those are downright offensive with 'corporate appeal'.
I could only think of two more possible solutions to their problems (although it may be too late).
First, recognize that the Baby Boomers are getting older. You aren't going to see that kind of explosive buying power again (at least not until the next major disaster that wipes out a third of the population, making room for another baby boom). So don't even bother. Go with a wider range of musicians and spend a little less money on production (something that's getting easier these days). Quick little hint: scarcity of resources breeds artistic endeavor. Some of the most clever bits of music ever crafted came from truly small production budgets. No need to starve their resources, though, just force your talent to grow their techniques and composition skills before exposing them to the big production dollars.
Second, instead of lobbying your congressman for these truly insulting and offensive abuses of law, put your money into the education system to improve the state of music education in our schools. If folks have no appreciation for music, what makes you think they're going to bother to listen to any of it? Branding? Today's youth barely grasps the concept of counterpoint (multiple melodies played on top of each other), can't appreciate a good groove (preferring an obnoxiously repetitive 'beat' instead), and do not have an iota of an appreciate for music without lyrics.
And so it goes.
"A sort of paralyzed acceptance"?
Funny, I haven't seen the RIAA back off a smidgen from its goal of labeling anybody who even uses the *legal* provisions of the Home Recording Act as contemptible thieves and people who share MP3s via P2P as cutthroat pirates. And they do still want to get legislation to help outlaw general-purpose home PCs (with the help of the MPAA, of course.)
Maybe the industry marketers are clucking their tongues and looking numb at conventions but they're still paying Hilary Rosen, Ernest Hollings and Billy Tauzin to push their agenda, and push it hard.
To quote:
Self absorbed people talking of their own death, realizing they've killed the golden goose. I'd really like to hear one of their stories to see exactly what they'd say: what part of the many things that pissed me off enough about RIAA to stop buying music have they actually realized?
Fuck 'em.
20721
In reverse order:
The ugly - We'll miss out on some people who really should be heard. Of course they can do it now by simply releasing the songs on the file share services.
The bad - We'll be harrassed about buying music ever more often as the industry declines.
The good - No more N'Sync and Britney clones.
And the last just shows there IS a silver lining in every cloud!.
The closing comment of the article says:
And best of all, our children -- all right, our grandchildren -- won't want to become rock stars.
This leads me to ask the natural question, "so what's next?" I mean, our culture seems to demand creating these icons of rebellion. People who do something that most of us cannot do and most of us wish we could do. So what's next?
Does this trend move into the film industry? That seems to be suffering the same problems as the music industry though. Too many people producing too much product and drowning out the chance to distinguish ones self.
Celebrity Hackers perhaps? I think that's more of my own little geek fantasy that somehow people like Linus Torvalds could have popular celebrity. Though as computer technology becoems more a part of everybody's lives, maybe there's a possibility there.
I wonder what happens if maybe we are just out of realms to spawn these cultural icons. When teenagers want to rebel, what's left for them to do?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Many people often buy an album due to hearing a song they like on the radio and just hopeing the rest of the album is good, its like a form of self advertising, you hear it, you like it, you buy it. But how many people buy a book because they have heard one chapter and liked it and want the rest? Noone I know of.. often book sales increase due to films coming out etc *cough* Lord of the Rings *cough* but its not the same as being exposed to a song on the radio day in and day out!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I don't really get the huge problem here. The revolution they're experiencing is from a studio-based existence to a live performance existence. Live bands and performers will rule the music industry. Anybody who is talented enough to perform live and make their live shows interesting from show to show will still make plenty of money. I don't see any catastrophe here. Just a shift in focus. I totally welcome it.
Don't kid yourself. The same media pimps are pandering to the same dilutable tastes with the same pap.
How the fuck else do you explain Harry Potter suddenly being every where?
How about books spawning comic books spawning movies and TV shows until, in one last ditch efort to wring a buck from the whole mess, it winds up on Saturday morning comics. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, X-Men, Star-wars, Ghost Busters.
They're making a "Scoobie Do" moo-vee.
How fuckin' LAME can you get? We're talking the crap you watched on TV slackin' off from home-work, (the same two plots stretched out to 13 shows, year after year, that you eventually abandoned when you started playing with yourself, when slackin' off led to jackin'off,) made into a multi-million dollar production. Before it gets recycled into TV AD vehicles, back into comic-book form and back on Sa-turd-ay morning comics.
The print-media stars are just as rich and lead lives that are just as depraved, drink sodden and drug induced as rock stars but its not as public because you can't hum the latest Gothic horror nover in the elevator.
Stephen king's biography reads like a street-corner dealer's wet dream. Was that poor coke-addled man EVER straight?
Fact is that print has a very different band-width requirement from music and video/cinema. That's why there are three orders of magniture of hype, cost and pay.
The article is basically bogus.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Musical recordings cannot be seriously compared to books, or even book tapes. Music, like TV and movies, is too easily assimilated, understood, and appreciated, to suffer the same fate as books. There 's always time for a 4-minute song; there isn't always time for a 400-page novel or a 5-cd reading of it. Music also transcends language barriers with more ease than books, and will always have the potential for international "hits". Then there are the concerts and shows...there's just too much difference between the two art forms to see them suffering the same fate.
"A sort of paralyzed acceptance"?
Funny, I haven't seen the RIAA back off a smidgen from its goal of labeling anybody who even uses the *legal* provisions of the Home Recording Act as contemptible thieves and people who share MP3s via P2P as cutthroat pirates. And they do still want to get legislation to help outlaw general-purpose home PCs (with the help of the MPAA, of course.)
Maybe the industry marketers are clucking their tongues and looking numb at conventions but they're still paying Hilary Rosen, Ernest Hollings and Billy Tauzin to push their agenda, and push it hard.
(I re-posted this comment: it's mine, but for some reason it came up as anonymous, and I like to sign what I write)
USA Today's cover story from Wednesday was a very well-written and non-biased article about everything that is wrong with the music industry. I'm surprised at the quality of the piece; given that it was ran in the king of the fluff rags sold on the newsstand these days.
View it here.
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
This already happened in the early 90s when the mass media stopped trying to push metal.
For many metal bands, sales of less than a thousand isn't unusual (e.g. Barbarian Wrath label makes 666 copies of their CDs ;-) The big ones that everyone in the metal scene knows about, sell a few ten thousand. Fifty thousand is a lot -- you are a without a doubt considered a commercially-successful metal band if you're selling that many. Then there are a few exceptions like Iron Maiden who can still sell in the millions, but books still have those kind of exceptions too.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And it's all because libraries let people share books at will, depriving book pub...er authors of their just rewards! Not to mention those people reading magazines in the bathroom! It's your moral obligation to buy books to read in the other "library"!
The thing about Music is that nothing about it is _inherently_ expensive to produce. Sure, once you've thrown in the videos and the launch party and the services of the London Philharmonic it starts to get up there (Although I'd guess the services of the London Philharmonic are cheaper than you'd think) but the equipment, space and talent to just record music is generally within the range of every day people. Of course certain kinds of music are easier to record on the cheap than others (Moby can do it alone in his apartment because, well, he doesn't have any instruments) but with a nice Mac and $10K worth of extra hardware a talented bunch of people can put out some pretty respectable stuff. So music will live on, even if it's almost free. Same goes for books.
But what about Movies? Movies are going to be subject to the very same dynamic, although perhaps timeshifted a few years to the right. If the shit start to hit the movie industry, the world is going to start to look pretty different because movies are _expensive_. I mean even once you throw out the union pay scales and the staffing and the rules, blowing shit up (which is a staple of a lot of movies) is expensive; As are sets and crowds and animations and all the other stuff we see in our movies. Sure, you can still make "Clerks" and "The Blair Witch Project" pretty cheaply, but those aren't the only kinds of movies out there - not even an appreciable percentage if you're looking at Hollywood output. So the big budget movie could be a thing of the (soon to be) past.
Maybe movies will go all digital. Computing cycles will be so cheap and software so good that movies can be "filmed" at low cost by some Savant in his basement with the futuristic equivalent of an iMac and some Red Bull. But I wouldn't count on it.
The book industry never thought of comming up with ways of preventing the use of the copy machine...
But why is the music industry trying to cripple the use of their product on computers?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
In 1996 Paul Krugman, MIT economics professor and wirter of the Dismal Scientist column in Slate, wrote this column about a look back at what happened to content providers from 2096. Krugman's overriding point is that in a digital environment content ends up being free, and people that actually make tangible non-digital things (blue-collar-type jobs) will get the benefits of the future.
His model for music in a post-Napster environment is that music is delivered free to promote attendance at live concerts.
I particularly enjoyed the part where he predicts the demise of economists' perk jobs and he's writing part-time from a vet clinic.
I weep not for the end of Madonna and her ilk's excess. It's far more important what happens to the average plumber then it does for these pampered poodles.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
"Here are the choices:
If you're providing free entertainment, which is obviously what the music business is doing, then you have to figure out some way to sell advertising to the people who are paying attention to your free music. But nobody seems to have any idea how that might be done. Or you can provide stuff that's free, and use the free stuff to promote something else of more value that people, you hope, will buy -- now called the "legitimate alternative." (Putting video on the CD is one of those ideas -- though, of course, you can file-share video too.) Or sell the CD at a level that makes it cheap enough to compete with free (free, after all, has its own costs for the consumer)."
Here's a more realistic choice:
You're rich, powerful, influential and arrogant. Theft of your product is rampant. You buy a Senator, say Senator Hollings from SC, and you have him draft a bill that forces all hardware and operating systems to incorporate some form of anti-coping technology. It becomes impossible to copy music/video files without hacked hardware. You make it illegal to run hacked hardware and vigorously prosecute those who have the audacity not to bow to your will.
Your sales remain high. Problem solved.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I'm a music g33k. I'll freely admit it. I carry a backpack with me where ever I go, and out side the Game Boy Advance, the only tech item I carry around is a Sony Walkman and a big CD wallet, along with HUGE, ungodly headphones.
But you won't find many CD's in there that have artists with a large presence on the radio (97.7fm near Cincinnati is probably the only real underground commercial station left, you can check out their webcast at www.woxy.com), outside the rare instance where one of these bands has a minor radio hit.
Music died on MTV a while ago. Moby changed music from being, well music, to being a sidenote (no pun intended) to commercial transactions. But, because of people's disenchantment with corporate music, there has been a recent rise in real music.
Music might be small, live, and like books. But, like books, the good content will get more exposure when there is less uber-hyped content out there.
For the indie music fan, this is a great thing.
The cost of having one long lasting artist is lower than that of many produced teeny-bopers.
Case in point: 5 x Britney Spears boom and bust = expensive.
1 x Rolling Stones = less overhead and more profit. This is a human resources problem, just like the IT industry. It has everything to do with "Knowledge management" but on a talent level. As a studio owner and attempted rockstar, it hurts really bad when music is commodotized beyond an art form.
Personally, I have no problem with watching the entire shrink-wrap music and software business go away entirely.
Spoken like someone who has never created anything of value.
I'm sure you would like to sponge off the work of others.
Get Real!
Music is a very individualistic art form. It isolates in a crowd.
You very rarely find li'l ol' grannies rockin' with "The Cramps" and "They Might Be Giants".
You rarely find bikers gassing on the latest "Conway Twitty" or "Boxcar Willy" CD.
I'd ruin an evening trying to find Mexicans really geting into Susanne Vega. Nor will you find much salsa music in Norwegian taverns.
Music is idiocyncratic and idiomatic.
Just to help things along, most music is sold to and bought by people who don't like it and don't listen to it.
Its everywhere at every fuckin' mall the planet over, in every bazzar, every souk, every gallery, "gallerie" and galleria. The people who shell out the bucks are merely shelling out for the "least unpleasant noise" to fill in the void between commercials.
Your buying a couple of CDs every year is squat compared to what the commercial outfits shell out for canned muzak every single hour of every single day.
That's what the media companies are protecting. They don't give a shir about you or your ears.
Bruce Springstein's "Born In The USA" was not saying that you should be PROUD of being "Born In The USA."
Nobody listen's to Marylin Manson's lyrics. Nor Trent Reznor's either. If they did. There's be nobody at the fuckin' shows.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Wolff may have analyzed the current situation boldly, but I don't think he looked very far into our history before he made his statement. I feel Wolff is very ignorant when he states toward the end of the article that Rock music is a bubble that has burst. In the short history of Rock music, critics have made the same statement at least twice per decade. It seems to me that Wolff obviously hasn't learned from the mistakes of other critics.
It is true that popularity in music is becoming more decentralized. Bands are content with lower record sales, and we haven't seen anything to rival the popularity of the Beatles. However, as the number of bands increases, so does the variety of music available to the listener. And so does the size of the audience; look at the world population in the 50's when rock started and compare those numbers with today's.
Wolff also states that consumers look not only for music, but also technology when considering a music purchase. I agree with him to some point, but I believe his use of 'technology' is too strict. 'Technology' should be defined to include music videos and concert production. The influence of MTV on modern music is staggering; technologies like additional music channels and satellite radio will only increase the influence.
While I would agree that music will cease to exist in its current form, that does not mean the industry will go the way of the book.
The main reason is that music itself is exciting. Reading a book takes at least a several hour time investment, most of which is time spent alone. Music on the other hand takes just a few minutes to enjoy and is best when shared with hundreds or thousands of other people at the same moment.
Screaming, jumping, dancing... sound waves travelling through thousands of people simulatenously... sorry, but you can't reproduce that with a book.
For anyone interested, Shepard Fairey, the kick ass artist who designed the Mozilla logo has written on his site about this very topic.
Over time, CD sales may decline, but people will still want to share music with their friends. Concert sales will increase as people are exposed to a wider variety of music via better distribution channels. Personal music will take shape with the creation of high quality online services like FullAudio. But, to say that music will ever become anything like the book industry is totally off base.
A choice of masters is not freedom
No way will the music industry become as bland as the book industry. musicians have charm, charisma, excitement, bad-boy attitude, good looks, and live concerts that draw thousands of screaming fans. When is the last time anyone paid $45.oo to hear a live reading of 'The Old Man and the Sea' at the Staples Center? I can just see a parking lot full of rowdy book-readers before a live reading. =P
Besides you just can't hold up Lighters at a book reading..too dangerous!
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
Artists will always give live performances, concerts, etc. No matter what happens, there will always be people who will just love to listen to them on-the-spot.
Artists are not going to live a miserable live. That's nonsense. It's just that their cheese is moving. They have to move with it.
And yes, musical empires will never be the same.
I see streaming concerts ala pay-per-view in the near future raking in big bucks.
The biggest problem about concerts is their location oriented cash flow. once you decentralize concerts you will see artists performing more and gaining higher value in the marketplace. This won't stop attendance to concerts in the same way that boxing matches and other sporting events are still attended while an at home audience views at their convenience.
Free recorded music, pay for live PERFORMED music.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It's still possible to be some kind of star as a writer. J.K. Rowling is probably the most egregious example at the moment. A few other writers make millions (Stephen King, obviously). They may not be considered 'serious' in the way that someone like William Faulkner was, but how many people regard modern musicians as 'serious'? Maybe J.K. Rowling signifies a swing of the pendulum, back to story telling. Come to think of it, isn't Rap music as much poetry as music?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I read the article an hour ago and I've been kinda stewing on it and now I'm reading the comments....
... I don't know. Music, I think, will always be able to touch people deeper and more powerfully than words ever will. I suddenly FELT that sound. Note that I am a trained musician so my opinion is likely biased, but I still find it hard to believe, looking at the history of literature and music and art that music + mass communication is definitely the most potent combination of the three. And I don't think mass comm is going anywhere soon.
On streaming radio 'Magic Bus' by The Who came on and I suddenly realized why the original article is dead wrong. Now, don't get me wrong, 'Magic Bus' is a pretty silly song and DEFINITELY not one of The Who's better tunes, but
So, to wrap this up:
ROCK AND ROLL IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL!
Mr. Wolff is arguing that for the past twenty years people have been replacing their vinyl copies of Thriller, Nevermind and Celebrity with CDs? Publishers are selling fewer books? Hemingway and Mailer outsold King, Clancy and Rowley?
I think that Mr. Wolff is commenting more on the fact that his hometown of New York City has lost the title of cultural capital of the world to LA where they don't write books. They write screenplays.
A while back I saw an interview with Lars wots-'is-name from Metallica stating that he didn't expect a plumber to come round to his place to fix his toilet for free, so why should people be able to download his music for free. And I thought that the day a plumber was able to give an interview, sitting beside his swimming pool, outside his huge mansion would the day that I'd give a toss about Lars's royalties.
The music industry has been a cash cow for years. And in an effort to make even more money they've stopped listening to what we want and tried feeding us over-priced pre-digested pap. And now, thanks to the Internet and the ubiquitous MP3 we have the ability to bypass the latest creation of the marketing department, and listen to what we want. And the music industry is desperately trying to stop us. They've used the law; and lately they've started mucking around with the CD format too.
The greed of the giant corporations has killed the goose which laid the golden egg. And I'm not at all sorry. So perhaps one-day rock-stars like Lars won't have huge mansions with swimming pools and they'll earn what I earn, and live like I live. And that will be the day that I will say copying music is morally wrong.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
love says that unlike books, the music industry wasn't always tied to distributed media. it wasn't dead then and doesn't have to be in the future. i think the glamour was always part of the performance of music, not the record contracts. i'm in a modest band and have friends in slightly more successful punk bands around pittsburgh... they hardly rake in the dough, but still get by, and with enough booze/sex/id to satisfy your American Dream.
just because people are making 300 people scream at a local club instead of 3000 or 30000 at some massively promoted venue, does that mean rock stardom is dead? and didn't we figure out yet that when people start getting more limos, cocain, and fly company than they can possibly need, they just stop having that much to say to the rest of us? god, look what happened to Bono, over the years.
just my 2 cents...
Just like jwz said about Linux, its free only if your time is worth nothing.
I used to download a lot of songs(I never could bring myself to download a whole album, something about that just didn't seem right). Lately I've downloaded a lot less - and if I do its purely to sample the music.
There are several very good reasons I gave up downloading MP3.
Finding a song that is encoded at a high-quality rate and that is not purposely screwed up is getting harder to do. Someone out there is purposely seeding P2P networks with "songs" that aren't the real thing, contain 30 second loops played repeatedly, or that have large chunks of blank space.
The value of the time I would spend downloading a whole album of high-quality MP3 and burning it to CD would pay for a new CD a few times over.
I'm one of those people who can tell the difference between CD audio and MP3. I have a portable MP3 player, but generally I listen to CD's.
Also, I've been a musician for many years and have long supported my favorite musicians and groups by buying their products and going to see their shows. You are mistaken when you say famous musicians will earn less - if anything broader distribution and "airplay" will make them earn more. Also, in reply to those who think bands earn money by playing live - very few of them do. Most bands tour to sell more CD's.
There's nothing wrong with downloading something to try it out or to have technology to make backup copies of your media and to convert it into different forms. But to say its free is just plain wrong. If you listen to the same MP3s over and over again and you never support the band, and its against the bands wishes for you to do so - you're a thief, plain and simple. What gives you the right to take someone's blood sweat and tears and call it free? Only the right you gave yourself by grabbing without considering the wishes of the creator.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
for most musicans and bands out there trying to make a living. Rather than huge advances, you'll see more people receive just what is needed to get the recording done, and some smaller promotion. If it takes off, the artist recoups faster, and then begins to get royalties.
On the other hand, I've been told by many artists "Get as much as you can upfront, because you'll never see another cent from the labels". I've heard that from too many not to believe it.
That guy...
As things stand, most acts (big name and otherwise) don't get paid much / anything for CD sales (Dixie Chicks and Courtney Love have both made this claim pretty loudly). Basically, they make money off of the concert tours and t-shirts / lunchboxes (which they also don't get a huge share of but that's another story).
Now if they could just do something about Ticketmaster and the toilet "facilities" at most concerts we'd all be a little better off.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Concerts nowadays are multi-media shows. The big bands used to travel with a ton of sheet music (literally). Now the performers(?) are preformed, travelling with a ton of canned sound and canned video. There's no way you can tell what's real at a big rock/gospel/country concert nowadays, if anything. Rock stars are getting paid for doing something about as much as Bud Selig is getting paid to be a baseball commissioner.
Trying to assert gatekeeper control over the technology industry that gives them they tools they us to do their jobs. I know MPAA and RIAA are crying "tough times", but I don't see them bleeding employees the way the tech sector is. (I suspect they're bleeding artists, but I also suspect that they don't consider most artists to be people, let alone employees.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone." Regardless of how music is distributed, rather it be by record labels or by bootlegged mp3's, the music and its makers will still be influencial on other people. If you have a CD or if you have mp3's, that doesnt change your mind on what you think of an artist or if you'd like to see them play live.
she scares the shit outa me.
..for every insert your favorite author here, there's ten thousand who, by some grace of Linus, manage to sucker a publisher into publishing their book. You know what they end up selling? A thousand copies, if they're lucky. You know what they make in royalties? The advance (against royalties) tends to be more (And in the whopping $1-5k range)..
For every book that's published by these people, there's hundreds of rejection letters.
The music industry and writing are actually quite similar. The main difference is, there's more respectable publishers than respectable recording studios/album-pushing-places.
In the end, unless you're one of the few masters who spring up in any given century, or you're picked up on a sob story that the publishers can market, you're screwed. You don't make a living off of writing without years chock full of Ramen and being bitched at by your landlord because you haven't paid the rent in three months. It's a lot like any group of musicians who's striking it out and trying to sell albums. They can't do it either without some random act of profiteering by a corporation.
There's an alternative, of course. Release your stuff over the internet. Ah, but there's the legitimacy problem. Musicians with discs pumped out by Vivendi snicker at those who are selling mp3s. Writers with books on shelves snicker at people who publish online.
Perhaps rightfully so. They've gone through hell to get to that point.
Want to change things? Support bands that release online. Support writers who release online.
'nuff said, man. Up the irons!!
The guy who put my toaster together created something of value, but I don't have to pay him every time I make a bagel.
But how many of those bands are using their mass appeal in an earlier era to extend their concert sales? U2, Elton John, Billy Joel, Madonna, Aerosmith, Janet Jackson, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Buffet, James Taylor. I think Wolff is describing an era that will exist after our facination with nostalgia ends.
John Susek
Funny the article talked so much about rock and roll. The rest of the world had a huge boom in electronic music (especially, but not exclusive, dance) starting more than a decade go.
I moved to the US a couple years ago and was surprised at how the entire country basically missed out. All because MTV - and in turn, the record companies - couldn't figure out what to do with it. (Apart from a brief fling with the bigbeat of The Prodigy and The Chemical Bros.)
America has so much inertia, and corporations have such tight loop between "underground" and "mainstream" that there's not much room for true innovation in its culture.
I'm sure I won't get modded very high for this, and probably because a lot of the American tech-savvy folk who read this aren't into electronic dance music. If you're one of them - ask why! Electronic music is all about pushing the technology of music, and having the most innovative, new sounds. In the rest of the world, electronic music is especially the domain of tech-savvy folk... in the US I think their tastes are just too well-controlled by a slow-moving, non-innovative music industry.
Look at the popularity of such shops as B&N, Amazon, and, for all of you in the Portland Oregon area, Powells (geek book paradise!)
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
As the ability to copy, distribute, and consume art increases, the only value left will be in the types of art which are live. We already see this today. Who cares about the Mona Lisa, we all have seen pretty damn good pictures of it, who wants to own one? Who wants to put one up on their wall, who cares. Well, now If said Mona Lisa comes into town and is touring the local Art Museum here in Los Angeles. I'll be the first in line to pay the $30 bucks to go and see it. Classical music is the same way. My parents own one or two CD's of classical music (and perhaps 40 - 50 LP's) but they go every other weekend to see live concerts in the park, at the local Colleges and universities or whatever. They also attend the local plays. Screw Television, Screw the movies. It's the live performances of art which will only have value. Ted Tschopp www.tolkienonline.com
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
As far as I can tell, the making of stars is a complex affair that not only depends on promotions, but also controls and circumstances. Back in the 30's and 40's, the production companies owned and promoted the stars. For the most part, people went to see movies to see the stars. Today, even though we have movie stars, people also look at the plot and content of a movie. This change was not caused by any single factor, but rather by a general change in business practices.
Of course, the music business is like this now. People generally get hooked to a particular artist. The artists can command large sums of money because the artist will be able to pass off crap music at a profit. This may or may not continue in the future. The thing that complicates matter is that good local music is relatively cheap.
The book industry still depends on stars for the avid reader. However, because people will tend to watch a movie or listen to music for entertainment, the large market is in is in simple educational and devotional books. This leads to the chicken soup and dummy books, in which an editor can create books of uniform simplicity and content, while minimizing the payment to authors. The book is then consistently market to the public. Though this has some similarities to movies and books, I do not knoe if either of these can get generic enough to totally cut our the human factor.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Trying to keep copyrighting and growing rich off music, is like trying to exploit and copyright mathematics. It's said the two universal languages are math and music. Math is free to all, so why not music? As a musician myself, I find the whole concept of trying to get rich off my music rather vulgar (though strangely appealing). The electronic scene (Detroit style techno, and the like, not the crappy commercial Europop) has it right with the idea of "Keeping It Underground". Stick with it for the enjoyment, not the all mighty dollar.
The book industry is the new music biz ?
I've always believed that the future of music was in Live music, i.e. performers must play to get paid.
Or to phrase it an other way: In the future, the composer of music will have very little ability to get paid.
If the composer is also the performer, he will get paid, but only in his capacity as performer, not composer.
the future lies in performers doing actual work
Obviously, composing music is actual and difficult work, requiring talent, training and considerable effort.
Yeah, the popular author has gone the way of the dodo. Now we have small time book authors like Grisham and King and Rowling and Hubbard and Clancy and Clancy and
How many people recognized Tom Clancey's name on the poll, how many people have read Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke? Lets not forget LOTR and Harry Potter. Although the stars arn't as big in the book industry the discrepency between the top and the bottom is roughly the same. In the future the sales might not be there for the big artists due to file sharing but music will still be as popular. The reason why books have lost their popularity is that they're a form of primary/active(?) entertainment, when you are reading you cannot do another activity. You cannot read and drive, work, jog, socialize, or anything else. The only time people read was sitting around at home and now TV has taken that niche. The fact is that people will always listen to music because it doesn't take effort and there is nothing else to take its place (so far). Rock stars and most of the perks associated will always be around because music will always be around.
I stole this Sig
The music industry is overcharging for what should be an almost free commodity. People are reacting by "pirating" music on the web. The problem isn't that the music is overpriced, but that the supply of music is too plentiful to justify the high prices. What is needed is a music "Farm Bill". Get congress to pass a law to pay musicians NOT to produce music. When the supply of music is reduced to levels where $18 per CD is justified, then piracy will cease because $18 will seem like a fair price to music-starved consumers. Agribusiness learned this lesson decades ago.
At least we will still be able to download the indy stuff for free from the internet.
When will these music people get it. Until they acknowledge that the only way to get heard is by putting all your stuff out for free, no one will get those multi-million releases.
Advertise all you want, until you give it away for free in this digital age, no one will listen.
Many /.ers have said that technology is either going to hurt current business models, make them available to more people, or make artists rely more on live performances than any tech/recording based business. But after all this talk about business models, can't technology make the actual art of music better?
Think of broadband. Right now it's used mainly for copying files and playing violent games. But imagine if it was used for music: Just as you can assemble a team of players online to go shoot up other teams, you could assemble a team of singers or instrument players. Once telephony goes CD-quality and grows from one-on-one chat to many-to-many chat, it could be used as a way of singing!
There's also surround sound. Dolby is working on surround sound through headphones. Imagine putting a tilt sensor on your headphones so you could turn your head at any angle and the sound would seem to stay in place, rather than follow your head as it does with current headphones. This would require music to be stored in a MIDI- or MOD-like format with XYZ tags rather than as a waveform recording, but it would allow a lot of flexibility and interactivity. This could soon be used in games; imagine if it was used in the creation and listening of music.
These are just two examples I can think of off the top of my head. You can probably think of much more enticing ways. But the main idea is that while everybody is talking about how technology affects the distribution process, the most important thing, in the long run, is how it'll enhance the actual art of music.
After all, what was rock and roll before the electric guitar?
Crack Smoker!
This guy is a dink that is so out of touch with reality. Music will never become the book industry. the Music industry has been around longer than the book industry, granted the book industry created portable take home versions of it's products before the Music did, but long before printing presses there were concerts and street musicians, and amongst those there were to greats just like today amongst all the bar bands there are the greats (and those that have been shoved into our intra-vienis music drip by corporations, i.e. britney, insynk, etc). No the music industry will never become like the book industry for the people need their superheroes/rockstars to lookup to and insipre them to craw up from their pathedic lives and better themselves. The music industry has just become bloated with corporate rock. cut out the fat and you'll see the that the music industry is still live and kicking, just as it alwasy was.
The link between books and music is confusing to me, and it doesn't seem like the author follows the logic. He opens and ends the article stating that musicians will become as modern authors, then moves on to say that the music industry is facing shrinking profits with the technological changes. Huh?
I agree with both ideas. Today's titans of culture will become yesterday's classics of culture, and the music industry will surely figure out more novel and brutal ways to lose money. But how is this related?
Most famous authors were not particularly rich, to my knowledge, unless they came from money or were complete and utter superstars (Lord Byron is an example of both). Faulkner, Poe, Keats, and most other authors you can think of did not die with a lot of money in their pockets from their works, even though they are remembered as literary giants today. Then there are those who are not discovered until after their death, such as Blake and Kafka, who really did not make money off of their writings.
And then there's the idea that music replaced books as the driving force of popular culture. I would grant that only in part, but I would also say film and TV took equal parts of that massive share once held by books (and religion). Besides that, books still drive an incredible portion of culture. If you don't believe me, think about the sheer number of movies that are based off of books while you drive down to your local Barnes and Noble or Borders book superstore.
The thing that really bothered me about the article though, was that the author does not present anything to take the place of music as a dominant cultural mover. There will be some cultural form to replace music if it truly falls by the wayside, but until something actually comes forward to replace it, music isn't really going anywhere. The industry will change, as the article asserts, but musicians will not become mediocritized until something else comes forward. Given that internet distribution is making artists more popular than they likely would have ever been (watch TRL for evidence) I find it doubtful that music will lose its cultural power with the advent of the internet. If anything, it'll be strengthened.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This relates to the article in that it shows what the blame SHOULD have been placed on when these companies were crying piracy and how it could (and still can) stop it. It also provides a solution.
First of all, in terms of stopping the piracy of content, why in gods name do all of these companies throw their money away on DRM, SSSCA, etc? ATTACK THE PIRATE GROUPS! When DoD (drink or die) got busted, THE ENTIRE SCENE shut down for 3 entire days. NOT ONE THING WAS RELEASED. EVERYONE WAS TERRIFIED. Many NFOs (informational files inccluded with pirated releases) said things along the lines of "we enjoy doing what we do, but not enough to get busted for it". And DoD was a bullshit group that had one major release... windows 95.
Whats the point? 99% of ALL copyright-infringed material online comes from one of these piracy groups. Attacking Napster \ KaZaa, etc is treating the symptoms, not the problem. Kill the piracy groups (some of which such as Razor and Fairlight) and widespread piracy of new content (not already released things) will virtually come to a halt.
Second note: I propose the following: $19.95 a month for acccess to a MAJOR record labels ENTIRE catalog in mp3 format. Dedicated connections, instant downloads, no searching, etc. Why is this better than the free Napster \ KaZaa \ etc?
A: ads galore.
B: I'm sure there are many people out there that would be willing to pay for a service with ZERO searching and fast downloads
C: Record companies get the full price of a CD from a wide userbase every single month. No more peaks \ valleys because you have nothing new out recently.
D: Exposing more people to more artists. You can do cheap but effective A&R jobs via "if you like this artist..." links and get more people who always like hearing new music to search within your roster.
Even if you charge 50 cents or so per track, I think that is definately worth the price for a single song that costs a label relatively nothing to distribute, and all it is is more money to the label.
Finally, what about your ccontent finding its way onto free file tradign services?
YOU STILL HAVE TO SEARCH!! In addition, your catalog is updated much faster than the free services (unless your material is stolen and released early, but thats another issue) so users will get things when they want them as soon as its availble.
Business should cchase customers, not profit. Give the customer what they want, and profit will follow. In the music industry, it seems as if the buisness wont give the consumer what they want, they will just go and take it.
Sorry for the long post.. comments?
This works for me. Can we start with *NSync and the Backstreet Boys? It may mean higher taxes and less dollars for homeland security, but it'd be worth it.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
No, it is copyright violation. That's been discussed here many times before. If I steal the CD from a record store, I've committed theft. If I copy a CD or download an MP3, it's copyright violation. You might call it semantics, but it's a big difference.
Either you understand the basic tenants and contracts that maintain this thing we call society, or you believe that it's all some anarchy held together by the strings of technology.
You attempt to define this as a legal and social issue. It is not. It's technology and the free market.
In 1900, musicians made and played music live. That was it. Some made money, some didn't, but that's the way it was.
Technology came along and provided a way for both the artists and their distributors (recording industry) to make even more money by recording the music and selling it.
Now, in 2002, technology has come along and obsoleted the previous technology returning musicians to the legal and practical situation they had in the year 1900.
Technology giveth, technology taketh away.
Here's the problem: the entertainment industry is extremely rich, and politically powerful. They won't go down without a fight. In case anybody hasn't noticed, the U.S. political system is still dominated by big business, through various mechanisms, such as a system of legalized bribery based on political contributions to the two ruling parties. So while they entertainment corporations are postponing the inevitable, they'll fight a rear-guard action that will make the law even worse than it is now. IP law will become even more unbalanced in favor of IP owners. Hardware copy protection will continue to be written into federal law, possibly with the eventual result of making free operating systems illegal. It's not going to be pretty.
Find free books.
J. K. Rowlings personally earned roughly 1 Billion US dollars from the sale of her Harry Potter books.
Note - that is not revenue - but profit for the author. If that's not rock star enough for you - I don't know who is.
Since I'm not a mod all I can do is chime in and agree with you. I really have nothing to add to that, but I want to thank you for saying it and agree with you.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
I am a big listener to a band by the name of KMFDM. They are not huge by any means, but I'm sure many of you have heard of them.
I have seen many bands in concert, however I have never seen KMFDM live.
What did I do next?
Did I wait for the radio to tell me when they were coming to town? No, I'd still be waiting.
I grabbed a local free magazine (I assume most major cities have this things), called "The City Paper." They have a listing for all the happenings at local clubs including live bands. I did not see a listing for KMFDM in the near future.
So I went and tracked down their website. And lone behold they are coming to my home town June 23rd.
I then ran down to the local club and bought a ticket for $17.
How hard was that? I have never heard this band played on the radio, and yet I still discovered them, as well as when they were coming to play live in my home city.
I for one don't honestly care if the music crashes, burns and dies a slow and painful death. I will still be able to come accross new and interesting bands.
No matter what the shit will sink to the bottom and the cream will find a way to the top. It doesn't matter if we have radio, internet, or print to advertise. Simple word of mouth goes along way.
The sad thing is that it's their own fault. It doesn't have to be this way. If they would just stop fighting the customer they might find that the customers don't have some deep seated desire to deprive them of money. They just want to be treated as human beings. Apparently that's too much to ask, so the music industry is getting what it deserves.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
Simplest way to make sure you get the music you're looking for: Search for one song in the album. Attempt to download this song from 4 or 5 different people, simultaneously. Play each one. If one of them is the song you're looking for, browse that person's shared files list - chances are, the rest of the files they're sharing will also be good, and if they've got the whole CD, you win!
The corrolary of this, of course, is that it is now your responsibility (if you care) to make yours available for sharing, as well, to increase the signal-to-noise ratio.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Books aren't quite dead yet, but they will be: eventually there will be a decent way to read books on a portable device, and books will be "free" as well. What will authors do - charge for signings and readings?
And don't forget movies, and TV: they'll follow soon. Why will they somehow be immune to the same forces that made music free? It's a little better there, 'cause you can embed ads in movies in a way you can't with music or text, but production companies won't be able to pay $10M for a star, and they'll be animated anyway.
If your industry only has a few decades in the sun, you should monopolize everything and screw everyone over, including your customer. After that, there is no more *big* money to be made, so you can quit and go home rich.
Indeed, i'd say that perhaps its the learning to lissen to consumers which will kill the industry. Specifically, once there are real alternatives, the consumers will have a voice, and there will be no more big money to be made. Needless to say, this is a very very good thing, unlessyou happen to be a record company executive.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
... who's been listening since the mid '60s, I have to say you're right. America has missed the boat. I started getting into the pioneers of electronic music in the mid-70s - for awhile, there didn't seem to be much going on except synth pop bands in the 80s, but then I started hearing in the early 90s that electronic music was taking over the European scene and had to find out what was going on. Since then, most of the CDs I buy are electronic acts. Meanwhile, the "underground" music in the USA seems to be NuMetal, which for the most part, stinks. Oddly enough, I like today's pop music better than that, but prefer what's going on in Europe.
...
There's still life left in rock and roll, but the cutting edge stuff is electronic or electronic influenced. As a musician, I decided to learn my computer as a musical instrument rather than stay in the past
> After all, what was rock and roll before the
> electric guitar?
They say it was the delta blues, especially that from Robert Johnson and his buddies. The music did not actually change that much; it became a lot easier to perform it in large live venues. What was truly created by technology is the Rock Concert.
Line of thinking:
... have the skill of writing: highly recognizable and obviously not something everybody can do...
... have the skill of making music: highly recognizable and obviously not something everybody can do...
... MS!
Book Authors
Musicians
So what else can be very popular (and useful even!) that huge scads of people can be excited about?
In the absence of other rock stars, just maybe you and I might be the next Heroes of the people!
...
Oh jeez! I just realized that computer geeks already have an Evil Industry Controller
Nice dream there for a minute.
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
I'm not sure you get it. ive seen this type of stuff before. when i worked at my last job my employers used to seed the yahoo stock message boards with counter opinions, this is probably the same tactic. something as blatantly obvious as that would not be overlooked, if anything these posts are from music industry execs themselves in desperate attempts to change the opinions of the weakminded amongst us. theyre just like sexually frustrated geeks angry when they cant get laid. theyre pathetic really. They are thugs and this is the only thing they can do. lol
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
he has a greater more diverse taste in music than anyone i have ever known and it is the direct result of napster and all its successors. he has essentially abandoned traditional music venues and has bizarre mix cds containing everything from trance, to perry como, to jefferson airplane, to 80s hits to old country western music. he must have music from every decade for the last 100 years in his mixes. this is the ultimate fear of the music industry, the internet amplifies your interests and specializes each person. my brother will likely never enjoy corporate fed music again and this scares them to death.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
... when will someone make a song called "Napster killed the Music-biz star"? :-)
:-)
... ok, writer-stars are no more, rock-stars are no more ... what's next? Programming/Computer stars? It's not that stupid if you think a bit about it, in fact :-)
Hey, it feels quite good being able to tell my grandsons (whenever I have them) something like "Yes, I knew Napster, and I can tell you what was the music business before it"
And besides
My weblog in spanish
If this is true, then there will be a rise in the popularity of the small label/radio station/local seller. You'll listen to artists from the same label that publishes your favourite artists. You'll listen to the radio stations that your friends recommend, visit the local music store where you like the owners taste in music, or at least listen to his views.
There will be less "big money" music (fleetwood mac spending 2 years, and millions of dollars in the studio, etc). Smaller artists will not have the funding for huge production efforts. Quality will be less - if they're only selling tens of thousands of copies, every penny has to be counted. Forget a real piano - use a synth. Arrange brass and strings too costly - use a synth. I'm listening to Van Morrison just now, beautifully produced, but I wonder how much it cost for the studio, engineers, musicians, etc. Even the big bands may have to cut back. Some big bands may put their hands in their own pockets or fund from live performances, but not all will be willing or able to do this.
Enjoy the quality of today's music, this may be a golden age for popular music
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
how many business have embraced the use of the internet as an essential way of doing business? how many have double or even tripled in size since they found a way to use the internet for their business? it's the same old story, i know, but the music business hasn't done shit to embrace the use of the internet, this is something they should have done 5-6 years ago, along with every other business, yet they still haven't figured it out yet today. In order to be succesful in business you have to give the consumers what they want, what we want is a cheap library of music as an alternative to the marketing promotion we call radio. Especially for those of us in nebraska, it's either hits from 10,20, or 30 years ago or what record companies decide that we have to listen to(and gradually accept as their is no other choice it is nebraska) so people like me get on the internet and get all kinds of music we had always wanted(but couldn't afford to pay $15+ for, if we could find it). I bet in 10-20 years it will help out with the diversity of acts as they all have grown up listening to all different styles of music due to the use of the internet. Either wise up or get the fuck out of town, we won't use you anymore. First internet promoter/ad person here for you, it's so easy, i'm amazed you haven't figured it out yet(i've got tons of ideas, which I would love to share, but I've ranted enough in one paragraph already)
Well that depends, do you buy a new toaster every time you want to make toast? You don't have to pay every time you stick an old CD into your stereo or an old game into your PC/console.
If you want a new toaster or a new record though, you've got to pay. If you're buying the same media ten times in a row then I think there's something wrong with you, not with the industry.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Incidentally, the article author, Michael Wolff, wrote a book called Burn Rate , the story of his ride on the internet IPO rollercoaster. Good read. I used to recommend it to friends who were joining their first .com company.
I think the replacement for Music Stars will be Blog artists. No, really, I'm not kidding!
Games won't work - people want to look up to other people.
Yet today's variety of media (video, audio, texts, picts, interactive stuff) make Artists that self-limit themselves to only one media (audio) looking kinda strange.
But don't think of these future artists as your average blog - the most important ingredient in becoming a cultural icon is that he/she has a mission.
Well, just my 2c
I noticed a few French tunes I heard sounded familiar... it was an English pop song dubbed into French (by some middle-aged sounding man)!
Where are the modern versions of France Gall etc. ?
That's almost as bad as Germans dubbing pr0n films (like "aah, ooh" really needs to be translated from young czech voice into middle-aged german voice!). The French don't need to do that since they make their own pr0n ;-)
Now, they're lucky if I pick up that many new cd's in a year (and most of those are soundtracks). Once radio stopped playing progressive music (other than community radio) I stopped paying attention. It totally pisses me off that the local "Classic Rock" station can promo the new Stone's tour but they haven't played a new Stones album since 1989. Go figure. 'ClearChannel' won't let them.
I support small touring groups now that haven't made it big and probably never will. Who cares?! I have their music, they have my cash, and it's real interesting sitting down these folk and having a beer between sets. Doesn't get much better than that.
I drank what? -- Socrates
So when the dot-com industry has to work harder for it's $$$, we just have to buck up and deal, but when it's the music industry, they get to whine like a bunch of sissies...
Even though there WILL be more musicians because of falling entry barriers, I believe that the most famous musicians will earn MORE.
You have to look at what can't be made into a commodity. Personal appearances (not concerts), TV and radio commercials, product endorsements, etc. will become more important as time goes on. Sure some musicians will sign bad deals, but there will be those who will be savvy enough to get filthy rich off of this by turning their careers into sustained media events and wisely investing their earnings.
The distribution of recorded music will become a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
Likewise the literary equivalent of the Beatles are books like Catcher in the Rye.
The literary equivalent of the Beatles is Danielle Steele.
The problem I have is paying for unused / unusable storage space. I wouldn't have minded buying the two singles for a couple of bucks. I buy books online but I still use a brick and mortar bookstore. Stop producing whole albums. Do a good song, release, do another. Use better than CD Quality (SACD quality). Acknowledge that I will rip it for traveling and burn it for compilations for my home. Understand the more convient it is (and sometimes stores are better than downloading) the more I will buy.
Music is becoming less of an impulse buy everyday. I look at an album that has a couple of good songs and have to go check online if it is copyprotected or not. If it is, no buy, can't risk the computer now can I.
I buy FreeBSD / OpenBSD disks after all.
To further support this post, I would like to say that music holds a niche in the younger population that books don't. During those young years of raging hormones and the peak of 'ankst & woe' music holds a special sway over you that for most people doesn't hold as you grow up.
I'm not saying that the younger population likes music more, but they certainly are hooked into emtionally driven music much easier, and this is a hook that doesn't relate back to books or movies. "The sound track of my life" can be shared much easier than "I read this book that I so relate too".
I perhaps am broadly generalizing, I'll take this back a step and say I was that ankst & woe child, hooked on bands that emtional punch, like NIN, Metallica, Ani Difranco, Rage against the Machine, The Cure. I like all these artists still, they are in my music line up, but as a teenage these groups/artists meant MUCH more, and I listened to them on a much higher frequency.
Music allows you to be drawn in over and over in a way that books or movies don't. The 'cultural' power of having something beat into you during much of your waking hours is nontrivial.
So, I support the above posts statement that this is an apples and oranges coorilation. The comment that the future could hold less money for more artists maybe true, but like books, music has become easier to record and distribute. THIS is where I see them as alike. Not as a cultural, youth, drugs, hookers, type thing.
His facts are wrong. The musicians he listed all came along earlier and, as others noted, the 17th century was replete with authors.
The parent is an obvious troll (at least I hope so). My beef isn't with him. It is with the asswipe who modded him up.
Not me. The simple fact of the matter is that record companies have been forcing their crappy music down our throats for years now. Between MTV, VH1, and the radio conglomerates, music companies have had a strangle hold on the music industry for decades now. They pick the bands they want to sell, put them on TV and radio, and wait for the public to buy as many CD's as they can. This isn't what one calls a healthy industry, and it's an abuse of the airwaves as well. With Peer to Peer programs so widely spread, people no longer need to buy albums, they can get them for free. And while technically it might be stealing, there sure as hell is nothing wrong with stealing from the music industry. The truly exciting thing about digital media and Peer to Peer networks is that all an independant musician needs to do is digitally record (or convert) his/her music, send mp3's to friends, family, etc. . . and make sure that their music gets out on Peer to Peer networks. If people truly enjoy music, they will purchase CD's. I've personally got gigs upon gigs of music, but I still buy CD's of bands I like and want to support. Hopefully, we're witnessing the fall of the music industry and the rise of the independent muscian. But knowing our capitalist system, more likely than not, laws will be made before such a thing happens.
--What, you ain't know about them country fried sessions?
So, the music industry is succumbing to the inevitable. It's not really a big deal - music will still be made, and musicians will still be able to make money by performing live.
The bigger issue is that the same things that made the music industry unprofitable are already starting to make the TV and Video industries unprofitable. Ad-skipping PVRs are gutting television's revenue stream as fast as they are sold, and file-sharing is slowly making inroads on any recorded video. But unlike music, there is no "live performance" option, local content is largely irrelevant, and real costs are much higher.
The situation for the withered book and publishing industry is even more dire. The inavailability of a screen comfortable to read off of is all that stands between it and its total collapse.
The point is this - the notoriously rotten music industry may be down for now, but they are not alone in their troubles. Their ultimate fate will not be sealed until the greater "content" industry either gains control over the distribution of their works once and for all, or loses it entirely and is reduced to patronage and selling their content at costs comparable to copying it yourself.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
"As a result, industry executives estimate that major-label releases must on average sell more than 500,000 copies just to break even. Of the 6,455 new albums distributed in the U.S. by major labels, only 112 have sold that many, according to SoundScan, which monitors music sales. Overall music sales were down 5% last year-the steepest decline in decades."
I may just be a simple caveman and not understand the neo-liberal virtual globalization of economics, but that seems like a poor investment strategy.
So let me see if I have this straight. The B2C market would convert to pay-per-play(live), meaning the performers would get paid for actual work/performance, whereas the B2B market would continue with the make-money-sitting-on-my-ass method.
I'd say that's fair. The B2C market is roughly a few-to-many market, so pay-per-play is viable, whereas the B2B market (in this case, composers to performers) is a few-to-few market, and composing takes a hell of a lot longer than performing, so those two factors combined justify keeping the make-money-sitting-on-my-ass system for composers.
Any one else's take on this?
I suggest to you that the "service" provided to you when you download a song is twofold:
1) that the song was recorded in the first place. that way you get to hear it.
2) you enjoy the song when you listen to it.
You do enjoy listening to the song, right? I mean, that's why you downloaded it, isn't it? For me, I find value in paying for a recording once, so that I can listen to it many many many times. That's better than having to pay every single time I want to hear it.
Blunt version: they recorded it once, you can pay for it once.
Record labels have horribly skewed what's paid to the artist which is why I would much rather pay the artist directly than go through the label system. But if the artist decides to go that route, who am I to say, "well, I disagree morally with your decision to use a label and get cheated out of good money, therefore I'm just going to download your music so you get nothing at all" ?
Or do you regularly donate money directly to the artists whose music you download? If you are not giving them anything and you are enjoying their music then you are getting something for nothing.
However, I do agree with one thing in this thread. Live music rocks! Anyone worth their weight in anything can pull off a good live show. And there's little better in the realm of music than seeing a great concert. Hell, there might not be anything better than a great live show.
But to say a recording is worth nothing is going a little far. And besides, I can think of a few bands that I really like who I'll probably never get to see live. Should I just enjoy their music without rewarding them?
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
And what happens when the band you want to hear doesn't come around where you live? I can't recall the last time Radiohead came anywhere near where I live. Oh wait, yes I can. It was never.
And my budget doesn't quite support flying to the UK to see them perform. So, given that seeing them live is pretty much out of the question, I'd say that the number of times I have listened to their CDs far outweighs what I spent buying them.
And, I guess I am just cynical, but I don't think the majority of people local to me are going to be making music of interest. I guess I just don't buy that there is a high quantity of quality musicians lying about.
You could say I would rather listen to recordings of stuff I like than go see some crappy local band play live.
Further, touring takes a lot out of you. And I mean a lot. People cannot simply tour constantly - it's not healthy. So what should they do to make money while recovering from the tour? Should they get another job? That might leave them with precious little time to write new songs to go out and play on tour.
Thank God that Rush leave Canada when they tour. Can't wait to see them this time around.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
The thing people haven't addressed is that there is way too much music for the average consumer to sort through to find out what he/she likes.
In effect all the marketing is what differentiates music. People ignore the stuff that isn't being talked about and isn't being marketed, on the assumption that people talk about the best stuff and the most marketed stuff is the stuff that people buy the most and is therefore also the good stuff. Taken to it's extreme you get top 40 all the time which isn't a good thing. But the fact remains that in the music era there will need to be some method for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Interesting opportunity for sites like mp3.com to fill this role.
Also how much of the top40 phenomenon is the fault of the record companies and how much is it the consumer that wants to hear familiar things? If something is good because it's familiar, marketing makes things good. Interesting thought.
The music industry will never go the way of the book industry. for one simple reason...it takes no brains or intelligence to listen to music. Books need time, lots of it. time that cannot be shared with most activities in life...the book industry fell to where it is now cause of the baby boom. people needed to work more and more to take care of all the children..so books were replaced by music. where ever u are u can always listen to music..almost always i mean. in your car...at work..at home..where ever u can think of u can probably listen to music. books dont have that luxury. thats why there are only a handful of "superstar" writers, becuase people know if they get that writer's book they know their time will probably not be wasted. why do u think a crap load of poetry and prose writers switched from writting to making music in the 50's and 60's they knew they could get their works across in that format easily and not be left behind in the book industry's decline. the only thing that has potential to do what MICHAEL WOLFF thinks is happening is the indie labels...but that will never happen. u may hate all those new bands on major labels...but remember this all those bands u loved for yester years...were mostly on major labels...so u cant hide for major labels for ever.
>>...performers must play to get paid.
There's a radical idea. Getting paid for doing something. Rather than getting paid to do nothing.
The Beatles' last concert (aside from the rooftop thing) was in August 1966- would you claim that for the rest of their career, Sgt. Pepper's through Abbey Road, they "did nothing"?
More generally, discussions of how musicians will earn a living when it is no longer possible to charge much (if anything) for recorded music tend to assume that all artists worth considering work in something like a traditional rock band format: songwriter/performers whose music is easily reproduced live by a small group of musicians.
This ignores a lot of good music, from "I Am the Walrus" to Brian Eno to Squarepusher, that is either impossible or just not very entertaining to reproduce live. It also raises questions about how nonperforming songwriters/composers/producers will get paid.