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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.'"
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I don't recall paying a radio tax. Radio stations are either commercial or listener-spnsored.
I don't pay a cable company, because I don't have cable, but if I did, I'd be paying for the service, not the content. That is either commercial or paid by premium to the producer (e.g. HBO).
I pay for my ISP right now. I don't download music. How do you propose that Congress handle this? A tax which is levied on all ISP customers to be given to media "content providers?"
I sincerely hope your message was tongue-in-cheek. Five digit User IDs should not post such stupidity.
IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
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.
They haven't shown any sign whatsoever of 'realizing where they went wrong' yet, despite an every-growing anti-RIAA, anti-music consolidation feeling in the first general population and the media. They still have a chance to salvage their disgusting dominance over music distribution, but I don't see them giving up short term profits for long-term stability. As evidenced by their dogmatic resiliance over pointless, unreasonable fights (file-sharing), the intelligence just isn't there at the highest levels.
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
Again, I disagree. A book is a book. It has content, that content can be anything the author would like, as long as it can be put into words. A music sample is a music sample. No matter how you package it, it's the music that matters. Don't forget, books have cover art too, if you really think that makes a big difference. If you mean Entertainment companies as in AOL/Time-Warner, that's a whole different beast, and it's not at all an apples-to-apples comparison.
Cetainily another advantage is that most people have to have book forced into their pocession, but almost everyone buys music
Certainly in the pre-college-age culture this is sadly the prevailing case (although 'buying' music is debatable in that case). However, maturation often brings with it interesting perks, such as the discovery of good literature (or bad literature, if that's your thing). Again, this is not always the case, but I'd venture a guess that book vs. music purchases go up hugely as age increases.
In any case, just my two cents.
-Exo (too lazy to create an account)
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.
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 ___________________________________
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.
The vast savings digital technologies bring to music production and sales should more than make up for any drop in sales. Music studios not RACING to take advantage of these technologies have only themselves to blame for falling revenues.
I personally look forward to the day when someone can press an album for little more than the cost of their musical instruments, and do the sound engineering/cd burning/mp3 streaming from their home PC. Ditto for film, as digital filmmaking makes visual storytelling cheap, cheap, cheap.
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...
I completely and absolutely agree with you. In fact, during times of my misguided youth I was a fan of the "warez" scene, but lost all interest because the noise to signal ratio was just far too high: I would rather go to the store and spend $50 for the game than spend night after night grabbing incomplete copies with bizarro little errors that strangely made it past all of the error checks, etc. I know friends who tried to get the new Eminem album, only to encounter countless screwed up copies, looped copies, etc.
I have no doubt, whatsoever, that this isn't the act of digital vandals, but rather is a concerted effort by publishers to discourage piracy (and personally I applaud them for a pretty brilliant move, though I'm sure some "GIVE ME EVERYTHING FOR FREE! IT'S MY RIGHT!" weenie will claim that this is a violation of some amendment or other). It's quite a brilliant stroke really: Put servers covertly on all the networks serving up bogus songs (which, because of laziness, will propagate to more and more servers as people download the flawed copy and don't audition and delete it) or bogus warez files (or servers that mysteriously disconnect/freeze at 98%), and you'll build such an inconvenience around it that the $15 price of a CD or $40 for a game becomes quite palatable.
Of course there are technical solutions to piracy legitimacy, but all of them either centralize the data, or require you to explicitly become a part of the criminal process, and things like that are easy to crack by the strong arm of the law. The decentralized, everyone-is-an-equal aspect of the P2P networks is a curse as much as a benefit.
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
"very little ability to get paid" my ass. That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. Most business is not B2C (Business to Consumer) -- a ton of business is B2B (Business to Business). A simple thing will happen, the "preformer" will be unable to "make money" with crappy material, he will barter a deal with the "composer" (probably for a percentage of the take) and they will both be happy. Remember, if either one is crap it doesn't work. The idea that because someone can't sell something directly to the consumer, they can't make money. Hell, I would bet the "composer" would actually be better off, because he can sell his work to multiple artists and better he chances, and can simply choose to "ride the highest wave" once it gets to decision making time.
The role of a composer is an intersting economic problem. The history of the career goes something like this -
1 play your composition and someone feeds you
2 teach your composition to a musician who barters something of value.
3 get room and board from a nobleman who shows off the compositions you make in his care.
4 (where we are now) Own the right to make copies of and perform your composition, an entitlement to earn a certain sum from each person who learns your composition and for each public performance or audio reproduction of it.
Composers, authors, and inventors are in a strange role in a labor economy, they do not simply get a fixed fee for a fixed time spent working or a fixed output. They are granted a reward for each time their work is appreciated (the only economic alternative it seems would be to set a *very* high one time price for the creator's contribution to humanity, if composers are to be rewarded economicly).
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
Pardon my language, but why should I give a shit if the music industry is destroyed? I *do not* buy RIAA member label music. I yell at people and make them turn it off if they try to play it (or anything that sounds like it) in my house. I do not 'consume' music, as you put it. I listen to music. And the music I want to listen to will be as available after the flaming and painful death of the RIAA as it is now. And if you need to know, I have never downloaded music on the internet except from a link on the composer's home page (one of those nice things you can offer to fans if you do not heve a RIAA member label contract).
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
Alright, what the heck, I'll feed the troll.
You'll note that I wrote obnoxiously repetitive.
As such, 'Trance' music, African rhythmic drumming, and such are not included. They aren't obnoxious. Although, to you, it seems it is (you did, after all, quote 'obnoxiously').
And if you think today's youth would appreciate a Bali singer's peculiar intonation system (when compared to Western ideas of intonation), you would be deluded. Hell, most folks today have become so used to hearing music in even-temperment they couldn't imagine the purity of sound available to them if some decent musicians would go to the trouble to use just-intonation. Listening to Eastern music, for today's youth, is inconceivable, with its unique tonal system.
My musical education, since you're trolling, includes some ethomusicology, and damn near a BA in music, with an emphasis on composition. I take music quite seriously, and would like to see the art form grow in this country.
As for dancing to music, I have never been moved enough by so-called 'house' music to feel the desire to dance to it. I have danced (privately, where no-one else could see me <grin>) to music that moves me. I'm probably not a great dancer anyway, and I doubt I could find crowds of people interested in dancing to a 5/4 beat (for example).
As for being 'an aged man clawing at the past', if the present cannot provide music worth listening to, perhaps this is indeed true. However, occasionally, I have managed to find a modern gem or two out there (however, never in the mainstream). Toby Twining has recently released an album that promises to be good (complete with just-intonation, vocal techniques that are non-western, and tone-rows, to name a few interesting techniques), and sometimes I manage to find some really cool stuff amongst the rabble (Chrystal Belle Scrodd comes to mind). None of these artists I've mentioned will be popularized by the mainstream media, although you might find Toby Twining's work in the stores (maybe, if you're lucky.. I was). I do not consider them part of the music 'industry', hence, not a focus of my previous comment.
As for defining 'good' music, admittedly, it's in the ear of the beholder. However, when different artists are all doing damn near exactly the same thing, when the innovation is lost, the music ceases to be 'good' anymore. And without some training in music appreciation, kids will continue to grow up thinking that this drek is wonderful, when there's a wide world of wonderful music waiting for them out of the mainstream.
And so it goes.
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?