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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.'"
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
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?