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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.'"
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)
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
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.
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?
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.
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
Yeah, there are. About twenty or thiry of them. Everyone else sells dick.
The thing the author has missed is the trend in the publishing industry, which is moving more like the music industry, trying to aquire strangleholds on authors' works, doing deals with bookstores to charge authors for promotion and shelf space, and a whole bunch of nasty shit they've learned from EMI.
... 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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?
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
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.
lobby congress to protect reasonable profits by establishing a flat license fee. Ultimately the fee would probably be paid by anyone who has an internet account,
Fuck that. I, for one, rarely, if ever, download music. Why should I subsidize the leeches?
If you were talking about _streaming_ content with a
large quota and a fair pricing structure for additional content, then I might buy that. A flat tax (a rose by any other name) would be unfair.
You could counter argue that the proceeds are used to fund grants for artists, but if you think music sucks
now, you'd really see some restrictions on lyrical content.
A flat "fee" scenario also doesn't address independant content producers. You have to have some kind of metering to ensure proper distribution of royalties.
There are no easy solutions to the problem.
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.
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!
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.
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 doubt that the music industry has gotten to the point of admitting it yet, what they need to do is lobby congress to protect reasonable profits by establishing a flat license fee.
Well, there's no reason that they have to stay in business (with or without "reasonable profits")... certainly no reason for the gov't to tax us to ensure it. But hey, the gov't doesn't have to make sense, I suppose.
I really can't see what else they can do. From the technological standpoint, bits copy well.
They can either come up with a viable business model for this century, or they can make way for people who aren't so wedded to the old distribution scheme. Either way, there will continue to be music for people who want to listen to it.
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.
You asked what replaced books in most peoples lives. Here's you answer: Television.
Yep... and computers, too... Games and net activities.
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.
You should want to pay for the leeches so that the industry can collect reasonable profits. Reasonable and statutory pricing means that there is not any need to protect music or other media with encryption, which will ultimately either fail (destroying the entertainment industry in the process), or succeed (destroying the public domain.) Since neither of those is a desirable outcome you should be willing to pony up a small amount to keep that from happening.
Why everyone instead of just music consumers? I admit the tax could be on 'music capable equipment' instead of on ISPs, but what computer isn't capable of rendering music these days? Any attempt to control who gets access to the data just results in the data being copied beyond those constraints, so that doesn't work too well. The only solution I can see that would work is a general levy.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
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.
Most musicians make very little money from records--they get most of their $$$ from playing gigs.
Eh-heh.. Most musicians have day jobs.
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?
The "industry" is, was, and always will be about making money, not music.
Making music has zero barriers to entry.
Tickets for the pop star lotto are expensive.
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.
There will always be superstar musicians because music is one of the fundamental universal human likes.
Superstar musicians are a product of the business end. The scenarios you speak of have a business angle. In the early days of the current form of the business, it was more obvious that criminals were bankrolling a lot of production. At least in hindsight.
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.
she scares the shit outa me.
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
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.
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
While visiting relatives in Germany this summer, much was made of a party we were attending that was to have a real, live, German band. Guess what they played? American oldies. Everyone sang along, even aunts and uncles who didn't speak English. All the music on German MTV was in English (thought the commercials were in German). There were even a few German bands on MTV...who sang in English.
I suspect that this is why the French kicked NATO out a few decades ago...they foresaw the the cultural influence of hundreds of thousands of American youth who were overpaid, oversexed, and over there. I'd be curious to know if France is significantly different in this respect.
And that pisses me of, because I make music, and when I use CDRs, it is to make copys of *my* material, something that in no way belongs to the RIAA.
But the vast majority of that money never makes it to the artists
That is because a RIAA member signed artist will rarely, if ever have *any* right to or ownership of the material they produce while under contract. The album belongs to the label, the song belongs to the label, even the name of the band usually becomes property of the record label. All the artist owns in the most common case is some percentage of the profit on the material they provide. The way things are now, quite literally, the label owns the artist's work, just like MS owns the work of one of their programmers.
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
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?
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.'
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 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.
Actualy the French droped out of the military arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because they (de Gaule) objected to the admission of W. Germany into NATO.
American culture/music/fast food/etc had nothing to do with it.
Funny how often that history degree comes into play on this site (-:
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
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.
Do you want that to exist in the future for the music industry? Do you want your kid or your granduncle thrown in jail or fined thousands of dollars for copying copyrighted music? Do you want to have to produce on demand licenses showing that you are entitled to play the music on your hard drives? I know this is a bit of science fiction, but it has already happened once.
Whether you listen to RIAA music or not (I don't) you have to see that such a world isn't the kind of world that you want to live in. It isn't that hard to change it, the cost really should be minimal. Like any regulated thing it becomes a mercantile fixed sized market. There isn't any growth, so there isn't anything to keep businesses there. They will expand into new markets, just as soon as they don't have to worry about losing their old one.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
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.
It is interesting that you bring up the software analogy, because, as much as it is under my power, I only use Free software. Not because of cost, mind you, but because of the content control issues you bring up, and a conviction that sharing what I have with others, whether someone else is selling the same thing or not, is not wrong. Sadly, I cannot *have* non-free software, even if I pay for it, so I prefer software I can have and therefore give. Back to the issue of music, I do not want to support the music industry as it exists right now, and have no objection to them making it more difficult, even illegal, to listen to the music they own. As the solution to fucked up software licenses is Free software, the solution to fucked up multimedia copy protection is music that is Free (still paid for, but free to copy and sample and listen to in multiple formats). I say this as a composer a performer and a programmer, as well as a computer user and music listener.
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
... 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
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
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.
Well, it's the RIAA's job to put a brave face on things; to strut around making speeches about how they're going to go after file-sharing and recordable CDs with a can of whup-ass and generally acting like it's still 1992.
But if you talk to people who are actually working for record labels, they're scared. Two years of negative growth in a row, with this year looking to be no better. They are still paying the RIAA to push that agenda, but that's mainly because they don't have many other ideas. Every technological and legal attempt they've made so far to address those issues has been beaten. Bluster aside, there are few left in the industry who expect file-sharing and CD-burning to go away just because Hilary Rosen makes a few speeches.
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.
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.
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?
No, I think that the SPA is already as successful as it is ever going to be. And for much the same reasons as are stated in the other follow-up to my previous posting. Moreover I don't think that the music industry would be any more successful than the software industry in this regard.
But success isn't really my point. Sure they'll have declining market share and declining profits if they continue in the same vein; but I don't want to live in a country where that kind of business makes itself at home. It is too scarily close to the Corporate Police State. I can't understand why anyone who so clearly believes in freedom would want to bring about such a dystopian society.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Does free software have a positive work cycle; can it sustain itself, or must it be supported socially in order to continue evolving. It isn't clear that there is any business model for free software which covers the bare costs of development of free software, thus the majority of the costs must be borne by the developers.
How do the developers support themselves? If we were to conclude that social support becomes a necessity for the work cycle to continue then free software would be very much like the system I outlined for social support of music.
Is free software really a solution to the excesses of proprietary software, or is it just the alternative that shows by contrast what those excesses have become? Surely a solution would solve the problem. If by social support of the music industry you become free to copy and share music with your friends, isn't that really a solution to a problem. Free software can't be a solution to a problem if it leaves the old problem intact.
In lieu of a real solution I do agree with you though that Free Software is better than the alternative. Cost issues aside, I like the fact that I can just install the RH7 disk I have sitting in my car into any machine that happens to be on my desk without considering how many licenses I've purchased or whether that key was for my home machine(s) or whatever. It is freedom, and like you I believe that the cost isn't nearly as important as the liberty aspects. But I'm also painfully aware that what I pay in real dollars barely supports the costs of integrating open source software already written into an easy to use distribution. I've wondered if Redhat shouldn't structure itself more like NPR...
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio