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Moby Says Techie Fans = Fewer Sales
jalefkowit writes: "Launch is reporting that Moby explains the recent slide in sales for his newest album, "18", by describing what he calls the 'Pearl Jam Effect': bands and artists with more tech-savvy fans sell fewer albums than those with less tech-savvy fans, as the techies will disproportionately get their copies of the album from friends with CD burners or P2P services rather than from record stores. What do you think, are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?"
Moby is only saying something that's been repeated a million times elsewhere. He's an intelligent enough to address the issue without berating his fans Metallica-style.
I would say this is hard to refute. Indie, geeky, techno, and others in the technophile musical demographic are being copied left and right. Oh course there are huge advanteges to this in terms of exposure, concert attendence, etc. For instance, even before the broadband P2P revolution, back in 1998/1999 Stereolab managed to sell out two good sized Chicago venues. This is a band that never got any local radioplay and never came close to the top40 or top100 record sales.
Shameless copying is a tradition that started with music lovers and has simply been made easier through technology. Moby questions how the industry measures success. That's a very important issue. The genie is out of the bottle, but the industry measures success through outdated methods.
In another way this isn't exactly new. A lot of talented artists who take risks instead of sticking to pop formulas tend to be undervalued and underexposed. At least P2P can fix the latter.
Before tech savvy people had the computer we had the radio and tape cassette.
People could ALWAYS pirate music, yet michael jacksons triller sold 20 million copies, funny how no one decided to pirate him even though it was all over the radio all the damn time and everyone had it and could copy the cassette.
I know, I had one of those dual cassette players, you stick both cassettes into it, play one and record on the other. Funny how when everyone was using cassettes the RIAA didnt complain about sales but now, that they are losing their monopoly, piracy is suddenly a big problem?
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Wow, talk about living in denial. P2P does hurt sales directly. Does that mean that ALL those people would have necessarily bought that album? No, but you have to accept the fact that many/some people would rather download than buy. Moby makes a good point here:
I think its fairly obvious that Moby understands the exposure benefits of P2P, but is trying to point out how success can never just be based on sales alone anymore.
I'm also curious as to the assumption that more sales = better music. We know that the way to make a superstar doesn't start with muscial ability but with marketing, PR, gimmicks, manufactued controversies, bubblegum pop, etc. What Moby is saying, and its been said before, is that sales cannot determine any meaningful information about the artist especially now with P2P and he asserts there's a victim demographic. Arguably, there is a victim demographic. Whether or not exposure, concert sales, and fandom outweigh album sales is the real question.
Umm, have you been listening to the radio recently? Moby's single We Are All Made Of Stars is getting lots of airplay in mainstream radio stations. It's currently #19 on the Billboard Dance/Club list, and the album is at #35 on the Billboard top albums list. I think it's safe to say that Moby has moved into the mainstream.
If you ask me (or him), Moby is not condemning people for burning/filesharing his music. He's just trying to explain that his music is more popular than the record sales give him credit for. From the Launch article:
He's not bitching, he's just musing. Give him some credit.-3Suns
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More examples of this would be the last two albums from Radiohead (Kid A, Amnesiac) as well as The Fragile from Nine Inch Nails. All the die hard fans went out and bought them as soon as they were released, so they would debut at #1 on the Billboard charts, but they had no radio/video airplay to keep them going. Both bands might still be great (and Radiohead is as good as anyone in the world right now), but without a single and a video that's really popular (and I mean higher than #15 on the Modern Rock chart), you won't stay up there for long.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Moby didn't attack anyone in his journal entry. He didn't editorialize. He didn't whine or complain, or moan about lost sales. At no point did Moby even say that he minded this supposed effect. He put forth a reasonable theory with some empirical evidence to back it up, for the sake of discussion. Why is everyone attacking him? He's done nothing wrong. He hasn't even suggested that we've done something wrong. Why is everyone on this board acting like a total asshole, instead of reasonably debating the points that he made? I can't help but notice that very few people have mentioned Weezer at all to this point.