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Music Industry's Future Foretold in China?
sapphire writes "An article today in the International Herald Tribune provides a look at music piracy from the point-of-view of pop stars in China. China is a country forced to deal with the reality of unchecked piracy of digital media products. Will their experience lead to new business models for the world-wide recording industry?"
So people can't get rich playing music anymore. I guess they'll have to find another reason to play.
I think that quote sums it up best. They must "look elsewhere to fund the rockstar lifestyle".
I don't fucking pay artists to fund their 'rockstar lifestyle'. I pay them to make music. If they get the intense rich/famous shit going on because they sell loads, well, that's a bonus. If they make enough to live on and keep producing, then they're with the rest of the population.
To me, that keeps what they say in their lyrics all the more relevant to me.
Sorry, but it really gets to me when a "band" only does their stuff for the money.
I know plenty of bands that just thrive to hear a live audience, no, they're not big and they don't have a flash Porsche but they enjoy what they do and get to pay the bills.
All pirating means is that people that expect that when they get into music that their life is sorted and they can go round smashing up hotel rooms and stuff.
Bah! They don't even usually write their own songs.
Where CD's only cost a few bucks instead of $13-15.
If you really look at the article all you really get out of it is that some artists expect to make a few hit songs and be able to live in luxury for the rest of their years off the millions they supposedly make. Whenever I hear artists complain about how they are suffering from the effects of piracy, I just laugh. They are making lots of money doing something they supposedly love to do and they get made when they aren't making millions?
See Courtney Love does the Math.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
What scares me about this though is that from what I know of the Chinese music scene, is it's pretty much all pop garbage. There is very little diversity in mainstream music as compared with what we have in the English speaking music scene. I hate the RIAA with a passion and I'd like to see them die a gruesome death. But I just hope that we don't end up with a music scene that is only fincially viable for boy bands & Britney Spears look alikes.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
You do realize that these "bands that only do their stuff for the money" are just going to work everyday like you or I. I am a professional musician and have played many a gig just to make money, not because I particularly liked the music I was playing. I definitely do not live the "rock-star lifestyle," but not one of us can say that all that money wouldn't be nice. We definitely can't blame these rich artist for enjoying their money. As far as the article goes, it seems like a good idea in general. Musicians get paid for appearances, companies license songs for ad campaigns, and, most importantly, record companies basically act as talent agencies. This is one model that the RIAA could look into. Most of these agencies skim a huge percentage off the top for booking gigs for artists. The record companies could make much more money from this method than their current model, which is probably why they aren't doing it yet. Easier to complain than change.
To be honest I don't listen to pop music at all. It's the auditory equivalent of "My Mother the Car". I am far more interested in music as art - and from what I've seen here China is failing miserably in producing anything that I would want to listen to.
I couldn't give a rat's behind whether or not the latest Devo album cost $2 or $20. But I do care if the music industry and where it is headed is going to make it impossible for me to get a DVD-Audio recording of the works of somebody who actualy making a real contribution music.
The prediction that the music industry is heading towards the current situation in China does not please me at all.
Only the truly mega-super stars are rich. Most other bands are not multi-millionaires. Most are probably still in debt after having 2 "hit" records. The ones that are getting rich are the music company execs. In a true markey economy, it would be the musicians that would be making the money since they can set up a direct marketing system and buy airtime at radio stations, etc. However, the current system is not even close to a true market economy.
The IP shouldn't even be the property of the record companies. Shouldn't the IP reside with the artists who wrote the lyrics and who wrote the melodies? Singers and other musicians, who only play other people's songs, are more like employees than artists. At least the Chinese "system" makes these people work for a living, just like everyone else. Wang Lee Hom, in the article, sounds like he does everything himself from song writing to promotion. He also doesn't seem to be starving, either.
The article itself was basically very pro-RIAA. It would be nice to know how hard is it to "break into" the Chinese system as compared to the already-industry controlled system in the U.S and Europe.
Anthony
And the music just gets worse. There hasn't been much original music released since Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins broke in the early 1990s. It's not because the artists suck. It's because the record companies only invest in sugar-pop acts that are too watered down to be interesting. Is there a band that has artistic ingenuity or a political point? They won't get a contract, because the record company won't take a risk.
I'd pay about a dollar per song for a CD today. If I could find one I was interested in.
The whole music thing is overrated anyway. It's all just entertainment. In the end, you can get too much entertainment.
The big record companies have dug themselves into a deep hole. They're too big to release innovative or strongly artistic acts. They're too large and bulky to move nimbly. The giants are going to fall. Both music and art in general will be better for it.
"In the United States and Europe, stars have it easy if they make a hit record," said Han Hong, named best female artist this year at Channel V's China Music Awards, and whose renditions of Tibetan songs have become nationally popular. "In China, we have to give so many concerts that we do not have time to rest our voices."
Am I supposed to feel sorry? Since when is it news that musicians, for the most part, have always been largely poor? It's those "posers" and "fakes" that somehow strike it rich are now bitching. They've been a part of the "corporate pop" machines for so long that they've forgotten what it meant to be creative in the first place. They've been given songs to sing and now get paid to sing a song that someone else wrote just because teens these days need to hear a new song from the same old cookie-cutter pop star.
Let's get real people. Music is good this way, honestly. We want to be able to choose for ourselves who is and who isn't "in". I'm tired of the radios force-feeding me the same old shit. I want something new, fresh, or maybe not-so fresh. Something raw but honest is way better than a "polished" whore/hottie who can sing. It's about time the fans demanded honesty in a musician's musical expression. After all, music isn't about honesty, it's about one's unique interpretation of a song, genre, or otherwise. Music is about allowing those who truly love it to choose what they love. The musician is the one who must also love music enough to effectively stress how much appreciation he or she has for music. Let us all live well together and with music, we can all continue our sanity.
If you sell your records at $20 a copy, you will not sell a million of them. Anymore. But if you sell your records at $10 a copy, you might. And if you sell them at $5 a copy, it's that much more likely.
So, yes, you can get paid. But in the current economic environment, the substitute goods (Economics 101 terminology) mean that you can't charge monopoly rent for it anymore. That is to say, music downloaders would rather have the convenience of an audio CD than the poor audio quality of MP3, as long as the audio CD isn't priced too high. The current price of 15 to 20 dollars is too high.
As an alternative, put out a mega-album with 2-3 CDs, a big booklet filled with lyrics, photos, art, and interesting notes. Put it all in a quality sleeve/jacket/jewel case. If the music is decent, you could probably charge 35, 40, maybe 50 dollars for it.
The days of easy money for musicians, groupies, executives, and the rest are over. Period. No more cutting a record for five weeks that makes millions. From now on, if you want to be a musician, you're going to have to work for your money.
As for the musicians who still want unlimited money, furs, diamonds, private airplanes, giant mansions, and all the illegal drugs they can inject in their ears, from now on they're going to have to work a lot harder to get all that dough.
The real winner in this will be that art form known as music.
Did you see this line?
As a result, Wu said, there are fewer than 20 professional-quality albums produced per year in China. This lack of large-scale music production inhibits the entry of talented newcomers.
Unbelievable! Granted China is a poor country, but with their population they must have millions of talented musicians. Yet only 20 professional albums are produced per year. I can't think of a sadder commentary on the effects of universal piracy. Let's hope we don't end up in the same state here in the West.
You clearly are not familiar with the laws of your own country. The intellectual property that you speak of... the stuff that's not 'ours'.. it doesn't belong to the artists who created it. Recording is done as a work for hire for one of the few huge corporations that control the flow of music from the artists to the listeners. Those impartial laws you speak of, they weren't concieved by some grassroots movement. No one marched for this shit. The laws were the results of lobying by the RIAA. The politicians we elected to protect our rights sold us out for Sony and Time Warner. Very little, if any of the money made by the average artist comes from royalties. If piracy were to become the accepted standard by which the public obtained their music, artists on average would actually make more money. Why? Because the primary source of their income(concerts/public appearances) would be increased by their increased exposure. Forget about the benefit to the public of not having the recording industry decide for us what is good. Copyright laws serve more to protect the corporate stranglehold than anything else. You seem to be a fan of capitalism, but we've failed to realize one of capitalisms most important goals: promote competition. Don't kid yourself, the RIAA and the MPAA are monopolies. When was the last time you saw a movie in the theater that wasn't produced by a member of the MPAA? When is the last time you heard a song on the radio that wasn't being marketed by a major record label? I say pirate until we have the option of buying from the people who actually made the music.
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That seeming would be wrong. The US was more "socialistic" during the 50's and 60's, and only a tiny drop of China's history could be called "traditionally" communist. China is China more because it's China than because it's Communist.
Music is a calling, not an industry. Thank heavens the record companies are being squeezed out. Now a musician can reach his audience without being shrink-wrapped first.
What can you say? After decades of the abuse of consumers by the RIAA and the record companies production of 'pop' stars, the crows are coming home to roost.
/. knows about karma. I guess RIAA is in for an education.
When they (recording industry) continue to make ever-unreasonable demands on us (the consumers) how much longer do they think we will put up with it? Just like open source, the will of the masses will become reality.
It's sad that in the China example, artists again get the shaft by the recording companies, blamed on 'pirates' (or is that terrorist? I'm no longer certain.)
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