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New Online Music Push by EMI
akadruid writes "EMI has signed deals with 20 top European websites to sell its music online.
According to Reuters, 'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'.
This represents a major shift in policy by EMI, who previously went to great lengths to protect their music from copying.
Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"
The idea of that sounds great, but unfortunately in reality, over 95% of bands do not make money touring. I work with tons of small localish bands, and can say here is how the current biz model works for small, medium, and large bands.
Small (i.e. local bands)
1. May break-even on their CD after recording costs. Some even make some decent cash on the CDs if they sell more than 2K of them.
2. Unlikely to get any decent amount of ASCAP/BMI money.
3. Lose money playing out. Lucky to get a beer for a show.
Medium (i.e. developing artist - sales under 900K)
1. Lose major cash on the CD. Label invents big dough in videos and stuff hoping to push them to Large sized act.
2. Make a bit of dough from ASCAP/BMI if they get radio play.
3. Band breaks even playing out generally because the label generally underwrites their shows (called a guarantee) in hopes that it will drive CD sales. If the label has given up on CD sales, the band loses big touring.
Large Act (over 900k):
1. Either make huge cash or no cash on their CDs. The no cash ones are like MJ where the label spent massive dough promoting and producing the album but saw sales that would make money with most artists, but because they poured so much dough into the album, they lose.
2. Almost all large acts make good dough off of ASCAP/BMI.
3. Only the acts who have a number of huge selling albums or extensive, extensive touring history make huge cash here. but when they do get to that level (i.e. rolling stones) they make massive, massive cash.
As somebody working in the music biz, I feel a little bit like I work at a buggy whip manufacturer or something as we are perhaps a business destined for the history books...
Anyway, I agree with your three points--- especially #2. At the store I work at, DVDs and games are going through the roof. Some in the music biz argues that that's because they can't be pirated, but I think it's simpler than that: customers like video games better than a CD and would rather spend 50 bucks on a game than buy 3 CDs.
No, what I wanted to really respond to was this:
Excuse me? The whole point of MP3 (and other lossy-compressed audio formats) is to reduce storage requirements for the data, and to reduce bandwidth requirements for its transmission over a network or broadcast medium. Your statement runs completely contrary to the spirit of that engineering design goal for MP3 audio. MP3 is obviously inferior to uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) source material for critical listening; where MP3 shines is in streaming applications and applications where storage space is at a premium. Of course you can jack the bitrate up to 256 kbps, but if you're going to do that with MP3, why not use a better codec that's engineered for musical reproduction, instead of using MP3, which was engineered for digital television broadcast and network streaming? ATRAC seems to get some things right that MP3 doesn't, especially at more modest bitrates. I've been hearing good things about AAC as well, although the patent restrictions may hinder its adoption.
I mean, seriously, would you rather listen to an uncompressed CD or DVD-A or SACD on your high end home stereo, or an MP3 compressed copy of the original source material? I don't even think there's a contest here! No, the MP3 copies are good for putting ten hours worth of music on a CD-R that you can play on a portable player or in a car's deck. When you're in a car, or flying cross-country on a plane, or stuck in a hotel room somewhere, or visiting family, or when you're camping somewhere -- these are non-critical listening environments, and highly compressed audio is not a problem.