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Music Downloading not Entirely to Blame
Outlyer writes "A recent article in The Economist discusses the proximate causes for the decline in music sales. Of some note is this quote in the article:
"According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. [...] Other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part." The article discusses in some depth the short-term viewpoint of the majors and why that is likely to be the dominant problem, not the internet bogeyman."
I switched from buying new CDs to buying used ones. It saves money and puts dents in the RIAA statistics.
Well, at least we can be reasonably sure that the RIAA higher-ups will read it. Not that they'll listen, but they'll at least read it.
Where I live, everybody downloads, the internet service advertize showow much faster you'll get your music, and the teens don't even think of buying music.
Retailers are in bad shape in S. Korea.
Put identity in the browser.
May I be the first to say ... "No shit!"
Who doesn't like free music?
I don't buy music because it all sounds packaged and the same to me. I'll buy a CD when something good ocmes out. I'm sick of the labels blaming the internet for their crappy products not doing well.
According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy.
OMG, like I am..sooo SHOCKED to hear that!
These people will never "get it"....
Did they ever think their current business process and ATTITUDE towards its customers could be the problem????
Obviously "Tainted Love" was the pinnacle of musical creativity in the world, and CD sales were bound to decline.
"Tainted Love ... oh, oh, oh, don't touch me please"
Have we been waiting for this a long time?
Anyways, I buy a lot of my music off the street, literaly. A lot of bands down here in BsAs are going the way around the musicindustry and publish their own records, playing on the streets for publicity..
They tricked me, anyways..
The reason I usually don't buy CDs is because 90% of the mainstream music sold out there is simply SHIT.
[alk]
Question is, will this really make any difference at all? Not likely... these companies have their minds made up that the internet(s) is(are) the cause. It's interesting that someone had the balls to write it up especially in an economical media outlet but it won't change anything.
Not a real shocker but nice to be higher profile.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
I am not a big music buyer, mostly because I can't get the music I like to hear (classical, folk and Celtic) at local stores such as Wal-mart, and the local folkie store is off my beaten path and has little parking. I would use a service such as this eagerly. And yet, everyone seems to focus on the indie rock scene and the big rock/pop/hiphop acts, and don't think that online distribution might mean the flowering of genres with smaller fans, such as folk, bluegrass, opera, choral, or whatever!
Frankly, the best way for a business to thrive is not to have a radical change of the business model. Instead, incremental changes and continual improvement (hitting singles instead of homers) will get the job done. One incremental change can be to make sure that downloadable music isn't just for young listerners.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
nobody points to the real reason music sales are dropping? Today's music isn't based on music, but on image and one hit wonders... Just look at Hoobaskank, one formulated bubble gum song, and they are headling big shows... what have they done since??? And don't forget about the eye candy... Jessica Simpson, Brittany Spears, couldn't sing their way out of wet paper bag, but with the volume down...
According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy.
So, one-quarter to one-third of the sales drop is due to internet piracy? I can see why companies might be worried about this. (And everyone who votes me down because I won't subscribe to their "waaa waaa waaa! I want my music for free!" is a wanker.)
Its the economy stupid! obviously those at the top didnt see that millions of jobs were lost because of the economic downturn that was accelerated thanks to 9/11...
hmmm, food or the new Britny Spears CD... tough call
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I have an iPod and I no longer buy CD's. I mostly listen to live shows that are freely available all over the net. However, when there is an album that I would like to buy, I just get it from iTunes (or other online music store). For me the benefits are:
1) Don't have to go to the mall.
2) Same price as a CD or cheaper.
3) I can back it up on a CD.
4) I have a copy on my HD.
5) I can convert it to different formats.
6) Don't have to go to the mall.
7) I can listen before I buy.
8) If I like only one song, I don't have to buy the entire CD.
9) Don't have to go to the mall.
God I hate the mall...
The CD boom was people format shifting to CD media, many people own legit vinyl, cassette and CD copies of the same album. I'm not in a real hurry to switch formats again and the great thing about digital music is that I can make unlimited copies without the sound quality degrading, this is the ONLY reason I re purchased on CD's, and if they want to make it hard for me to do that I'll stop buying.
The drop in sales has fuck all to do with filesharing, and everything to do with the witless commercial pop that saturates the market; everybody except the RIAA knows it!
I think the main reason why music sales have declined is indeed an innovation problem - but it may not be the record company's fault (for once).
In every decade you had technical innovation - whether it was 4 track recording in the 60's, the emergence of prog rock and sophisticated recording techniques in the 70's, synthesizers in the 80's, or rap/rock fusion in the 90's.
Question: What has the 2000's offered that previous decades have not? Answer: Not too much. For the first time, there's no real innovation in the sound itself - there's simply nothing that hasn't already been done, no tech that a generation can call their own.
If the music seems lame, it's because it is - it's all been done before.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
(The boardroom of a major record label)
"Guys, we have a major problem. Sales are at an all-time low, and if you all want to be able to pay for your BMWs and 2-million dollar mansions, we need a new strategy!"
"Now, our attorneys and marketing boys have been hard at work, attempting to pass th blame for this dilemma for months on such things as piracy of all kinds. However, these conclusions just haven't explained the numbers, and we have just recently uncovered a shocking statistic that cannot be ignored. Please consult the chart on the wall to see how the numbers break down."
Internet piracy: 9%
Media piracy: 7%
Any other kind of piracy that we couldn't pull out of our asses: 2%
We sign crummy bands and try to pass their music off on people who actually have taste, despite all of our really expensive research: 80%
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
no harm != legitimate in many people's opinions.
I have bought 2 cd's in the past 3-4 years, not because I am pirating or downloading, but because I firmly believe the RIAA are the biggest crooks in this picture and refuse to support them.
I believe the RIAA will rape their artists every which way they possibly can, and cheat them out of their royalties at every chance. Given this, I find it more than a little ironic that the RIAA campaigns against piracy by boldly proclaiming that downloaders are cheating the artists.
Here's to hoping that sales continue to decline until the RIAA crumbles entirely out of the picture.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
The article mentioned that large retailers, such as Walmart, are dedicating less and less space to CDs due to the increase in other entertainment media, I would suggest that an easy way to get around with would be to develop terminals that allow you to browse a library of CD's, sample a portion of each song, and then if you choose to buy the album, burns and labels the CD for you on the spot. This would eliminate the need for shelving for CD's, as well as allow retailers to have a much wider selection of music available.
This is a study, just like the other studies made. Because this one says what you want to hear, doesn't make it 'truth.'
The fact of the matter is that unless we can relive history and remove music piracy, we will never know for sure if it was 'the cause' of the decline or not.
This is another study and should be treated just like the ones that 'say piracy is the reason for the decline' are.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It makes me always laugh to see all this people pretending that the music sales decrease comes from the downloads from the Internet.
Young people simply don't have a extended budget. Ten years ago a normal teenager didn't have to pay 50 dollars a month for his mobile phone. This is the price of 4 CDs ! Some of us didn't even had a computer too ! These are all things that makes that we CAN'T buy more CDs, because we have less money for that. Sure, this is only a part of the explanation, but I don't see much people who invoke that argument.
TFA mentioned a reason why CD sales were dropping is that CDs are competing for shelf space with other, higher-value forms of entertainment.
Which is true (that the OST CD is worth almost as much as the full DVD is puzzling at best), but missed a more important point.
Two words: Cell phones.
Here in Europe most basic plans cost EUR 40 a month. That's a sizeable share of a teenager's allowance. That's at least 3 CDs a month they won't buy.
This isn't exactly a head-on solution, but here's some particularly nerdy outlets for non-RIAA music:
Nectarine Radio - streaming C64, Atari ST, Adlib, etc. music
OC Remix - huge repository of submitted video game remixes
Streaming radio of above
Metroid Metal - Surprisingly well done
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Personally, I find that CD's are just too expensive for me. I don't care that much about music, and can better spend that $15 elsewhere. Also, I just haven't found anything I really like in a while, though unlike most /. I blame this on my own narrow mindedness, and not the new music sucking. If the new music sucked so much, why does it sell so many copies? Most people tend to get stuck in a certain era of music, don't like the new stuff? Don't act suprised about it, you're getting old. Every generation tends to think that the next generation's music sucks, that's not going to change for you, you're not special, get over it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
H-H is horrid imo - endless, short, electronic loops of intensely annoying sounds, weak and/or stupid lyrics, bad singing (if they even sing at all), it's overly produced, etc. etc.
Any new CDs I buy now are established artists who've been around for a while and have a new CD out; or I'll just buy some 'classic' stuff.
Once uninventive, regurgitated hip-hop took over, the industry pretty much lost me.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
The economist reaches a very broad audience of VERY intelligent people, and also people who tend to have a lot of money, or be in positions of power. Hopefully they can recongize the situation for what it is, and I think the economist will give the position some credibility.
We have to start somewhere with educating the people in charge, and I'd say the Economist is a hell of a source to have touting this position.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's often beem said on Slashdot that the real reason for the decline is the decline of the quality of the music. That's possibly true, but I'd like to know how a reliable study could report on it objectively.
Music tastes are extremely subjective. If anything, the objective measures would tend to suggest that the music is getting better, in the sense that it's been focus-grouped to death. Somebody out there is saying, "Yes, we like it. We like it so much we want to copy it off the Internet or from a friend's CD."
It seems likely that in fact the focus-grouping and hit-promoting have lowered the quality of the music to a least common denominator, but I'd love to know how this industry report went about measuring that. In the end that measurement will describe how the music changes from here. The executives who make the decisions aren't artists and don't use artistic judgment to decide what to produce. They look at numbers and poll likely group members to see what will sell. They know that people will only buy what they like, so I'd love to know what measure of "like" they're using for this study that's different from the ones they're already using.
I believe they refer to the people selling pirated copies of CDs (and usually other stuff, eg DVDs as well) on street corners and such...I know someone who was in New York City recently and saw both new-release movie bootlegs as DVDs and plenty of recent, mainstream pop CDs for sale in the sub-$10 range...as long as the cops didn't get too close, at which point the merchants either hid the media or split.
Bootleg/Burned CDs you find at the flea market or on the corner in some guys trunk. That is a physically pirated CD.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
The music industry has a hard time accepting that they sell an elastic good - when prices go up, sales go down. That's really happened to concert tickets. $60 tickets for second-tier bands went unsold all summer. Several major tours were cancelled. Lollapalooza was cancelled due to slow ticket sales.
The endless reissue of "oldies" is self-limiting. By now, everybody who wants any Beatles/Stones/Doors CD presumably has it.
But the fundamental problem is much simpler. The outlets that sell audio CDs don't just sell music. They also sell movie DVDs, which provide more entertainment content at a lower price. Audio CDs ought to sell for about $3.99 to $5.99. There's no excuse for audio CDs by mediocre bands costing more than DVDs of major, big-budget films.
You've surely heard of the CD replication facilities, particularly in the Far East, which pump out tens of thousands of copies of CDs which they haven't licensed the rights to...
Physical CD piracy is the selling of unlicensed duplicated CDs... like the guy selling CDs from a table on the street for $5.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Here's a 'proximate cause' for you: Creative accounting. Note that this is based on an internal study. The industry has in fact been making more money the past five years, and lying about it.
Why?
The purpose of pursuing piracy is to gain monopolistic control over *MEDIA* so that only 'the big six' (or is it five now?) can publish music. This will put independent artists out of business, in fact all record companies that aren't universal/warner/bmg/emi/sony. This is because they are trying to madate in law that all media must have digital protection. The protection will be crackable (it always is), but controlled by the RIAA, so they control who publishes.
With the advent of home studios and the digital revolution.. and internet promotion there is less and less need for a bloated recording industry. They know this.
People may pirate eminem but he still sells >10 million copies an album.
I haven't bought or downloaded a Song or Cd since I got my satellite radio "Sirius" I think this is a good alternative and also a possible cure to pirated music. If you think about it you can get uncensored. Commercial free music of all of the new and old hits out there in addition to live talk shows and TV shows all for the price of 1 cd a month. When you go home take you portable docking station in your house.boat.friends car, etc... If not that you have online radio shout cast etc. This was my cure I don't know about anyone else.
It's the exact same thing with the pharma companies withholding the results of studies that are damaging to them. Ditto for the tobacco companies. I wish there was something that forced big companies to tell the truth when they have it.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I think that the biggest reason that music sales are declining is that the largest demographic in this contry has finally stopped buying lots of music. The boomers have finally repurchased all the music they have owned on vinyl, eight track and cassette. They are not interested in Ashlee Simpson, Usher, Coldplay or Creed. Most of their children have grown up, so they aren't spending a lot of money there either.
It's my contention that people buy less entertainment of all kinds as they grow older. Hence, as a country's population ages, music sales will decrease.
Are there studies that bear on this?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'll probably get a Flamebait rating for this. But in my opinion (and the opinion of many of my fellow co-workers...) Music just sucks. There are no singers, there are no artists anymore, everyone is sampling the old music and just redoing everything. Talking about the bling, talking about the cash, and talking about "I got 99 problems but uh bitch ain't one". (Nice grammar there Jay-Z!) It's just stupid. The only artists left are Prince, (sits for three or four minutes) can't think of any more right now..
Sure there are re-releases today still but the numbers dwarf in comparison to the beginning to 90's. This was a point brought up during PBS Frontline "The Way the Music Died" documentary on the troubles of the music industry. I seem to remember that Frontline pointed out that sales relative to new albums have actually gone up. But the overall sales have gone down because older albums sales have decline greatly. This Economist report doesn't address this point.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Today's music ain't got the same soul
I like that old time a-rock 'n' roll
the one thing that gives them nightmares and keeps them up at nights.
it's not p2p or theft or piracy or even used CD/DVD sales.
their biggest fear is that you tune out and stop watching/listening altogether. that would mean not only no sales, but no advertising revenue either.
if this happens on any scale, i expect the mpaa/riaa to push through 1984/maxheadroom style legislation requiring a TV in every house turned on 24/7, and make it illegal to turn them off.
...the good RIAA sanctioned music stopped at about 94.
Actually I have heard a lot of better music coming from the Indy space (ie. podcasts)
From Garageband.com or Magnatune.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
90% of the kids that love the music don't have the money to buy the CDs. By the time they get to be the type of wage earning adult than can afford CDs, they're already turned off by the record companies.
That's real smart marketing. Price your products to the point where your biggest market can't afford them, do anything to stop them from having them, play shi*t on the radio, do nothing for the little bands, and then complain your market share is down.
Time Warp ...
Hey, wow, what am I doing here !
Last thing I remembered, I was reading the inner sleeve of my Madness 7 album which said "Home Taping is Killing Music" while recording it to cassette tape for my buddy.
Now it's 20 years later and Music isn't dead !
Arghgh ! - what's going on !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
The article doesn't mention satellite radio, but in the USA subscriber bases for both XM and Sirius satellite radio services are growing rapidly.
Don't know what the net effect of growth is. As a one-year XM subscriber, I listen to CDs less, but have purchased a couple a CDs from artists I never would have discovered without satellite radio.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
what record company do you work for?
Internet piracy must have its share of blame, of course, but it's not the only cause, and problably there isn't a only cause.
Other factors may include economic recession, poor quality, repetitive artist offers, rehash of old "hits" in spite of new, refreshing sounds, much broader offer in entertaiment, etc, and the record labels are moving too slow to face these multiple factors.
Of course, the multiplicity of "causes" and the speed at wich the entertaiment industry moves nowadays may harm the diagnostics of the situation, but I guess that the solution must involve some profound changes in the sector.
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
We are experiencing a Renaissance of locally-produced music, from street performers to small bands. Music is no longer the exclusive domain of a handful of mega-conglomerates, but is being taken back and revitalized on the micro scale. Seattle/Portland (near me) support a thriving community of small indepenent musicans producing truly excellent music. It's like the 60's all over again. Not so much "new" sounds, but new takes on the folk/rock/celtic traditions and a resurgence of interest in vocals and acoustic instrumentation rather than synthesized, reprocessed top-40. Complex, muti-layered arrangements that depend on real musicians, not 20 year old pinups with digitally-enhanced vocals supporting their silicon-enhanced figures.
Personnally, I'm excited by the trend, and am actively building a large and varied CD collection with very little help from the RIAA.
For anyone interested, Frontline produced a very nice documentary about this topic.
u si c/view/
Record labels were once small and not very profitable. However during the 80's and early 90's the music industry saw the introduction of CDs, which compelled people to purchase many of their older albums again, as well as the introduction of new genres of pop music ( HipHop, Rap, Grundge, etc). The combination of these events brought a LOT of money to record labels, and that compelled larger corporations to start investing in the music industry. Unfortunately, CDs and new genres of music became mainstream, and now we have corporate labels who are concerned about quarterly profits... not long term investments. All in all, it's a recipe for disaster... and crappy music.
But... any who... watch the Frontline piece to see what happens.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/m
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
While this may not be news to /. community, I can assure you that this *is* news to the PHB & corporate executive types. I haven't found any "studies" showing your assertion, only a bunch of no-name anonymous people on the internet. Having someone as respected in the business community back up your assertion will give you clout when dealing with the non-slashdot (Joe Six-Pack & Granny) community. To put it bluntly:
It's one thing to run your mouth on a tech related web site claiming something. It's an entirely different (and more credible) thing to have a major business publication say you're right.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
I wrote about this a while ago.
m l
http://www.summerblue.net/missives/copyright.ht
The major distributors are now in a situation where their product is having to compete with a free rival (P2P). It's hard to compete with free. In fact, all the major distributors have to offer are ease of access, breadth of catalogue and guaranteed quality. This is not worth 15 UKP a CD and 25 UKP a DVD! this painful adjustment is currently what the major distributors are in denial about, and have attempted to perform a minimum-effort resolution, lawsuits, and via DRM.
Our culture is accustomed to copying, because of the VCR, and it is not possible, a la prohibition, to legislate out of existance an act which is widely culturally accepted.
DRM is a brittle solution, since the P2P networks provide immediate and universal distribution of material; if a DRMed product is broken *just once*, then it's gone - it goes public, and that's that. Since DRM is a major investment, and since these companies have a long habit of choosing proprietory security implimentations, I think they're on a burning plane with no parachutes.
All in all, I think the heyday of the major distributors is over.
--
Toby
Buying used is guaranteed, no-doubt-about-it legal. No copyright violation possible: you're buying the same copy as was sold originally.
In such a scenario, that copy has already benefitted the artist as much as it was designed to.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
I'm not talking about file sharing, I'm talking about internet radio stations.
I'm willing to bet that the same people that are buying satellite would listen to internet radio. I think that all the 15 mins of music with 30 mins of comercials really puts off a lot of tradional radio listeners these days. These people are turning to internet and satellite to avoid all this BS. You only need to listen to commerical radio once a month to memorize the playlist.
Turn on internet and satellite and you'll have to listen a whole month to hear the same song again, if it really does play again. Plus with internet radio you can get an artists name (not sure how this works with satellite).
My point is that if it weren't for these new technologies I probably wouldn't have found anything new.
That and AllMusic which is a great resource for researching a genre or even an artist that you like.
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
Back in my hometown (Rock Hill, SC), a local music shop (Woody's) has a used record bin up front. The records in the bin are $1 each. Granted, you won't find any new stuff out there, but if you have a record player and like the poppinp and crackling of vinyl, you can really make out. Even better, I've discovered jazz and rock artists this way--a whole album for the cost of a soda!
Live free or die
I'll tell you how, because it's painfully true. The music industry has built it's business by offering something new to each generation of kids. Honestly, what's new lately? The artist examples you give have been around since the 90's - at least. I was taling about THIS decade.
It can be argued that music is continually evolving and I agree with that except that the previous few decades have shown far more music innovation that has arguably happened for thousands of years. The presentation of recorded music, ways of recording it, and whole new instruments fueled a lot of original material - stuff you could honestly say didn't sound like anything before it. Maybe I'm old, but I'm not hearing what THIS generation's music is doing to be different.
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean the music itself has changed much. For instance, there were similarities in New Wave to the preceeding Disco era, but there were extremely distinctive differences (mostly in instrumentation). I'm not sure mating a grunge band with a DJ is all that innovative, but for the sake of argument, I'll bite on that one.
But again, that was soooo... Last decade.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Show me where I can buy a copy of Kraftwerk's latest ("Tour de France Soundtracks") for $12 and I'll buy it immediately. I've been looking online and offline since it was released.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...before you all start to go nuts hear me out. Sure we know music is starting to suck but there is only so much money to go round and as consumers were are starting to spend our money on other items. For instance I believe video games and DVD sales are booming if recent figures are to be believed . Now that money has to come from somewhere, it is just a sign of changing times and market trends shifting. I personally dont think we will ever see CD sales return to what they were.
I don't know what sort of music you listen to, but I like a lot of albums as a whole, as they've been produced by the artists and the producers. The promoted singles sometimes get my attention, but I usually prefer to play the album completely.
After all, would you be satisfied watching a 10 minute slot out of a movie or half an act in a play? Those scenes aren't pointless or worthless just because they're not complete. More often than not, if it's well directed, they're developing context for the surrounding material that makes the whole even better.
I'm sure there are exceptions. I don't imagine that most teeny-bop music is much more sophisticated than throwing a collection of songs onto a CD when it comes to album arrangement. (I don't listen to it, so I couldn't say for sure.)
I strongly feel that new music is just awful. These new musicians are horrendous, and shoved down our throats by huge media marketing campaigns. Throw in the fact that hip-hop has become the mainstream and its driven by no-talent ass clowns (Lil' John, Birdy, Chingy, Nelly, etc), we won't see any good music for a while.
100% Insightful
The Economist is such an excellent magazine because even when they write about something we know about, we can say "duh" instead of "they got it all wrong". Now extend that to world news, business, finance and economics, science and technology, and a smattering of other articles, and you have a magazine that covers a lot of things pretty well, which is not an easy accomplishment. It's nice to see things like this there, because it also means they are probably being read by at least a few people with real power.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
I know, I know... most of the people on Slashdot are probably thinking I've started smoking crack or something, but I can honestly say I can't remember the last time I bought a new rock album. Try bands like Cross Canadian Ragweed or Reckless Kelly, they are more southern rock than country. Pat Green is the godfather of the Texas music scene, although I think he's starting sound more and more "Nashville", check out his older albums. There are too many other names to mention here but i'll put a link on the bottom of the page.
Of all current styles of music this seems to be the only one that doesn't have completely innane lyrics, i.e. the lyrics aren't about how much their life sucks like most current rock songs, doing drugs and having sex like most current rap songs(remind you of 80's metal?, hehe), and finally the lyrics aren't some lame patriotic theme or a corny love song like "Nashville country". Not to mention that the artists actually write their own songs, which can't be said about alot of forms of music popular these days. If you still doubt me, then by all means check out some of these bands. I don't think anyone outside of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana even knows they exist. At the universities here in Texas I don't think I know a single person who hasn't at least heard of these guys. I hope I helped you find alternatives to the RIAA's list of crap....
-Joe
Links:
http://www.texasmusicguide.com/
http://www.lonestarmusic.com/
http://www.patgreen.com/
http://www.crosscanadianragweed.com/
http://www.texasmusicmovement.com/
I've got over 500 CDs in my collection, but these days I'm lucky if I buy a new one more than once every 4 or 5 months. There is just rarely anything good out there anymore. Granted, I'm a metal fan, but even metal acts suck these days. I can always relyon groups like Judas Priest, Megadeth or Iron Maiden to put out somethig worthwhile, but that's about it. Kinda sad.
I believe the major reason for lackluster sales of CDs is that MTV doesn't play videos anymore and radio is payola, playing the same crap over and over. I think a lot of music buyers have also been alienated by the rise of hip-hop.
The major labels have all adopted a business model which puts a heavy initial investment on an "artist" with the expectation that their popularity, while enormous to begin with, won't last more than a few years. I think people are wising up to the fact that they've bought all these albums that they don't listen to any more and have realized that it's just a waste of money to invest in music with no staying power.
With the homogenization of radio ala clearchannel, and their annoying "demographics" and pay-for-play formats, the biggest problem I have when I DO hear the rare song that catches my ear is that I have no way of finding out what it is I just listened to.
iTunes and its ilk have made purchasing new music a bit more viable for me now - the previews are good (I'd buy half the tracks on every Cake album out there, and discard the rest) and I appreciate the "people who bought X also bought Y" references - it turns me onto some tunes and bands I hadn't heard of before.
Similarly, the in-store preview audio systems like RedDot in Barnes & Noble and Borders are pretty useful also.
Corporations need to get over the whole physical media thing, plus make radio a useful method of getting new music out there (why they play the same 50 songs all day long blows my mind - no request mechanisms, no way to throw out new music to expose potential big sellers - it's music by committee)..
sloth jr
Not too long ago, there was a slashdot article of an interview with David Crosby on Frontline.
... The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died."
He talked about how at some point the tone and attitude of big music changed from being supportive and developing of young talent for the long term to being adverserial and short term profit minded.
I think this economist article is the conclusion and proof of what he was talking about, his thoughts were mostly anecdotal without concrete evidence. From the interview:
"When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
SRC: PBS Frontline
The result of this commercialization and 'selling out' resulted in companies the likes of Sony, BMG, EMI, etc. run by lawyers and accountants. Of course, their first instinct when faced with new technology and a threat is to sue the pants of grandmas and 12 year olds. Way to go corporate America!!!
I'm gonna apologize for my attitude, for this next part but... I got karma to burn.
Evidently, having some lawyer or accountant run a business may just well run it into the ground. There is apparently no substitute, no matter how ivy or expensive your degree may be, for heart and really appreciating the business you work with or work in. Being in it for money will eventually sink the ship. It's love of music that brings out the great music, and brings it to the people, not lawsuits, not cheap thrills turned into overnight successes with the help of Payola (to radio stations -- ahem Clear Channel), over promotion and slick advertising (ahem -- MTV).
I hope Elliot Spitzer rips these companies and the lawyers who run them a new one with his Payola investigation.
M
I own a record store that carries everything from the beginning of recorded music and I can say without a doubt that the quantity of good music created TODAY is more than it has ever been in the past. The problem is that the overall amount of music is exponentially more now than it has been. We find ourselves deluged by an immense amount of shit and so it seems like there's fewer classic albums. Frankly, the average person doesn't have time to listen to everything and find the really good things. Most of the real music lovers who used to filter some of the crap and promote the real quality as A&Rs are long gone. What we really have is MBA's churning out marketable artists with no interest in the music.
There are some good web sites that take up the slack like Pitchfork but the best way to find something current (or old) is to go down to your local independent store and ask them. They're the only ones left who are actively filtering the bad stuff and sharing what they know.
US$7 in 1983 (the year the compact disc was introduced) is equivalent to $12.73 in 2003 after accounting for inflation. The average retail CD price in the first quarter of 2004 was $13.29. Seems like CDs these days are selling for about the same as your vinyl LPs back in the day, so that line of reasoning really doesn't go very far. You can't compare monetary amounts spanning two decades without accounting for inflation.