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Record Labels Struggle With the Album's Demise
Supplying yet more evidence, if more were needed, of the dire straits the music business increasingly finds itself in — reader cphilo sends us a NYTimes article about the death of the album as the mainstay of profit, and the record labels' struggle to adopt to the new realities. The article notes the trend of the labels signing artists for a single song, maybe two, and a ring tone.
If a singles album has ten songs on it and costs ten dollars, but only two of those songs are any good, then we are being charged ten dollars for two dollars worth of goods and being told we got our money's worth. This is somewhat like having a vacuum cleaner demonstrated at your house in order to receive "two hundred dollars worth of home furnishings", only to discover that they are giving you a cheap photocopy of a Norman Rockwell.
There's more. Even if every song on the album were solid gold, the fact is that it never cost any ten dollars to get it to the customer. Ninety cents on every dollar (say) goes to developing, promoting, and marketing no-talent "hormone bands" in the hope that they're the next New Kids on the Block. Or what-have-you.
Why should I have to pay twenty God-Damned dollars to listen to thirty year old music? I particularly like Procol Harum, but I would bet that their marginal profit hasn't gone up a cent. The record companies' certainly has, however. If I thought that the band members got a healthy cut, I wouldn't mind paying for such genius. But knowing that record companies use(d) die-hard fans like me to pay for such offensively vapid fare as fills the top 40 charts goes a long way toward easing my conscience about downloading files.
When the technology was firmly on the side of the RIAA, we felt the lash. Now, who's holding the leather? Suck it up, RIAA. It's your backlash--you've earned it.
Good luck selling songs one at a time. The rest of the world beat you to it.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
First, if your standard for new, good albums is really that low, you have probably been listening to nothing but what the major labels try to shove down your throat. There are plenty of new concept albums out there, and even more that lack an overarching story or theme but still stand out as fantastic works when taken as a whole. You can certainly find dozens of new albums that are more than just a couple good songs and some filler. You just have to look elsewhere than the latest Justin Timberlake or Gwen Stephani disc.
But mainly I wanted to comment on your statements about marketing. It seems that bands can make a decent living without advertising, but they have to have something pretty unique. Then with a little time and some well placed live shows, they tend to develop a following with no major advertising of their own. I know the last five or six new bands I've found have all been through word of mouth. Sure, they're not as big as top 40 bands, but they have a devoted fan base that's far less fickle than the masses that like someone simply because they're the "next new thing".
Maybe it's the music snob in me, but I tend to think that the only bands that really need marketing to survive are those that aren't much good to begin with, or want to be bigger, faster than good music will get you on its own. In the first case the marketing is counterproductive (blocks air-time and brain space that could be used by better bands), and in the second it seems like all the advertisement does is turn a band with potential into a one-hit-wonder that goes on to release a couple mediocre follow-ups and then implode. Even a great band can never match the insane expectations set by a marketing-driven surge of popularity, because 3/4 of the crowd will move on to the next new face, and the label will push for a repeat instead of letting the music mature.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I disagree. A British punk group named Koopa has made top 40 and is going to release a cd without being signed. Them doing it shows that mass production of CDs isn't the only way of releasing an album. I'd argue that a download/burn at home method is less expensive (and easier on the environment- no fuel spent shipping) anyway.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Buried in the article was an interesting idea from the record companies themselves: instead of being the channel, they'd morph into more of a fan club model.
That's a great idea, but they should go one step further.
The main problem for record companies is that the record company, for the most part, is not the brand - the artist is. The artist is what's promoted, etc. What would be better, from the record company point of view, is if they had a whole bunch of sub-labels, all of which have their own genre/style/sound/whatever.
Then, you'd know that you like the stuff coming out of a label, because all their stuff was the style you like.
It used to be like this in the old days, where a label like Blue Note would have a whole lot of good jazz, or Elektra Nonesuch had good classical. I knew people that would buy everything that EN put out.
Combine that with a subscription service (or music club, cd-by-mail thing I guess) and suddenly you not only have a business model, you have a core group of consumers that are committed to your label - not your artitst. That subscriber base is a guaranteed revenue stream that you can use to hunt down more stuff that your subscribers want.
Will it lead to the homogenization of the music industry? Who cares? It's already freaking homogenized!
It might make smaller players more viable because as a botique subscription music company you have a guaranteed revenue stream with no distribution overhead (except for the overhead you want). You can budget, plan, and not worry as much about the next payroll.
Ideally you'd have a third-party doing the fulfillment, so all you have to do is find acts that your subscribers might like.
It's interesting to think about, but finding that much talent would be difficult. No matter what people say, there isn't that much talent out there.