Interesting Admissions From Record Industry

way2trivial writes "Many in the Slashdot community say the reason music sales are off is the content. It appears the industry and some music producers agree. In todays NYTimes magazine there is an article that says the quality of todays music is the problem. I have an issue with one part however, it reads "...and the once lucrative album market has been overshadowed by downloaded singles, which mainly benefits Apple" and here I thought Apple made most of their money with their hardware sales and a pittance on each track, giving the majority to the producer."

Comments

Re:Go back to the beginning...

[MrLint]

Why do you think Applet should get a cut from *calls* made with an iPhone?

I pose the question why do shops like Universal think they should get a cut of the sales of the Zune (which was paid by MS) and the iPod (which was not paid by apple). Perhaps we should that Universal has also implied that Apple should pay them for (by Universal's estimation) "the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material"

Not to mention that Universal-NBC wants consumer to pay significantly for downloads of shows that they could buy on dvd for less.

This all boils down to a the last throes of a failing business model.

The reason for lack of content

[damburger]

Popular music is informed by youth culture, and thus reflects the hopes and fears of the youth of any particular era. The 60s was about Vietnam (not because of any real concern about the war, but because teenagers faced the possibility of being drafted). The 80s was about overt avarice and consumerism.

But what about the 90s and the 2000s? What were they about? I, and most people I've talked to about this, draw a blank. Some people think modern emo bands were influenced by the Columbine massacre and its aftermath, but that is at best a minor facet of popular music.

The thing that characterised our societies after 1989 was a sense of triumphalism. The cold war was over, the world had unanimously chosen the best way of running things (sic), and it was the end of history. Essentially, we were told all the battles had been won and there were no more challenges left for our generation to take up. People say 9/11 'changed everything' but in reality it changed very little, for the most part western society still smugly grinds away as it did before. The daily life of young people is largely unaffected.

So the prevailing feeling is apathy. You go to school, go to college, have kids and die. There's nothing else to do. The music reflects this.