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Media Research Exec Says Music Industry Is On Its Last Legs
Ponca City, We Love You writes "For years, the major record labels have fought a pitched battle against the MP3 format. Although major labels like EMI and the Universal Music Group have embraced MP3s in recent months, a story from the Mercury News says early returns from those moves indicate they've had little impact on the industry's fortunes — for better or for worse. 'These are ailing businesses on their last legs,' said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a market research company focused on digital media. The question of copy protection on song downloads 'matters a whole lot less to them than it once did.' The industry has a bigger problem. Consumers used to buy CDs for $10 or $15 a pop. Increasingly, they're buying songs at about $1 apiece instead. So, even if transactions continue to increase, the industry is seeing far less money each time consumers buy and it's having a difficult time making up the difference."
So long Music Industry, and thanks for all the Phish!
They need to do a better job of recruitment. On any given night I can find better bands playing at local clubs then I hear on the radio. How about they all chip in to recreate a free classic MTVesque station to market directly?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
There is a war going on for your mind.
Seems to me TFA predicts the end of the album as we know it, not necessarily the music industry. Could we be entering the golden age of the one hit wonder?
Frankly I won't mourn the deat of the album. There are very few out there that work as a whole. even the best artists pad them out with filler. Especially since the advent of the CD meant they had 80 mins to play with.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
of a recording of the world's smallest man playing on the world's smallest violin plays the world's saddest song...
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What a clever way to show how propietary content and artificial constraints on access can spell doom! I bet more than half the comments in this thread will be about the idiocy of putting a registration-required article in the summary.
As for the actual topic at hand, if the music industry goes away, who will provide music? Once the vacuum is created, it will be filled by someone else. Music isn't like buggy whips. Maybe it's like bottled water, though. You used to get it in those plastic gallon bottles, but nowadays you mostly get it either from large 5 gallon jugs or 500ml bottles. Content stays the same, packaging and marketing changes.
What's the bottom line? The evolution of the music industry will lead to dumber and more expensive product of something that is essentially free otherwise.
Does that mean that if the record companies want to keep making money, they need to produce albums with a bunch of good songs instead of a $16 album with one good song? Oh, the humanity!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Hopefully this will help reduce trash music, apparently increasing the quality of music available.
I really think this is BS. I have a friend who has worked at Atlantic for the past year or two and he currently has 5 gold records hanging on his wall and one platinum is on the way. If these bands are selling so well, why is the industry doing so poorly. Also, these bands are not totally mainstream. I bet 90% of /. hasn't even heard of them.
At some point all you bigwigs up in the nice cushy offices need to realize that this business model has some PR issues: 1. Fill Albums with crap music. 2. Tell customers to bend over. 3. ??????? 4. Profit!!!
My understanding is that, for a $1 iTunes download, the breakdown looks something like this:
$.75 - Label
$.20 - Apple
$.05 - Artist
If the middleman (who provides neither the content nor the bandwidth, and takes 3/4 of the money) can't make a profit here then I think perhaps they're doing something wrong.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The bit that this "analysis" misses is what we are talking about is the shift away from a pre-bundled offer as the only way to transport the content (music) as the distribution cost for single elements were too low towards a user bundling approach. In other words its moving away from CostCo and the great big packets and towards those nicer supermarkets where you can actually choose what you want. This means moving towards more retailing offers like Buy One Get One Free (BOGOF) and the like. This will tend to mean that albums won't be able to contain filler tracks that are just rubbish but you will be able to buy more dynamic combinations of elements from a single company, band or shop.
Chirping away about "Used to be $10 for a CD now its $1 for a track" is just plain silly as saying its the end of the industry. What it means is that the distribution cost has now been practically eliminated so all that is pretty much left for the companies is the profitable bit, remember the creation and shipping of a CD (although cheap) is a business cost.
The industry has big big issues, but that has nothing to do with albums v mixed basket and everything to do with actively preventing people buying music in a mixed basket approach.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
What compelling option is there to the following current scenario: Some CD has 10 songs and costs 10 bucks. I have only heard 3 songs from that CD. I can "guess" that the other 7 are probably not as good since they weren't released as singles, and I can save $7 by buying just the 3 songs I have heard/want. If they want to sell a whole CD, make sure all the songs are preview'able and equally good!
stuff |
This has been a long time coming. The music industry has been hosing over it's customers for decades and now folks are hosing them back. I'm not saying stealing is right, but from poor quality vinyl records to over priced CD's and more recent crappy or inconvenient formats like DRM or SACD and DVD-A's, the big labels have created fertile ground for music industry anarchy. Reap what you sow.
I like supporting my favorite entertainers, but I don't feel that the music industry gives them a fair shake either.
So good riddance.
If the music industry of today goes the way of the dinosaur, it is inevitably their own fault. Rather than adapt and work with technology, they chose to fight it and eventually fought their own customers. Companies that had nothing to do with the music industry (Apple, Amazon, etc.) found an untapped and unexplored way to sell music to people at competitive price using the relative ease afforded by the Internet. The music industry now says that they don't make enough money because they find themselves to be the middleman instead of the people with the product.
You built a wall around yourself and ignored the real problem. Your own costs are too high, you rely more on the popularity of an artist/band rather than the true talent he/she/they possess, and you chose to ignore new technology in how it could bring you new opportunities. Think fast or die slow.
Here is a series of terms. Do we add, subtract, multiply, or divide them?
TFA is in a locked site so nobody can comment on it.
MP3 made sense in the last generation of technology, no longer does it make sense to embrace it.
Buying an album always is waiting for the other shoe to drop - which is the good song in it?
An album of filler is to a lossy MP3 of a great performance,
as a subscription-only website is to which of the following:
a. TFA
b. Record industry profits
c. Slashverbowling
c. CowboyNeal
d. All of the above
I just don't see how major music companies are relevant today, when for a small investment, any music group can record their own music at CD quality or better, burn CDs for small production runs, farm out CD production to a mastering company if they hit it big, set up a website for e-commerce and publicity, etc etc. Any genre of music, from classical to folk-rock to metal to New Age, can be recorded fairly easily these days. In many cases (orchestras), the performance is a much bigger headache logistically than the recording, with so many artists involved.
With micropayments and the ease of putting content online, it's hard to see what value EMI, Columbia, and their ilk bring to the table. Most of the music that I enjoy can be found on sites like emusic.com -- and no matter what sort of music you prefer, the artists would be able to record and produce it without much more effort than it takes to perform it. Let's cut out the inefficient middleman and buy directly from the musicians!
On the topic of albums, they may be declining, but there is definitely something to be said for a well-imagined and well-executed album. IMHO an excellent example is ELO's "Time" album; the songs flow into one another, creating a continuous artistic work, rather than a collection of haphazardly-assembled songs. "Down to the moon" by Andreas Vollenweider is another example.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
The overhead is. Artists themselves shouldn't worry, as long as touring isn't a problem. I know myself and 50,000 other people will pay upwards of $70 in less than an hour of opening to see Tool come to town. For all those that leech off the artists and don't do anything but make it harder to distribute and enjoy music, yeah, they're pretty F'd. Good riddance.
'Cause I don't. I've lamented the death of the LP since CDs appeared; the only benefit CDs ever gave me was that I didn't have to flip the disc over. What did we lose? Well, in a lot of cases, liner notes, the cool label on the media, etc.)
;)
What I miss is the *packaging* of the LP. They were big and afforded great album art, along with all kinds of neat extras (like the spinning wheel on Led Zeppelin III, or the zipper on Sticky Fingers, or the stickers and posters in Dark Side of the Moon). And even without the extras there are just so many album covers that are just great *art*. It was the cover that made me buy Joy Division's "Closer", even though at the time I'd never heard of them. Frankly, the album cover, AFAIC, is still the best part of the record.
So, hey, music industry...why don't you downplay the actual tracks and hit up on the packaging? In the Internet world everything is just a stream of bytes so your bytes aren't much more special (and certainly not worth more) than anyone else's stream of bytes. So give it up and make something tangible, keep-able, desirable. Put the disc in a wooden box with a wool interior, or wrap it in tinfoil, whatever...make the *experience* more meaningful. As much as I enjoy the convenience of buying a track in iTMS, I am missing an "experience" that I got with some of the better-packaged albums.
And the crazy thing is that this is not new to the music industry; they've put out special collectors editions of stuff for years and years; I have CDs that came in pseudo-film cannisters, wooden boxes, even bubble-wrap. Sure I paid a premium but I didn't just want the music, I wanted the creative packaging as well.
Witness the power of the free market at work. When you've been fixing prices for decades to shore up your profits, you shouldn't be surprised when that system comes crashing down, once an innovation comes along that turns your industry on its head.
This is how OPEC will feel, if ever we get off our asses and start making commercially viable electric cars.
Yes, this news makes me oh, so sad.
All the bands I like never get signed by any big labels anyway. Such is the fate of industrial/ebm music.
Who's going to have the $$$ to spend on music when health insurance and energy costs consume your entire paycheck?
this was interesting, and i think it is accurate: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/the-inevitable-march-of-recorded-music-towards-free/
You, Sir, were not alive in the 80s.
And YOU, my good sir, were not alive in the 50's and 1960's, else you'd know that those were the true golden years of the one-hit-wonders. After all, "making a record" meant a 45 rpm single phonograph disc back then with the primary song on the "A" side and some filler material on the "B" side.
I wish, but don't buy it.
When people complain about CD's with 2 good songs and 10 yucky ones they are talking about popular music, IE: rock, punk, rap, etc. While this may be the largest segment of stuff in your local music store, there are other genres where the entire CD is wanted material. Classical music (you know Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff, etc), Movie and Broadway sound tracks remain staple areas. As long as there is a demand for this kind of material CD's won't completely disappear.
... = Death
Let's face it, there are so many forms of entertainment out there and only so many hours in a day. Couple that with work, the internet, video games, etc. All forms of entertainment are competing with each other for time that's increasingly not there.
Head of digital media research company conveniently forgets the enormous costs of producing and distributing CD's.
Let's say for argument's sake, 100,000 CD kits cost $5 to make. Before you sink a half-million on inventory, you pay the printer, graphic designer, shipping costs, editors/proof readers and logistics personnel to get everything to the final CD packager.
You still haven't distributed a single CD. To distribute the CD you pay shipping and a variety of logistics personnel to make sure they are getting where they need to go.
Your sales/marketing costs don't go away with digital distribution and for that reason, the media conglomerates will maintain their cartel and probably make MORE MONEY THAN EVER
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Music industry has been a dinosaur for years, and face it they where never interested in the consumer. For years people HAD to purchase a CD, Tape, Album for all of song, and 10 or 11 pieces of crap filler. Its the EVIL P2P people that our killing the industry they say. Cassette tape have been around for decades and decks biggest selling features being that of high speed dubbing, & synchro starting. Piracy has always been around and always will be. Music always has and always will be copied. Its nothing new, what is new is by being forced to sell music in piecemeal, People are only buying what they want and not getting ripped off on the filler. Using digital format, we make backups. CD/Tape get lost, stolen, broken we don't go out and buy a new one, we burn a copy. (After buying the Metallica Black Album 4 times, who in their right mind would play for yet another copy of something you have already bought and own.) Now while I may download a song, If I like it (ie listen to it more than once) I will support the ARTIST and buy a copy or at least order a t-shirt or something from their website. Nobody ever has any love for the greedy labels, who do nothing but take most the profits of the artists. Today with digital formats the artist can bypass the label all together and guess what they get 100% of the profit and nobody misses the label. We the consumer are not forced into paying extra money for bad songs that we will never listen to.
Now with one song purchases we can do away with buying the cereal to get the toy mentality. The busines model can survive but I think the artists are going to be the one to eat it. Sorry Britt Britt.
FlyingPizzas.com, for the tasteful hermit
I work in a Manhattan building whose main tenant is one of the big four record companies. The looks of doom and despair you see on their employees' faces everyday make Milton from Office Space look like Rachel Ray. I think it's safe to assume that the office we sublease from them will add more to their bottom line this year than a new Ashlee Simpson CD.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
CDs started out pretty expensive. I think my first CD was about $30 or so. In the early 90s, new CD prices were going down on a regular basis, to the point where they were making it harder for the used CD shops to stay in business. A lot of large and medium sized labels were able to get their releases out for $9, which made buying a new release a lot easier to swallow than deciding to wait a few weeks for it to show up at the used shops for $6-8.
After a lot of the better used markets started to dry up, what I noticed is that new CD prices kept creeping back toward $20, and some of the shops that used to exclusively sell new CDs started selling used CDs as well... for $12-15.
The Harmony House chain used to be a big deal in southeastern Michigan. As the industry changed, they stopped expanding locations. Eventually, they started closing a few stores, then collapsed to one store for classical and one for everything else. Then they just went to one location. I started making a regular trip to start buying some previously expensive niche label stuff that used to be well over $20 - Mille Plateaux, Forcetracks, Mute, etc. because now they were dumping everything at half price or less.
When I read the articles covering Harmony House's woes, the company spokesmen blamed it on the internet. While there's some validity to that, it wasn't the internet that kept most people away. It was the fact that their stock was regularly overpriced. If CD priced had continued to go down from their low, they should have reached the $5 mark by now.
In retrospect, I wonder how much piracy $5 CDs would have avoided, because I know my purchasing habits started to change from the most expensive releases before reaching the less expensive. Maybe it would have gotten to the point it is today anyway, but I doubt you'd see the level of wholescale consumer rebellion the labels are dealing with now.
I am a musician and have been for 30 years. Never had a major deal but understand enough about the industry to conclude the end is near.
No one wants to admit it but filesharing is the primary reason the industry is experiencing declining fortunes. When I say primary I do not mean to ignore other factors contributing to the decline of the industry.
Yes they failed to embrace the technological revolution until too late
Yes they put out a signifigant quantity of inferior product or coddle losers like Britney
Yes they are a fat and bloated bureacratic bunch of bungling psychophants
Yes the ala carte offering on download sites is a factor
But hands down, the sheer amount of lost revenue to illegal downloading and offshore piracy is surely bankrupting the industry as a whole. The Digital revolution made this possible wheras before, analog inferiority and generational audio loss was the major hindrence.
The current generation of "fans" if you can call them that feel a sense of entitlement to download anothers property freely. They reason its just a song so whats the harm and if we multiply that times hundreds of millions of downloaders over the course of their lifetimes and what economic model does this serve?
Ultimately it serves to kill whats good about the music industry as evidenced in its history of discovering, nurturing and supporting/marketing artists worthy of our attention. I am fortunate to have been born in the 60's and to not have been subjected to the drivel that passes for music today. I came of age in the 70's, a decade when the long playing LP was more than just a collection of singles.
The future (if things remain as they are) will be filled with more of the current crop of talentless music pimps and ho's shouting and wriggling with a microphone and rendering lackluster musical pornography and I dont have problem with that as long as there is more to choose from but I predict there wont be and I prefer true pornogrpahy to the lukewarm tittilation that you find in todays music. I say to britney or beyonce etc. go to porn already!
The future for music is a Randian nightmare where creativity goes unrewarded and eventually dies on the vine.
Its happpening now, expect more of the same
I miss the days when listening to an album was an experience. This was because the artist carefully crafted the album to create a mood or feeling. Many artists would write 40 songs and turn 10 into an album. Now they write 2 songs and fill in the others with generic three chord rock songs about how they once knew a girl and something happended.
I am hoping that the death of the album is a good thing. The last thing we need is another Nickelback album. The death of the current market structure and format can only give the artist more freedom to be creative and that's what I really miss about mainstream music.
Until then, I'll keep looking for those indie bands that get it and keep listening to my King Crimson albums on my headphones.
Here's a clue: in the long run, you have to give the customers their money's worth. Either charge less or deliver more. ("Dark Side of the Moon," anyone?)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I grew up in the 80's and 90's when MTV's focus was music and music videos. If they weren't playing a video, they were playing something about a band or the music. They promoted new artists all the time. This is where I heard of all the new artists, along with a lot of other people. MTV was on basic cable, so just about everyone with cable got it. This was great promotion for the record companies. In the last decade (maybe more) MTV started to focus on reality tv. Some has been entertaining, but the more they focused on this, the less people found out about new music. Sure, they'll play videos on their other stations, but not too many people get those. The record companies seem to have lost a great source for promoting new artist. Your local clear channel station is not going to take a chance on a new artist/band like Arcade Fire or LCD Soundsystem.
"No more albums", "No more filler tracks"
Not all bands write their singles and then pad the rest of the album out, some actually write about 20 songs, select the ones they like the most, and release an album. THEN they choose what songs to release from the album.
It's only the American Idol and other reality show winners that choose the singles prior to releasing the album (most likely because they're covers) and then pad the rest with crap.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that there are better songs on the album...
Summation 2
They have a lot of cash, and a lot of strings to pull in washington that will prolong any death to long after we are all dead and gone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...the revenues from the downloads are killing them, it is that the quality of the bulk of their offerings is so poor that now that people get to pick and choose what they're getting, they aren't clearing the money when they were ripping us off by the CD and fobbing crap off onto us to fill the CD's.
Get better content and you'll make the same money.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
..They finally figured out what the rest of us have known for quite some time now.
Use what works.
All the music industry has to do is say, "Go ahead, pirate it, lose all the music in the future" Then it wont be fun anymore. ..also, isn't music these days already lost?
So let me get this straight, rock stars will now have to actually WORK for the money they make? They can no longer rely solely on record sales to provide their multi-million dollar mansions. Boo-fucking-hoo, I've always supported the music I like by going to seem them in concert. An album is a way to create interest and get new fans to come see you live. This is the new music market the "record industry" had better start slimming down.
True that...
The only thing I want to hear from Christina Aguilera is her moaning my name.
The industry isn't going anywhere, it's just changing. Most people don't understand that the labels are basically venture capital for musicians. A VC invests in a start-up and gets stock in return. A label invests in artists and gets (historically) CD sales in return. Large companies can throw their weight around because they had enough starting capital to create good products, make the right partnerships, and grow. Large artists like Radiohead can do a "name your price" promotion because they had enough marking, promotion, and distribution to gain a sizable following. VCs invest in a portfolio of companies because they know 1 in 12 will succeed, and that 1 has to pay for the 11 failures. Labels invest in a portfolio of artists for the same reason.
Small start-ups can self fund, but the largest companies continue to have significant VC backing because it takes a lot of resources to make products and grow. Companies sign with VCs because they want that upfront investment. Unsigned artists can promote/distribute, but the biggest artists continue to have major label backing. Most serious artists continue to want label deals because they want the upfront payment and marketing/distribution muscle that allows them to focus on their artistry and not how they're going to feed themselves tomorrow. As proof, notice that even the big YouTube/MySpace artists are signing label deals.
So what's changing is that the labels will have to provide more services for artists and get things other than CD sales in return. But the need for "venture capital for artists" isn't going anywhere, so long as there are people who want to make music for a living.
Record labels' bigger issue is replacing CD sales
By Troy Wolverton
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:11/17/2007 01:37:25 AM PST
In the end, the long battle by the record labels against unrestricted digital music may have been little more than sound and fury signifying nothing.
At least, that's how it's starting to appear now that two of the major labels in recent months have embraced in some fashion the MP3 format, which has no copy protection. The early returns from those moves indicate they've had little impact on the industry's fortunes - for better or for worse.
Instead, the moves highlight a bigger problem. And that is how the labels are going to replace sales of CD albums, which constituted the core of their business and have plummeted in recent years.
"These are ailing businesses on their last legs," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a market research company focused on digital media. The question of copy protection on song downloads "matters a whole lot less to them than it once did."
For years, the major record labels fought a pitched battle against the MP3 format. The format doesn't allow for any copy restrictions, which made it a popular choice for songs swapped on illicit file-trading sites such as the original Napster and Morpheus.
To combat such piracy, the major labels insisted online stores that sold music had to wrap songs and albums in digital rights management (DRM) technology, which can restrict the number of copies users can make of a song or the number and types of devices it can be played on.
But online music and electronics vendors complained that such restrictions were limiting sales, in part because not all formats worked on every type of player.
In the past year, the music labels have become increasingly receptive to those arguments. In April, EMI announced it would make its entire catalog available for sale in DRM-free formats. In August, Universal Music Group, the world's largest recording company allowed the sale of a significant portion of its catalog in the MP3 format.
The labels' moves have opened up competition in the digital music space. In September, Amazon.com launched a digital music store, featuring only MP3 tracks. Meanwhile other, older digital music vendors, including iTunes and Wal-Mart's Web store, added DRM-free tracks.
Because those songs lack DRM, they can be played on just about any digital music device.
Although it's still early, DRM-free music seems to have had, at best, a slight positive benefit to the music industry.
Sales of DRM-free music to date have "outperformed" EMI's expectations, and Wal-Mart has seen its MP3 sales grow "considerably" since August, when its Web store made them available, representatives for the two companies said. However, neither they nor other labels or Web stores disclosed specific sales results.
Overall, the number of digital songs sold each week seems to have been unaffected by the launch of the major DRM-free stores since May, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital song sales - both of tracks with and without DRM - are in the same range after May as they were in the weeks before DRM-free sales started.
But that's small consolation for an industry whose wholesale revenue in the United States was down 11 percent in the first half of this year, according to IFPI, the industry's global trade group. That's on top of declines in retail sales in six out of the past seven years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Even if the effect has been questionable, some analysts think that eventually all the labels will sell DRM-free music.
"The writing on the wall, for the most part, is here for DRM," said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president and research director for Jupiter Research.
But not yet. Universal and Warner are still just experimenting with DRM-free music, and Sony BMG isn't even doing that much, analysts note.
"The marketplace wil
Record companies would drop or not sign promising acts if they didn't fit a certain mold. When grunge/alternative was king, it was harder to break if you weren't a grunge band from anecdotes I've ehrd. I'm sure in the early days for grunge it was harder for them if they weren't a hair band.
Now, a band can produce their music and get it out with less corporate filters. If it doesn't fit a certain pattern or trend, so be it.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The industry should return to the olde days, that people should be getting into the industry for their artistic interest and paid accordingly. None of this entertainer stuff, I want musicians--and it's called quality music content. This is all too familiar in the sports industry (high priced players, mediocre performances, greedy owners).
I remember what it was like way back when. What they had in RECORD stores was very different. The section for classical music was much larger. You bought LP's for classical, show and movie music, old "standards", and albums of a few of the top performers. All the "pop" music (relatively ephemeral stuff) was on 45's (hit singles with whatever on the B side).
Go back ANOTHER 10-20 years, and there was NOTHING BUT SINGLES (on 78's). An "album" was two or more 78's with a cover. The original Broadway cast album of Brigadoon was TEN songs, it HAD to be releasable as an album of 5 78's.
The music industry was alive and well back then when most people bought singles. The single was the mainstay of the industry. It was a perfectly workable business model. Maybe not as lucrative as forcing people to buy everything on albums, but workable. The music industry needs to figure out what they used to do 50-60-70 years ago, and go back to it. Obviously that is what customers want, because as soon as it became technically feasible again there has been a stampede to it.
Or maybe the music industry has its head too firmly planted where the sun don't shine, and won't see this, and won't get on the ball, and it WILL DIE.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
I've personally stood in a studio while a small college band was recording. I've fiddled with pro tools and positioning the mikes. I know what it costs per hour (about $100) and the total cost to record an album ($1-2k for a demo, about 10k-??? for a full on professional album). It's NOT THAT EXPENSIVE. It only takes a band a few weeks to make an album! SO, the minimum number of people buying music in order to have JUST as much music actually produced as there is today is only a TINY fraction of the money currently spent on music. If, say, HALF the revenues of a cd actually went to the band/production costs(cds are about 8 bucks wholesale, so $4.00) instead of maybe $0.10 they'd have to sell a LOT less.
If, on itunes, about half the money went to the people making the music (the band, the songwriters, the studio workers) they could probably charge $0.30 a song. Furthermore, popular bands easily make millions by touring - if they ONLY had income from tours, popular musicians wouldn't starve - they'd just have to live in smaller mansions and throw fewer parties with less free cocaine.
Once the middlemen all die and stop drowning out the industry with "popular" music and billions in advertising, I think the industry will be healthier. Just as much music will be made, and people will pay a lot less for it.
You have bought into the record companys' BS. Copying a song (or data or anything else) is not stealing, it is unauthorized copying. Stealing is when you take someone's possession and deprive them of it. If I was somehow able to transfer the copyright ownership of a song to myself, then I will have stolen it. Until then when I have done is potentially deprive someone of income from that song. They still own the song.
Why potentially? Because if I had to pay what they are charging, I might not have bought it.
With the exception of a very small number of bands, nobody but the record company and the distributor makes money anyway. I have many friends in the music industry, from Artists to engineers and mixers and just about everything else across the board. They copy music.
Almost all artists make money on performances and merchandise. Some make money on music, but it is the exception. See King Crimson and Porcupine Tree for examples.
Stop buying into the RIAA's re-definition of stealing.
W
Why has nobody mentioned the Draconian DMCA being pushed through Switzerland and Canada...two places I honestly expected to some of the LAST to go!
THIS is what truly terrifies me - corporatocracy. Government by the will of the corporation, for the corporation. Democracy, it seems, has been subverted.
Just look to Canada's recent minimum sentencing drug law push after a court ruled prohibition illegal.
And the Swiss were supposed to be safer with Direct Democracy. I suppose we'll watch it tested in the near future...
Me, I am still boycotting them until it also says "DRM Free, no Sony Rootkits".
And with a price drop, I would again buy more.
To survive and prosper, Big Music needs to do a couple of things in this new era of the music industry. They first need to go on a diet and get used to smaller revenues coming in with the demise of the force-fed album sale. And second, they need to get more exercise. That is, in order to compensate for smaller revenues due to ala carte buying of songs via download, they need to increase the supply of music by recruiting and promoting a lot more artists. There needs to be an explosion of quantity and diversity of music. If you can't sell more albums, then sell a lot more songs. This is all doable, but it's going to mean abandoning the old business model.
I'm not a fan of Big Music, but if they are smart, they can certainly survive and perhaps even win back all of the goodwill they've lost trying to prop up the old model. Long odds...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
How could music industry be on in its last legs? The article basically tries to push off this number that 15 Songs does not equal 1 album. This is garbled microeconomics. The fact of the matter is that this is a macro-economic change. People are still buying the same quantity of music. People just aren't buy the crap. This is a macroeconomic change that is long overdue. As soon as the recording industry fixes their quality and price; the overall quantity and gross sales will improve.
..pass the popcorn: let's enjoy the show!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Record industry: You ARE the weakest link. Good bye.
Oh wait.
The movie folks fought like heck to kill the VCR. And in the end, not only did home video not kill the movie biz, it likely saved it. Try to image a movie industry that only makes money from theatre showings and the occasional soundtrack. Now it's not tapes but discs, but we have the movie, the director's cut, the remaster, the collectors box set. I doubt Disney pumps out all those direct-to-video sequels because home video is killing their business model.
Likewise, when the music industry folks finally get their heads out of their butts, they'll realize direct digital distribution is not a threat, but rather the savior.
I don't know why they haven't jumped on board years ago. You mean we get to sell music without the overhead of a physical plant to produce discs/tapes/whatever, without a transportation infrastructure to deliver the product to retailers, without having to share the profit with stores? What's the catch?
Yes, making quality copies is easier for the consumer than taping off the radio or making a dub from a friend. But 1) that fact doesn't negate any of the positives of the above paragraph. And 2) playing luddite and ignoring all the positives of the above paragraph doesn't prevent any of the issues of unlicensed digital copies.
So as it is now, the RIAA folks get all the negatives (from their point of view) of the internet and digital music, while refusing to partake in any of the positives.
One day they will wake up, just like the movie folks did. When that happens, not only will the digital revolution not kill the music industry, it will save it.
To the folks who say the music industry will go away because bands don't need it, I disagree. Not everyone has the resources to build/rent a studio and make masters. And throwing up your mp3s on the band web site is trivial when you're a local hit and expecting a couple thousand downloads; it's not quite the same when you're hoping for millions of downloads. Putting together a tour of college town bars with an old VW van is not quite the same as organizing an international tour of stadiums.
Yes, the current business model is something akin to the record companies are property owners and artists are overworked dirt get combed by share croppers. Yes, I hope direct community built between bands and fans through the web will give artists move leverage. But I doubt music companies as we know them will disappear any more than the web and digital distribution has freed authors and killed off the publishing houses.
You did lots of drugs in the 70's, didn't you?
Best Slashdot Co
With Trent Reznor dropping usb keys with his latest album in random restrooms and asking the finders to share... you think the "others" in his industry won't realize they can create & market without a gaggle of idiots taking A LITTLE OFF THE TOP at every step of the process?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Look at pre-2001 Afghanistan - music was considered sinful and evil and was banned. But people would still meet in secret and sing, and would still find ways of obtaining cassettes or CDs and listen to them behind locked (and presumably sound-proof) doors.
In fact I would say that BigMusic is anything BUT. They are only in it for the money, they don't care about art, about expression, or about individuality. Not that there's anything wrong with making money off of art, but it should most definitely not be the prime motivation. And the reason why music sucks so hard nowadays is because money has become the prime motivator for many so-called 'artists'. If anything the demise of the record industry (just the word 'industry' disgusts me) could usher a re-awakening of 'true' music - art for art's sake.
I agree with the many insightful posts which have observed that this is just a shift and the industry will be leaner and better than ever. The desire for music will never go away.
But, isn't there also a bit of a downturn in how much people are willing to spend on music, simply because it's not a cornerstone of their hobbies anymore? I know that for myself I never just sit and ONLY listen to music. I'm on the web, watching TV, movie, reading a book, etc. Most of my music time is in my car, when I listen to the radio. The rest of the time, music is either a bother to what I'm doing (reading), or it's just background music in which case the radio is just fine. I no longer pop in an album and just sit and listen to it. So the value of music, to me, has been reduced to some vaguely noticed background noise and entertainment for when I drive. So it's no longer something I'm willing to pay much, if anything for. The radio is free. And the few REALLY good songs I want for my mp3 player or to keep on my computer, I'm not willing to buy the whole album to get it. Nor am I willing to pay $1 per song.
These days we have many more options of what to do in our free time. I'm not going to pay for music until it becomes closer to 25 cents per song. Even then, it better be a really good song, and better be DRM free.
This is similar to the time when recorded music began being sold, or when radio started playing recorded music. Everyone was convinced that live performances would die out, and concerts would lose to recording studio sessions. It didn't happen of course, nor will the death of the "music industry" (though more appropriately TFA should be referring to as the "recording industry"). The industry has been changing over the course of the last several years, and will continue to do so.
I also agree with the earlier posts that said the reason for decreased CD sales is due to lower quality content. I have been burned far too many times by buying an entire CD and finding that the only songs I like are the two or three I've heard on the radio. I think if the recording studios want to keep selling CDs/records/albums, they will need to put out content that stands together as a piece of performance art, not a compilation of singles. Great examples of this (for me anyway) include Pearl Jam's Ten, Pink Floyd's The Wall, or even Fiona Apple's Tidal, all of which in my opinion are greater as an album than as a sum of their individual songs.
there is no spoon. or fork. there is a butter knife, and it's dull.
3. To act as a filter. Few people have the time to sift out which acts are good and which are not. It is this case where the industry has failed most miserably.
...but why does music require an "industry" anyway?
We shouldn't even really need guitars (though I do, myself, along with amps, pedals, etc.), but people can just get together and sing, right?
"You have bought into the record companys' BS. Copying a song (or data or anything else) is not stealing, it is unauthorized copying."
I dont care how you look at "copying" and the fact is "unauthorized copying" is stealing in the digital realm any way you slice it. I am not reffering to ripping a cd for your own uses but filesharing using a medium that facilitates widespread unauthorized distribution, the internet.
Can you download or copy a car?
How about a house?
How about a winter coat?
Of course you cant but if you were to obtain the original or a copy of those items above without payment/licensing you would be charged with theft and jailed.
Because 1 song is a lowly few meg of data easily and freely traded withhout any sort of regulation, that makes it ok?
This is where the crack comes in and my observation is not the RIAA definition of stealing...IT IS THE DEFINITION OF STEALING!
Wake Up and dont reason it otherwise while you make excuses like...
2 out of the 12 tracks are the only good ones
rock/rap stars and exec's make too much money
the industry was slow to adopt downloading
None of those excuses or others justify obtaining someone elses property without compensation to the property owner and is stealing if then made available to the WORLD.
When I found out my PS3 could play them, I picked up several classical and jazz albums in SACD format. The sound quality is remarkable, and the surround sound in several cases really replicates the sound of a live hall.
I wish the music industry had pushed SACD more and released less expensive players. Honestly, I didn't even know it existed until I got a PS3, so it apparently never received broad support. I think the music industry could be saved if they released high definition content at a lower price. At $19 a pop, the hybrid SACD discs just seem overpriced, but $10 a disc I think would make it easier to splurge on a couple discs a month.
Everyone here seems to look at the Internet as the all encompassing way to promote or learn about anything. Well, that would be true if the penetration of the Internet was 100%. It isn't. Not by a long shot. The US isn't 100% broadband capable, meaning there are places where you just can't get anything better than dialup. Satellite is going to work in most places, but even that is problematic and it is pretty expensive for what you get.
The real issue with "the music industry" is promotion. When it dies - as it probably will soon - music promotion goes away. There are significant numbers of people employed indirectly in this area, far more than you probably think. There will be a sizable economic impact, especially in larger cities. There will also be side effects, such as music format radio stations and a number of "trade" publications just folding up.
Advertising is going to change. Today you still have publications in larger cities that are ad-supported and much of their advertising comes from music promotion in one way or another. These are publications doomed.
I do not see a radio station that is fed what is popular trying to figure out what to play themselves. Their advertisers pay to be on a station that is "popular" and is playing "popular" music. A radio station isn't a two-way medium and trying to move to an all-request format would be a big change. Trying to research and "discover" unknown bands would be even bigger. And neither of these would be something that every music-format radio station is going to do.
What we saw in the 1970s and 1980s was music-only format stations being replaced by talk radio. Why? Because it was cheaper to operate that way and looked like even more ad revenue was possible. Today talk radio is a known quantity with known ad revenues. I'd say music on radio stations is pretty much over because nobody is going to be paying to either get played or supplying stations with lists of what is popular.
I'd say some big changes are coming.
HOW are the music labels LOSING MONEY?!?!?!
Let me get this straight. They no longer have to make CD's to sell tracks.
The CD is costing them around 1.00 to make and sells for 18.00 for a major performer in most mall music stores.
When customers buy music online the industry pays literally NOTHING to get that music to the consumer. They only have to copy a track
that is already on someone else's (itunes) storage.
Sure people are buying less music (ie: one or five tracks off of an album, but there are still those who buy entire albums off of itunes and the like.
at 1$ or more per track they're still making 10-16 dollars if someone buys the whole album online and NO PRODUCTION COSTS!
I ask again how are they losing money? Either they're complete idiots or they are whiny liars.
Either way no pity from me.
And I really mean it.
So they are making less money ? Wow. No longer outrageous profits ?
Here is a very nice idea. I think I'll even patent it: try cutting your costs.
Start with the salaries and bonuses of those big executives.
How about trying to promote real musicians instead of teenager "fake-virgin" girls with crappy songs and nothing inside their heads ? I'll tell you another secret: real, good music is easier to sell than crappy songs. It is cheaper for you. Less costs = more profits.
I wonder it this was too much for them, and their brains is coming out of their noses with all these revolutionary theories I presented here. Well, at least I hope thats their brains. Hard to tell, really.
morcego
I agree with you 100%. I listen to 3 stations here in Pittsburgh. The NPR affiliate that plays jazz, the NPR affiliate that plays classical, and the NPR affiliate that plays indie/folky music. I get so angry when someone tries to cut NPR's funding.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
Sure you can get a lot of recording equipment that sounds pretty good, but what about the rest of the process? No matter what kind of music it is, you'll most likely have to compress it and mix it right to have it sound good. Remember that most listening environments don't have a listening dynamic range as large as the recording studio. So, how well will a badly mixed or mastered song do? Music in the 70's was greatly compressed (take a listen to Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic on CD not remastered, or listen to the album on tape or LP).
While this is a tempting line of thought, there are downsides. Record Labels do the marketing and distribution so the really good artists can get exposure. The more money the labels make, the more risk money they have for new unknown acts. Less money = more conservative, safer acts. And yes, I know, this was before every major label was supposed to be a cash cow for a media conglomerate. That, not the internet, is probably the major cause of their downfall: loss of connection to the artists & audience, too much focus on profitability.
Now in the internet age a musician's competing for attention with 10^8 other musicians. Even if they're terrific, what's their chance of standing out? And without the labels you get to do your own marketing. Yay. So the musician's now spending 80% of their time and money on trying to stand out instead of making music. If they're already famous that's less of a problem, but I imagine it makes the scene less attractive to some that are just getting into the music business.
It's not as if there is any shortage of talent out there- it's just that the only music you're ever going to hear is the mass-produced garbage that record execs think is trendy. Listen to any radio station in america and you'll notice they're playing a loop of the same 10 or 12 songs, over and over, day and night, for weeks on end. The radio stations are told what to play by the record labels. Recording equipment is cheap enough that any band who wants to record can do so, for at most a few thousand dollars. What the industry provides is *promotion*. TV ads, time on MTV, radio time- these are the things only industry insiders can get. Since they only pick a few acts every year in a genre for the royal treatment, they have to have a guarantee that every one will be a hit, which means they can't take chances on music that is different from the mainstream. So the music on the radio gets more inoffensive, unoriginal, and boring every year. If the record industry were to collapse tomorrow, it be would cause for celebration. It would certainly not affect the average touring band, and it wouldn't mean that musical innovation would suffer- the streets of america are flooded with good music and talented acts, and the big labels are simply not interested. What the world needs is more local labels, more promotion for the music that is out there and not being heard. MP3 and digital music formats are an excellent way to accomplish this. I say let the big labels burn! It's long overdue.
I always smirk when I see the statement, "The real reason the music industry is dying is because of the crap they have been putting out."
Right. It so crappy that people are tripping over themselves to rip it, publish it, and download it, by the millions upon millions.
The reason the music industry is dying is because THE PRODUCT IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE. Period.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Thanks to ClearChannel. They're all the same radio station now. And it sucks. The same stuff over and over and over and over and over. The other 50% of the time it's commercials. The music to commercial ratio is so bad I wouldn't listen even if they played good music.
I can't stand the radio anymore.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I've listened to everything Glass has ever put on vinyl/cd/the internet, seen him live playing piano, seen his pieces performed live, watched the films he's scored: you name it, I've heard it. And I can say categorically that he doesn't use silence, and in fact seems to hate silence. Maybe in his earliest minimalist phase, maybe then, but otherwise, absolutely not under any circumstance could Philip Glass be said to use silence.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
Tours are done by the agent, not the record company. Most of what you ask is done by the agent/manager of a band. Try to learn a little bit more about how the music industry works please.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You make some good points but have missed one...shrinkage!
No not of the George Constanza sort.
"Since they only pick a few acts every year in a genre for the royal treatment, they have to have a guarantee that every one will be a hit, which means they can't take chances on music that is different from the mainstream."
They cant take chances because they are losing revenue in many ways but mostly due to the fact that todays file sharing, which is effectively stealing, is incredibly efficient and without consequence to the perps and has reduced revenues by an amount that is ushering in something unknown, piracy to the degree it exists today versus the deterents and difficulty to perpetrate piracy in the analog days.
You can argue all day and all of the night to paraphrase the kinks but you cannot reason out the most obvious fact that file sharing is akin to giving product away and what business model is built on that?
None that survive anyway and so what you have is this new generation of music shoplifters who reason it away with all sorts of moral equivalence that never mention the simple fact and is evidenced over and over here, file sharing is stealing.
In any industry that offers a diverse product, not all products make money but the ones that do provide for continued product development and profit for themselves and even those that dont until they are improved or dropped.
LOSS of product via file sharing = loss of profit = a shrinking industry with even less chances taken
This is in no way excusing the industry but is pure and simple economics and if you believe otherwise, you are part of the problem.
Maybe this just nitpicking the title and not the article (haven't reg'd to RTFA myself), but the "music industry" will continue, albeit in varied forms. The *record companies* will either change drastically (hint: offering DRM-free downloads is not drastic enough) or die and have their IP bought by a company that gets it.
What ought to happen is what's happened to TV/Internet. Let the users have *everything* for $50/month. By "everything" I mean links to a library of every freaking song ever recorded. Not EMI's for $12/month and Colombia's for $10/month, and only on one device per household at a time...but a "base package" with a few premium catalogs a la carte for a couple dollars.
Every. Freaking. Song. Ever.
Then let the consumer play it on home stereo systems, computers, iPods, cars, phones, and watches if they want. Find an innovative way to filter it, whether it's XM-style channels, or collaboratively (people who made playlists similar to yours like the following bands that you haven't heard of).
I'm sure once upon a time some MBA said "No one is going to pay $50/month for TV. TV is Free!" Yet here we are. Do the same with music. Some people are gonna steal it, but an army of PhDs hasn't figured out how to stop that from happening, so they're gonna steal anyway. Make a legal way to let the masses access everything with little fuss, and plenty of people will take them up on it.
Sadly, the record companies will never agree to it. Perhaps one day when they can be bought for pennies on the dollar, some company with cash and vision (google) will do it right.
You're all idiots.
The music industry has been pushing crap for decades.
I seriously doubt the music industry is "dying". As far as I understand their sales are slipping a bit from the last media upgrade cycle, but that's not surprising. Their sales have also been off a bit because of a large pool of not very good music they've been pushing. They'be been trying to boost profits by widening the appeal of individuals CDs so they can sell more of individual CDs and produce fewer CDs per year.
Now, the important thing to remember is that profit != revenue. You have to expect revenues to fall as the music industry moves from physical to digital distribution. Why? Because costs have dropped. There's no little plastic case for the music, no plastic wrap, no fuel costs for shipping, no boxes to put the CDs in, no broken CDs because of accidents during shipping. There are fewer middle-men and the new middle-men are cheaper than the old ones. Think of it this way: when a CD sold for $15 with 15 tracks, the record label got less than $15 from that sale. Now they get close to $0.60 for each track from iTunes. But their fixed costs and marginal costs are much, much lower.
I sincerely doubt the record labels are going to die, they're just loosing the barriers to entry that prevented competitors from entering the market. As other people have said, they can be the one-stop turnkey solution for recording, promotion and digital distribution. They just have to get used to selling individual songs instead of full cds, and developing effective niche marketing strategies. In reality the digital distribution revolution opens up some new economies of scale.
Profits are likely to decline in the short term while they adjust the new environment and while up and new entrants will be snagging sections of the market that the old behemoths aren't adaptive enough to nail down. It's a loss of prestige and power but it's only going to result in the death of a record label if they decide to fight the changes to the bitter end.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
...that's what DJ's are for.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
They're not going anywhere for a long while.
They own copyright to the last 70 years' worth of popular music.
Perhaps if they could hire artists that produced a number of hit singles instead of one or two and the rest as filler they'd make more money. Increasing quality is a time-proven answer to competition. Perhaps if they cut back on the price they charge for a cds some folks would return to buying cds with their higher sound quality. Decreasing costs is a time-proven answer to competition. Perhaps if they stopped signing artists to multi-album deals that inevitably kill their creativity (Prince, George Michael, Michael Jackson). Cutting stupid expenses is a time-proven answer to competition. Why the music industry thinks that regular business practices don't apply to them escapes me.
The music industry is still in the BLACK. Profitable. They are making less profits, but still doing fine. They are not about to collapse. Posting this article is an insult to Slashdot's integrity.
Additionally, who logs in to iTunes and buys just one song? Personally I am spending more now that I can choose. This article is a joke.
It seems to me that the only reason the industry would be scared of tracks selling individually for $1/song is because they have built a nice business around selling CDs with 10 filler songs and 2 catchy ones for $15. I can't imagine buying the catchiest half of "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" even if it saved me $6, but I'd happily buy just one or two songs from either of Snow Patrol's latest two albums.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
For the major labels, it's over. It's fucking over. You're going to burn to the fucking ground, and we're all going to dance around the fire. And it's your own fault.
I'm not sure there would be all that much of a loss to the record industry by not selling physical CDs.
Retail shops (amazon, hmv etc) are going to take perhaps a 20% cut from the retail price. Then there's the physical cost of shipping, CD duplication and printing... so perhaps there's about $6-7 going back to the record company - that's $6-7 for 10-12 songs.
Or on iTunes - 10-12 songs cost around 10-12 dollars.
Presumably the costs of distribution are quite low on iTunes - after all there is no physical product or shop, and minimal staffing needs.
Which looks 'better' from a record industry point of view?
They're able to sell random old songs, and suffer (I presume) no limitations of keeping physical stock. Customers can pick random tracks and buy them as they see fit - classic long tail stuff. My hunch is that people will buy the same number of tracks (or spend the same amount on music at least) regardless of whether they're going for digital or 'hard copy' stuff... they just get to buy a better range for their money when it's digital.
The Ginger Dog
All she is doing is trying to raise two kids! You are putting her out on the street! How dare anyone out there make fun of Britney. You are STEALING her music! All she asks is $15 for one of her CDs. That's nothing to you! She only has several million dollars, no thanks to you pirates out there! So leave Britney alone, okay?!?
*sob*
*sob*
The music industry isn't going anywhere the recording industry is what is going away. This isn't the first time an occupation has disappeared becuase of progress. I am a Mechanical Engineer. In the old (1960's) ME's had a whole support staff of drafters, analysts, computers (human job not machine), tech writers, modelers, ect. Today most of these functions are handled with software to make us more efficient. I can now make my own CAD models even though I can't draw to save my life. I can use Stress FEA packages to check my hand calcs which saves the analysts time because the designs are (should) be better by the time they get them. The same thing here. Software and Hardware engineers have unleashed the creative people whether they are artists, engineers, musicians, industrial designers, ect to do more with fewer assistants then ever before. The same is true here. Musicians can create their own work without editors, producers, distributers.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Imagine if McDonalds only sold meals, no individual items. And each meal came with your burger, fries, drink and a generous portion of steamed cabbage. Nobody wants the steamed cabbage, but you pay for it becuase you want the rest. Do you honestly think that model would work forever?
If they'd created something along the lines of iTunes without DRM in the late 90's, it might have done what video rental did for film studios.
They didn't.
We've had free music for over a decade, and I for one have absolutely no inclination to start paying now. I'd probably be willing to pay if I could be assured that all the proceeds went to the artists, but otherwise I wouldn't even consider it.
And even if there is some truth to it, then too fucking bad. The "music" industry is why music sucks, they fought against innovation and now they can't compete. Because of new technology musicians no longer need their services (read that as opression and theft because they routinely steal and defraud musicians, but then they sue at the drop of a hat if someone gets something over them).
I'm sick of the music and other media industries (multi-billon dollars) trying to limit and hamper the developement of the IT industry (a multi-trillon dollars). Technology is the future and these troglodyte mafia-esque assholes are trying to cripple our whole culture by perminately privatizing our culture and trying to smash the development of new communication and consuption technologies. It is pathetic, these fuckers need to hurry up and die!
Was this the same researcher who said Apple was on its last legs in the late 90s?
Here is the problem with the music industry to think about:
1) Most of the music made today sucks massive donkey balls. I say "most" not "all". I know people have a variety of tastes, but honestly - has there been any major hits and songs you MUST have?
2) In today's age, I don't have to buy a CD to get a song I love. I can just by the song and that is that. I don't have to buy a CD full of other songs that either suck or I have no interest in. THAT is why CD sales and the industry is dying. Nobody is buying a CD full of crap just to get a song that is half ass decent.
3) The RIAA has pretty much done a fine ass job of shooting itself in the foot. Guess by showing the world that music is about MONEY and not EXPRESSION has painted a pretty picture about all artists, huh?
it seems to me that a company would be able to crank the price down to $.75 or $.80 per song and still break the same profit on a per album purchase while still giving nearly 50% of the purchase price to the retailer since you cut out production, shipping, in store marketing and relations, etc.
Supposedly when money changes hands, it's either a donation or a mutual transfer of value (company gives value in terms of services, client gives value in terms of money). I can clearly see that the artist provides lots of value so they do deserve to get lots of money. I can also see that Apple also provides some value for the platform, albeit not as much as the artist's. But I honestly fail to see what kind of value the label offers in the modern marketplace. I can understand that labels were useful before the Internet, but in the modern era a good artist could earn their money just by selling their stuff online and getting paid through PayPal (or preferably a smaller similar service). So, my best understanding is that labels have an obsolete business model, and offer no real value in the marketplace anymore. Giving money to someone who does not earn their business by offering real value or is in no real need for it (donation) is an act contrary to the basis of the free market. When you give money to someone who provides no value and it's not a donation, you are actively damaging the economy. The consumer also shares responsibility for the overall effectiveness of the free market: Consumers must understand who offers true value in the marketplace and only buy from them. If consumers buy from companies and people that do not offer real value, then they encourage this practice more and in the end this damages the economy and the well-being of all the humanity. According to my understanding, businesses that offer no real value resort to government-granted monopolies or sponsor laws that enable them to continue trolling the marketplace, and this is bad for genuine entrepreneurs who wish to offer real value.
They built their entire business model around the "one-good-song-per-CD-and-hype-like-crazy" business model, now they're complaining that we only buy that one song?
Somebody pass me the tiny violin...
No sig today...