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MTV: 2007 Borked the Music Industry
Sockatume writes "MTV thinks 2007 was the year the music industry broke, and provides a hefty pile of examples to justify it. Unsurprisingly, most of them revolve around the collapse of CD sales and the rise of digital distribution (authorised and otherwise). Be advised that many of the examples are the continuations or repercussions of old favourites (RIAA suits, the Sony rootkit fiasco)."
MTV: 2007 Borked the Music Industry
Ah, so that explains the hit song, "drup it like it's hut".
"Vhen my peemps in zee crib, mun: drup it like it's hut! Sveedeesh Cheff be peempin on 4-fo's!"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Just like in 1979, eh?
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
remember when MTV actually played music videos? don't they think that MIGHT have helped with the sale of music? and maybe the fact they now only play inane reality tv shows might have SOMETHING to do with the fact that music sales have dropped?
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
The other day, someone commissioned me to do some data recovery on a hard drive with more than $700 in iTunes on it (no backup, of course).
Generally, I do my best to avert my eyes during transfer of customer data but this was a little more involved and I had to verify the integrity of many of the files. With the customer's permission, I played a lot of the music and suddenly began to feel very old: I hadn't previously heard of most of the artists/songs that were recovered.
I'm glad to see that the kids aren't taking the radio monopoly. In my day, we didn't have these mechanisms to stick it to The Man (not that there isn't a problem with having all these files locked up in DRM...)
More
Why should MTV care about the music studios? Sure, I, too, remember the time when the M in MTV was for MUSIC, but it's not their biz to keep the dying studios afloat. I mean, would you tie yourself to a sinking ship?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"I mean, would you tie yourself to a sinking ship?"
The people who made the latest Titanic movie did.
...with the occasional landslide. A bit like the glaciers melting.
The music industry's old business model is outdated. Yeah, I know, if there was a "deadhorse" mod option I'd be modded into oblivion now, but maybe if we keep telling them long enough, they will finally listen.
Now, I don't want the MI to die. No, really. I don't want them to go keel up and drown. Yes, we'd still find a way to get our music through the internet, we'd go to artist pages, pay them directly and download our songs. But what about those people who don't have the net? Music is part of our life, would you really want them to do without?
Not that I'd miss American Idol nonreturnable stars, hyped today, forgotten tomorrow, but people want them and want those songs, they want those shallow, hollow feelgood crap. Who am I to dictate they should listen to good music?
So what the MI needs to find, and soon, is some other revenue stream. Personally, I could well see them turn from distributors to marketing assistants. They have excellent connections to TV and radio, so why not become the marketing and PR people for artists who think they can't market themselves?
Yes, that's probably less profitable than the current way. But this way is leading into a dead end, and the longer you run on it, and the faster you do, the more it hurts when you hit the wall at its end.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nowadays, most of those functions can be bought-in by the artist themselves. Record companies are now recognised as a barrier rather than the "necessary evil" they once were.
If their demise means more poeple start producing music, themselves, then good luck. As always, some will suceed and some will fail. However the failures will only fail because of their own shortcomings, rather than industry politics, greed, marketing and (lack of) promotion.
If there's anything us normal people can do to help bury the record companies, just let us know
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Video killed the radio star"?
Buggles 1 : MTV 0
Either you learn to evolve and thrive or you die naked cold and alone.
They've resisted the changes because the money's so good. Even when it's still as bad as they claim it to be, there's still a lot of execs and Producers and underlings driving BMW's.
It's no longer the 70's and they can't sit in the back room snorting blow and not expect everything outside of their little party to have changed.
They should have backed iTunes more vigirously instead of having to be hauled into the 21st century like a 2-year old that doesn't want to go to bed. They should have backed a DRMless format. They should have coupled with a tech source to make the benefits of an offering where the DRM would be acceptable to the listener. The should have comprehended that the entertainment dollar is now split between them and video games and the internet and everything else.
would be sad.
FAQs are evil.
don't click on the link in the parent its a minicity spam link. lets flag them all up. no hits and the links may decrease.
Now there is a news source for you. The very channel that started the music video industry is now spouting off that the record industry has "Hurt" it's own business. MTV used to be about the music and now it's about asinine "reality" shows. Now when MTV goes back to doing what their moniker implies and gets away from those stupid ass shows, THEN I'll start listening to what they have to say about the music industry and how the industry is being "Robbed", "Pirated" and/or raped of all profits and how the artists aren't able to buy multi-million dollar houses/cars/prostitutes/coke or in Gene Simmons/Michael Jackson's case, PLASTIC SURGERY!!
There was definitely a need for a change!
How much of the money goes to the actual artist? And how much goes to the label, to the retailer? Just go towards the needs of both, the customer and the artist, and you'll get things like the Radiohead album, or even better, open music.
What about a situation like EA Sport release? They take last years sports game, do minor graphical update, and market is as a new product? No wonder people aren't feeling bad for getting those for free. I know it's a game, not music, but same logic applies. Stealing bugs your conscience only when you feel sorry for the one you are stealing from, but my feeling for EA are somewhere else.
And besides, it's the old supply-demand law - no matter what the price is, unless it's zero, you are not gonna get as many people getting your album as you could. Free music is the best for the popularity, and guess what affects the sales of the merchandise and tickets to your shows?
And you also get people, actually trying to support you. I own a Year Zero album and as far as I remember, I never actually listened to the CD.
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
Ok, I make my fair share of spelling errors in my posts, too. But shouldn't the editors... ummm edit?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Exactly.
My company has an informal motto, Adapt or Die. Every 5 years or so we change directions slightly to keep competitive. Mainframe Service -> Sun Service -> Unix Development -> Application Programming no matter what the OS is -> Who know what will be next IT Project Management, Infrastructure Support... But the point is when technology changes so do we, When we feel that the area we are specialized in is dieing or we cant be competitive in then we move to a new area based on what we are good at to a new one that we have skill set to compete in and have potential to be really good at.
The Radio Industry needs to do the same. What happened in the past 10 years or so is technology improved to a point where Music can be shared in perfect condition. In the when Copy Analog to Analog there is a drop in the quality, and every other copy will in turn be worse copy. So from Beginning to Early CD (When most people harddrives were not large enough to cary the information, and they havn't found a way to personally burn your own CD Cheaply) and Music Pirates were limited to rather big operations (At lest the size of a small company) so They could Fight them off and the Fines for Copyright infringement was just. But now technology makes it too easy to copy music, and people want to share music. The industry is holding onto the old ways of doing things... And the need for them in their fashion all may be outdated in a few years, where higher quality Audio recording technology improving and the current High Quality Stuff is dropping, and getting easier to use... So people can make their own high quality music themselves with the Radio Companies Now Musicians will actually need to make their money the old fashion ways Traveling to different locations and sing, and royalties on public/commercial performances of the song. Yes they may not be huge millionaires unless they are cream of the crop, but it is back to the people to decide what they like and dislike.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not only are (many) consumers circumventing the record companies, the artists are also. It is an almost trivial matter now to self-publish your own material. If your stuff is good, you'll get the buzz, and that will take care of the marketing on it's own. What else does an artist need from a label that they can't do on their own?
Notice that more and more bands are stepping away from the big-name labels? Because they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, perhaps?
That may be part of the reason Jay-Z decided to bail out of executive suite at Def Jam.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
If the major-labels and entertainment conglomerates were to disappear tomorrow, radios would still be everywhere, including (especially) in the homes of the poorest. Instead of playing the latest hits from Britney Spears, broadcasters might have to find the music of local artists to play (or get their music from the Internet). There's no way that will provide enough revenue to support the incredibly top-heavy structure of the current entertainment industry. It would be better if they just started looking for real jobs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If, in '98, the recording industry had worked with pioneers such as Napster, rather than trying to close pandoras box after everything had fled, this would be a very different story. Rather than utilizing the internet for promotion and a sales channel, using the net to drive forward disk sales and band tours, they opted to try and hammer it down. Fear of the unknown, and fear of lack of control remains their sole cause for this. I'd pity them, and their eventual extinction. It is evolve or die time, for the RIAA and soon the MPAA, and neither one looks willing to accept the evolution, baby.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
It's alright, many of the /. readers today don't really know the term "Borked" and those that come up and post to say they do will have run to Wikipedia first to find out what it means.
On a side note: Many of the things that /.er's complain about the government gettting mixed up in would have been slammed hard by Robert Bork. If he were on the court today he'd be telling Bush and Congress that neither have the authority to do a lot of what they have done.
I think the use of the term "Borked" in the headline is misguided, though. The story doesn't fit the meaning. Again, another symptom of people who don't really know it, its just a fun word they heard and were looking for a reason to use it.
Kids, these days.
Now, get off my lawn!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's not simple, but it's straightforward.
1. SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC. Go to concerts/pubs/etc., buy self-produced CDs.
2. Buy from non-label-affiliated, artist-friendly Web sites, not fronted by megacorps. Google is your friend here, even if you're not buying from them.
3. When permitted by the artist or by "fair use" in your jurisdiction, share samples with friends or play a few tracks you're partial to for them. Word of mouth has been the greatest aid to supporting musicians since music was invented.
4. Write to your local radio station (in the US, undoubtedly ClearChannel, alas), as well as to their advertisers. Tell them that you support independent music, and won't be buying overpriced Big Label CDs any more. ClearChannel might not notice, but chances are much better that your local grocery chain or even some non-music-industry large advertisers *will* make adjustments if they've got a couple of thousand unique letters and emails coming in every week.
5. Listen to and support independent Internet radio stations. Their costs are going up way beyond orbital, thanks to the megacorps and the Bush-league "Copyright Royalty Board". While you're at it,
Yes, it means we, the fans (customers), have to put in some effort. We're going to have to break old buying habits, and actually pay attention. That's the price of living in a world where you're a customer, not just a consumer. Remember the famous quote by Jerry Michalski: a consumer is "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." We can do better than that. If we're going to move beyond being told what to listen to, what to think, by the megacorps, we HAVE to do better than that. visit http://www.savenetradio.org/ and stay informed. Fellow Americans, write (not email) your Senators and Congressperson to remind them that you care about this - and when they vote for bills like the Internet Radio Equality Act, write them thank-you notes. Congressional staff *notice* when a few hundred (or thousand) non-fill-in-the-blank letters come in on an issue... that's votes talking.
Remember, the megacorps are counting on the likelihood that you won't do anything, that you'll just continue to "crap cash" on schedule - THEIR schedule. They're counting on the "I'm too busy" or "I'm only one person" naysayers to tamp down enthusiasm, and let them carry the day.
You are personally, individually, solely responsible for the world around you. If you don't like the way things are being done, get involved. This is one relatively easy, open, effective way to start.
The music industry itself will never die.
In American i buy music online from European bands directly. my friend buys his music right from the artists.
For $500 you can set yourself up to make a few thousand cd's daily, ad in a website and an account at UPS or the post office, and mail away.
The bands that take the time to sign cd's before stuffing the cd into an envelope generally have a much more loyal following, who will pay more for music they perceive to be good.
the Music industry model is outdated. Music itself will go on. And since you can't get free internet in just about every library that's not a big deal.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
No need for wikipedia. It immediatly evoked a mindless swarm of robotised warriors sharing a hive mind that contro...
Sorry. There might have been something in what you said about the editor.
The proper sentence should have been
"MTV: 2007 Borged the Music Industry"
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Some of the stuff in the article had nothing to do with piracy, even though that's the implication: * Kelly Clarkson's album was BAD. Terrible. * Jordin Sparks is NOT talented. * Radiohead ignores the fact that one would imagine that even if their album sucks, alot of people would still get it for free. People have a higher tolerance of crap when it's free. * Island Def Jam's layoffs are likely a result of the slower economy. The record execs are one of the last groups that still piss money away on excess. * How did the Madonna deal have anything to do with music? Does she even sing anymore? * Yeah, gg music dude. "The music industry has no technologists." It's only been 8 years now, you might wanna consider that. That's like saying you company doesn't believe in telephones, or thinks that taking pictures of the artists will steal their souls. In fact, the entire music industry needs to get with the times. * Nine Inch Nails is still around? Huh. Music has stagnated, the fanbase has risen against that crap that they shove down our throats. It's funny, because country music is bigger than it's been in years--- the genre has evolved where teeny-bopper pop and "rock" music have failed to do so.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
...with the occasional landslide. A bit like the glaciers melting.
Global warming is killing the RIAA? Yay global warming!
if there was a "deadhorse" mod option I'd be modded into oblivion
Naw, this is slashdot. +5, dead horse
But what about those people who don't have the net?
The only one I know not on the internet is my 76 year old dad, and he hasn't been a music fan since they stopped playing Willie Nelson on the radio. You might as well ask "what about those people who don't have radios".
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"So what the MI needs to find, and soon, is some other revenue stream."
I hear Mickie D's is hiring burger flippers...
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Who cares what MTV thinks, thanks to themselves they have long ceased to be relevant. These are the people who deluded themselves into thinking they can define the trends and along with the music industry inflated their egos on short sighted thinking. Now they are struggling to be relevant. The net has changed the game, MTV and other music channels can no longer create talentless and manufactured hits. I guess thats good for music.
Remind me again...what does MTV have to do with music?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"We are the RIAA. Lower your lawyers, and surrender your lawsuits. You will be assimilated. Your wealth and intellectual property will be added to our own. Resistance is futile!"
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
MTV's underlying premise is that the music industry's success is measured by how much money it makes. If music isn't making money, then it's "broken". I think this attitude is a large part of why the record industry is losing so much business.
Maybe it's just bad music in general? With wonderful hits from "Soulja Boy" and other songs like "Hey Bay bay" with such diverse lyrical content, is it a surprise that the music industry in the US at least is taking a downturn?
if they had stayed with vinyl ( which sounds better anyway ) they'd never un-corked this can of worms but as Dr. Thos. Sowell notes: "You can't un-ring the bell" tee hee Copyright laws stands however, remarks by "i don't acknowlege imaginary (digital) property" NOTWITHSTANDING now ol' non-ack-imaginary-property can rail all he wants. dunno if they'll let him have a 'puter in the can though, he might have to go cold-turkey in computer-pirates anonymous
Anyone know a good way to block ALL *.myCRAPPYminicity.com sites? It's not hard to put a different line for each one spotted in the Hosts file, but I'd like to just put the full site on the list to get rid of this spam for good.
Heh, I feel you.
Sometimes I think, if new music and movies stopped being created today, but I could legally download all movies and video ever created prior to today, would I care that no more new content is being created?
I don't think so.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
the next day an A/D converter interface from RCA plugs to USB would appear in CircuitCity for $12.95
Is it just coincidence that 2007 was also the year that "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" was a huge hit? Maybe it's fun to dance to, but it's also the most musically and grammatically illiterate tune I think I've ever heard. It makes Salt N Pepa's "Push It" sound like a Mozart opera in comparison.
rotating physical media from CD to DVD to DASD are headed to the scrap heap
monster flash drives will rule
even the idea that memory is internal to the computer may be obsolete
I find it strange coming from the company that originally built itself on new and interesting music. Who later killed off Yo! MTV Raps & Headbangers Ball, Barely reports any music news, turned it's main station into Reality TV Central, shuffled all it's music to MTV2 and then started cutting videos from there as well, ignores most independent artists and panders to crass commercialism & manufactured pop-music giants. Seriously... maybe they had a small role in killing music buy changing it from an artform to a cheap plastic commodity.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
The only people at risk, are those who exist solely due the monopolized distribution channel. And I don't think there will be a place in the 'new music industry' for them. Not in any recognizable form.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Yup. And I just spent over $100 on shiny new disks. Old school, I know.
Iron and Wine, Fiest, The National, Over The Rhine, some others...
Already ripped to my media server, I no longer own a 'cd player' other than in the car, the new disks safely filed in the basement with all the others. The music industry dead? Not quite, but in turmoil for sure. I still find a lot that I enjoy though.
Also, I did not order the disks on-line. Bought at the local music store in town, http://www.jacksmusicshoppe.com/web/index.html. Considering the shipping cost from online, I only paid a little more, and the guy pays local property taxes, and he helps support the local music scene.
I take my five year old with me when I go and we check out all the instruments in back. Shiny brass, lacquered wood, snap a finger nail on the cymbals as we walk by. Rows of harmonicas in the display case, silver flutes all in a row. Give the small percussion instruments a shake, clack a stick against the plastic blocks. You cannot get that from shopping online. Then afterward, we walk to Zebu for a gelato for him and a coffee for me. Open the disks and check out the liner notes. Then head for home.
The music industry is going through changes, and ultimately it will survive in some form. My biggest lament is that the production quality has dropped. Even my old worn ears can tell the difference between a well mastered track and a poorly mastered track, even after it is ripped to MP3 (256kbps, high quality).
Hope you all had a good Solstice and wish you all a healthy and happy New Year going into 2008.
Try to think of those less fortunate than yourselves, and remember, the NetBSD foundation is looking to hit a donation target.
http://www.netbsd.org/donations/
Good call. MTV typifies everything that's wrong with popular music and culture. OTOH, who better to see where the RIAA is going wrong? Except for the fact that MTV is essentially the drunken trust-fund laden child of the RIAA.
The M in MTV stood for music... not drama :P
Tokyo Robot Lords! Smile! Taste Kittens!
Hey Mtv, 2001 called and it wants it's dour industry outlook back.
piracy had nothing to do with the nose-dive experienced by CD sales.
This coming from a network that prides themselves on music television while cramming the time slots with nothing but reality shows. MTV died along time ago.
They measure a loss in CD sales...the issue is that CDs are starting to become obselete. It's like...them saying the music industry is *dead* and citing audio tape sales as their statistical evidence.
The difference is, they have yet to find a new business model that really works for them. Or maybe they've found an alternative - just not one that works for them in a way they're *happy* with.
~Jarik
Actually a score will usually do it. I previously ran interactive for the People's Choice Awards. It's not the Oscars, but the audience still numbers in the millions. We got no more than a couple hundred emails from the fans who voted on the award winners. The number of people who actually write in to any "authority" on any given subject is rather small. So you don't need thousands to influence the "authority."
We did modify what we were doing if a score or more indicated a trend. In one or two cases, we modified what we were doing by one person who had an insightful, well thought-out point to make. A word of caution, though, letter-writing campaigns are pretty easy to discern and tune out because they all come at the same time and use more or less the same wording.
The point is, you the individual letter/email writer have more power than conventional wisdom says you have.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Seriously, they couldn't afford some "technologist" consultants? My high school band director (who probably makes less in one year than the average record exec makes in a week) was telling us about digital downloads in 1992. We all thought he was nuts. I mean, it would take days to download a single WAV file from a BBS at 14.4k...
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
There is still a lot of money to be made.
But they have made the "official" channels very painful in their lust for the last dime of profit.
For example, this morning during my 25 minute drive to work, one of the radio stations never had a song on. I kept switching to it because I like the style of music but never got a song. They wanted money so much that I ended up not listening to any adds for more than the 3 seconds to determine.. yup.. still no songs. If I could count on 30 seconds of ads and then another good song- I might actually stay through the ad. but once the ads start, I know it will be a few minutes so I skip on over to other radio stations.
Same thing for TV. We've gone from 8 minutes of ads to 20 minutes (some times 22 minutes) of ads per hour. And we can skip the ads by touching a button. They have to be insane to think we are watching the ads. Sell fewer ads for more money. Have shorter ad blocks so we won't leave.
The music industry has a great potential for a lot of people to make six figure salaries. But that's not good enough for them. So they keep pushing until it becomes so unpleasant that we go elsewhere.
I can easily spend an evening on YouTube or watching DVD's (Mission impossible season 2 for christmas so another 20 hours there without commercials).
If they are the most expensive entertainment possibility, they are the most likely to be cut.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If you run a local DNS, you can just create a zone file for myminicity.com, add a wildcard entry to 0.0.0.0 and boom, all set.
This might have been mentioned, I didnt have time to look thru all the comments. The music just sucks. I think there hasnt been alot of good music created in the last 7 years.
And even when younger people listen to older music, they HEAR it differently. When I listened to Black Sabbath in the 80's, I wasn't hearing Vietnam protest music (like my uncle heard it). And when a kid listens to MY stuff today, he hears it as "classic metal" (not the way I hear it).
No one likes to think of themselves as out of touch and no longer young and hip. But it eventually happens to us all. Trying to fight it only makes you look pathetic (think Warren Beatty trying to rap in "Bullworth").
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
didn't real world kill the video star?
MTV hasn't played music in well over a decade.
If anyone killed the music industry, it's MTV.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Let's just hope it's some editor helping his girlfriend with psychology/sociology project that is meant to study how many people will ignore the content of the article and how many will read it despite the misspelling.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
To paraphrase Dire Straits: Worse of all young man you have MBA disease.
Check out Northern State. They do some excellent work, especially on their "Can I Keep This Pen?" album. They got skillz!
Having radio pretty much tied up by the likes of Clear Channel hasn't helped either - and the royalty decision for internet radio was a great example of a pyrrhic victory. Would be interesting to see what will happen if they force 'real' radio to pay royalties per song played - after all, some of us old timers got a pretty decent music collection from taping off the air.
i'm just writing this out a little more clearly for those who're catching up:
mtv is blaming the internet for the fact that the last ten years have seen it pushing tracks that are not only musically and lyrically challenged, but that can't manage to hold its target audience's interest for more than a week or two at a go...
aside from pushing the rest of us out of pool halls and dance clubs, and forcing us to find alternative (mostly internet) channels to listen to all the wonderful new stuff that is coming out (because all the regular radio stations pander to the record industry too), they've also had a huge and highly detrimental effect on record stores who can't sell what people don't know and can't sell to kids who won't be listening in a couple of days anyway.
they've backed the wrong horse, and it's time to get back on the real bandwagon instead of trying to pimp their rickety jalopy.
---- I was woken up this morning by a face full of fur. Damn cat thought my head made a good pillow.
I don't think it makes sense to place so much importance on the quality of the audio. I know very few people who can even hear the artifacts in a 128kbps MP3 file. I don't mean that the quality loss is subtle. To me, it's glaring. But most people don't have the ears for it. Instead, the benefits of musical file sharing come down to speed, convenience, and price. Put simply: you can rip and burn a CD at 20x. A tape cassette you could copy at 2x, but only if you didn't mind it sounding like garbage.
I'd love to see your no-middleman vision come to pass. But for that to happen, the average person would have to decide that music is important enough to actually figure out what they want to hear without being told. And the average person does not care that much about music beyond its mere existence. Ask someone what they like. 9 times out of 10 they respond with "everything". This translates as, "I treat all genres of music (out of the few I have any experience with) with an equal amount of apathy."
Real music lovers will continue to support the artists whose music moves them. They will continue to relish the act of searching out new artists and records. They will make time in their life for it, and feel the rewards of doing so. Everyone else will *want* someone to tell them what to listen to, so that they're not hit with something unfamiliar the next time they hit play. You don't see a TiVo in every house for the same reasons. Most people don't mind watching the commercials...unless you're really engaged, TV watching is passive enough that it really doesn't matter what's on, as long as it's over quick. I think most people approach music the same way. It saddens me, but doesn't make somebody a bad person or anything. We've all got our priorities. I'm a musician, so mine are fairly predictable.
There's at least 4 classic rock stations in my area. People can't be bothered to listen to something they haven't already heard a million times *going back 30 years*.
I can't judge such people. How could I? It's everyone I know. I have to just accept that, yes, I'm the oddball. My point is...there will always be a middleman. The hit model is a natural consequence of recording technology and its economics.
I call what you're talking about the "Radio Shack" effect.
Many years ago (probably before most of you were even born), Radio Shack used to employ salesmen who actually knew about electronics. They could read a resistor color code, they could solder; heck when you brought in something to repair (from the "REALISTIC" brand), they would actually fix it in the store. As you might expect, this type of help commanded more than minimum wage.
Some president of Tandy said "Gee, why am I paying so much for sales help. I could offer high-school kids minimum wage and save $millions this year!" which was true, but also eliminated a lot of reason people went to radio shack. So they fired the guys who could actually help you, and hired kids who could find the battery section if you helped them.
So here's where the "Radio Shack Effect" starts... You have customers coming in looking for expert help that is now gone. It takes customers a while to catch on fully, and so over the next 6-36 months, customers don't come back. You're reduced the reason for people coming into the store for parts.. But not before the CEO just added to the bottom line of year 1. Never mind that years 2->forever will have negative growth... that's the next CEO's job to worry about.
And by the way... for some unknown reason, Radio Shack could no longer sell electronics parts. Funny how that worked. So they got rid of the parts, too. I went in the other day looking for fuses; they only had a handful and suggested I go to "Home Depot". Ouch. Tell me again why people go to Radio Shack these days?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I agree with your sentiment but the numbers are a bit off. My band's record cost $1000 to record and another $1000 to press a few hundred copies. This is still cheap though, compared to what it would have taken 20 years ago. Pro Tools has changed a lot of things, but it's still generally very expensive to record a CD's worth of (good) music. Expensive enough to make record labels a very useful thing (evil though they may be).
Try CDbaby. Their stuff is indexed and their search function actually works.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
MTV and the homosexual channel LOGO are run by the same people and they just use it as another way want to perv kids out more than use it as a way to promote music.
http://play.rhapsody.com/album/grease/rocknrollisheretostay
Takes more than bad execs and bad decisions to kill this stuff.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
While you are right that strictly speaking there are two meanings of the word, each with a different origin, the two meanings converge so substantially that they might as well be one.
In political jargon the term refers to an effort to torpedo a judicial nomination, but by analogy can really mean any concerted effort to ruin/stop/decimate something. In nerd jargon it basically means to break something, but I gather the strong connotation is to screw something up or really botch something. So basically we are back to ruining things.
About the only substantial difference is that one implies intent and the other implies an accident. But that might as well think of the two terms as one with context providing the information about intention.
I am reminded of how in every culture in the Hitchhiker's Guide universe there is always a drink whose name is something on the order of "Gin and Tonic."
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Since /. is all about misusing the "brick" analogy for rendering a device unfixable through straighforward means, wouldn't it be more appropriate to suggest 2007 bricked the music industry?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I swear to god I remember watching a sesame street sketch when I was a kid that was called Empty-V and was a parody of MTV. It had a big empty V logo in the style of MTV's old logo, and lots of little pink monsters dancing around singing innocuous bubbly poppy music.
Who knew muppets were such prescient cultural critics?
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
I was on the Underground today, and was listening to these two teenage girls chatting about how 2005 was "back in the day", as if it was some significant period of time ago. We've managed to serve up such an instantaneous consumer culture that 2 years is considered an age of man: paired up with utterly unmemorable 'music', and you've got the reason. I reckon it's not got a huge amount to do with file sharing: it's all about the lowest common denominator.
Everything is marketed and labelled as if it were utterly new. People seem to forget that almost everything is recycled in some aspect. Amy Winehouse is not new. Nor is her drug-taking, pillock-marrying lifestyle. People have been doing that (in the public eye, at least) for nearly half a century. Get over yourselves.
MTV only worsens matters by making damn sure that on their 'Bestest Music Evar!' shows, on the rare occasion that they actually play them, only includes the same regurgitated pop crap that's sourced from within the previous five years, thus compounding the illusion that current pop music is innovative.
Gah. It's all bollocks, anyway.
http://xkcd.com/313/
Good lord, learn a little history. Music was a "cheap plastic commodity" at least as early as the 1950s; the big labels were hitmakers back then just as they are now (well, before the Internet started killing their business model, anyway). There were manufactured pop bands long before you or I were born.
MTV didn't invent this, it's just another in a long line of corporate tools for promoting bands. There's been plenty of good, "artistic" music both before and after MTV was born.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Ack, where did I screw up? It's driving me nuts trying to see it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Big media was the worst thing brought about by the 20th century. Thank God the internet is finally breaking its stranglehold over politics and culture. While I feel for the people who might lose their jobs, anything that hastens its demise is a Good Thing.
Have you seen the movie "Heavens Burning" with R.Crowe and that cute little Japanese chick Youki Kudoh. There is a piece of music on it I have been trying to find, full length not just a DVD rip of the audio as it was mixed with other stuff of course. Since there was no CD audio volume released I have as of yet to find the piece. I believe the music was a Spanish style guitar interpretation of a Mozart composition by the name of "Solus Solique" of something close to that, I could not get a clear view because IFC screws up the credits on most all movies. I keep meaning to pickup the DVD but since the info I have seen on it says it does not include a separate audio volume of the sound track titles it is probably pointless. The piece Solus Solique, (latin: One Day, In A Single Day, The Only Day?) appears in its longest example during the love scene at Crowes pops house. Great music, gives me the shivers, and that is unusual for something that I did not listen to as a teen and thus come encumbered with emotional bonds to angst ridden stuff.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
http://www.amazon.com/Heavens-Burning-Russell-Crowe/dp/B00004YA78/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1198732542&sr=8-1
I always thought MTV had a fundamentally broken business model.
Think about it. Their function is to deliver the young hip viewers (18-25) with lots of disposable income to advertisers. That means every five to seven years they need to discard their viewer base and go after the next batch of kids. I never heard of a business succeeding over the long term by periodically alienating its audience.
What they should have done was retain the audiences they spent so much money and effort to attract and then launched new channels every few years or so with a new format that appeals to the next group of kids. If the MTV I grew up with (Kennedy, 120 Minutes, Headbangers' Ball, etc.) was still around I would probably still be watching it.
What does MTV have anything to do with music? This is like CSPAN writing about the Patriots' chances in the playoffs.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
This is my take.. The introduction of iPods and the idea that music is a kind of go-anywhere ultra-convenient entertainment item, is very different to how it used to be.
Pre-MP3, music you loved was a collectable item; mostly dominated by a handful of bands that were standard-bearers of your particular taste and culture. So of course you'd buy the latest U2 EP or Best of Sade, whatever. Remixes died in the 90's, but before that you'd also buy an EP full of remixes on ONE SONG. That would be insane now. But then it was at least something new and different.
So the culture has changed, and it's the music industry's own fault for homogenising music. There's little now that's new and different, so why buy an album that sounds just like 20 other albums from other artists? You really just want one track because the other suck, and you've no particular loyalty to the artist anyway.
However, if they came out with a Digitally Somehow Special version of Human League's "Dare", I'd buy that in a shot. But why, since I already have the vinyl and the CD? Because it's special! Hence the high sales of the Eagles' album as well.
The industry has failed to keep music special, by saturating it with similarly insipid, production-line pop songs and Idol winners. At the same time, iPods and MP3's introduced the power of the playlist over the album. (While that's a bit sad for albums, it was inevitable in the digital age.)
Combine all this and you get a de-valuing of music in the public's mind. There are still many bands out there of the calibre of REM in the pop world, but as the industry has tried to expand and push crap on us, they induced ambivalence in the market. Non-pop genres are probably still doing ok.
So to me it's no surprise people are reluctant to fork out a still-overpriced $30 for an album any more. Even in the previous decades it still took some time to gain reputation as a good artist, now they expect a new band to hit the top in 6 months because there's no much hype and marketing behind the release, instead of letting the music find its own level.
So IMO it's their fault there's an excess of pirating instead of it being a more fringe activity and looked down upon by people who support artists and good music. i.e. The culture is the important thing, not the product.
So MP3 is better than one analogue copy?
People used to copy films from videos and some muppets bought them (and were proud of owning them)
We have worse sound now then we have for many years mp3/ogg and itunes is the worse of the lot if not
listening on head phones
So this is not the reason for failing music sales, it's more a splintered market and more older people buy the back catalouges
of the bands they like and have lost the album/lp/CD over time.
The Eagles and Led Zeppelin still sell to millions of fans old and young because the music is relevant to them.
The thing is crap music doesn't make as much money anymore and the one hit wonder is getting expensive to produce, hence pop idol and stuff (make the punter pay for the A&R work, much cheaper)
Nice!
Bob
It Seems I've developed an aversion to proprietary software
MTV didn't invent this, it's just another in a long line of corporate tools for promoting bands. There's been plenty of good, "artistic" music both before and after MTV was born.
Sure I understand, and I don't buy much if any major label music... I have literally thousands of CDs, cassettes and (mostly) vinyl records. I'm bona fide music nerd. But, if you respect music, love music, live it even... it's not a cheap plastic commodity to you is it?
Pop music isn't all bad either, it can be fun and quality too. Yes, I know all about the payola scandals of the and present. In fact, this article by Davy D., "Why commerce is killing the true spirit of hip-hop" sums things up rather well. It's true for more than just hip hop, I'd say media in general. Check out this excerpt: During a separate conversation, Questlove of the Roots supported Porter's allegation with his own story about the process behind the group's Grammy-winning hit with Erykah Badu, ``You Got Me.'' He said the Roots had to pony up close to ``a million dollars'' to a middle man who ``worked his magic'' at radio stations. Initially, the overtly positive song had been rejected, he explained, so palms were greased with the promise that key stations countrywide would get hot ``summer jam'' concert acts in exchange for airplay. According to Questlove, more than $1 million in cash and resources were eventually laid out for the success of that single song. In the early days MTV was all about music, the VJs they had working were real music fans, you could see that sparkle in their eyes. They were hungry for it. Though a lot of it was cheesy pop, it was the better cheesy pop and on top of that they would introduce innovative artists.
Remember 120 minutes? That show was brilliant! Remember when afro-centric & positive hip hop was something they were proud of on Yo! MTV Raps? At one point MTV was staffed by music lovers and musicians themselves; they had lots of live concerts and gave back to music culture in their own way... now it's staffed by a corporate entity who's sole vision is dollars via the lowest of the low common denominator. BET, as well... they might act like they care. But they sure as hell don't seem to give a rat's ass about elevating the culture.
Maybe I'm just seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but I remember MTV being musical, substantive and entertaining in the past. Good music is still out there and with the help of technology even more music lovers are making it. I have hope for the future.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
If you're running Opera, adding the string "*myminicity*" to the Blocked Content list works well - the browser will just refuse to load anything originating from there :o) Not sure how it works in Firefox, but I'm sure there's something similar...
$500 to get yourself up and running for a few hundred/ thousand copies. if you start to press cd's then the price goes up but if your selling that many well that's cool too.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Perhaps The Music Industry/MTV should start to sell/produce/display half decent music. I have heard Akon say how sorry he is enough now mmkay? Also, maybe rather then pulling off legal maneuverer's that show they have the marketing aptitude of a goldfish, how about working with the consumer for once? This isn't the year music died, it's the year where the public realized the industry sucks horrendously
No, you're right, MTV definitely was all good and musical back in the day.
What I took issue with was when you said that "maybe they had a small role in killing music buy [sic] changing it from an artform to a cheap plastic commodity", which is a conclusion based on bad logic:
Premise 1: music was changed from an artform to a cheap plastic commodity
Premise 2: #1 resulted in music being "killed" (whatever that means)
Assertion: MTV did #1 thereby causing #2
None of these things are true. MTV definitely treats music more like a CPC than an artform these days, but its doing so has not altered music overall, nor has it caused music to be "killed"
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The problems in the music industry started years ago when it stopped being about people playing good music and started being about attractive people shaking their asses and lip-syncing.
That would be about one month after MTV came on the air.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.