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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)."
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?
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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...)
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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
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.
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.
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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.
I get the chance to instruct young people (18-24) for 16-week long classes a couple times a year, and I always bring up music debates for fun during our down times. With every class, good music that will stand the test of time falls on deaf ears. I often ask them, which song will still be listened to in 20 years, "Welcome to the Jungle" or "Insert Crappy One Hit Wonder Song Here"? Most of them actually think Fall Out Boy will have more playability in 20 years.
It's funny too.. In 2007 I bought more CDs than ever since leaving college. This year I bought about 25 different CDs. The only difference is that none were big names from any major labels. I bought from CDBaby, from sales at concerts and events, from music links to independent sites.. Any mainstream/established artists I picked up from iTunes... E.g., Dylan, U2, Linkin' Park (yeah yeah, it was a moment of weakness)...
So maybe the big labels declined, but my guess is that the smaller houses are growing...
Hasn't this always been true?
90% of the music I bought in the 1980s when I was a teen went to the trash.
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.
Heh, actually "Soulja Boy" is exactly the product that most of the people here on slashdot are advocating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulja_Boy
He recorded his song and posted it on the web, got popular with people, published independently, and was only picked up by a major label after he'd already established himself on his own.
I concur, I hate the song too, but it's not a viable example of how the music industry pops out bad music, it's an example people liking music that I hate.
This is of course what big content really fears.
They are deathly afraid of "perfect digital copies" of works in
the public domain. Without the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension
(and others like it), companies that make up the MPAA and RIAA
would have to compete against their old classics that could
legally and freely be transfered by everyone across bittorrent.
The net would become one huge version of WGN or TBS and it would
all be perfectly legal...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That absolutely drives me nuts. There must be an unwritten rule that in the morning, people want to hear a room full of DJs tell dick jokes and make small talk about whatever was on TV last night. No music, or maybe 1 crappy song in between a fart soundtrack and a phone interview with a celebrity promoting there latest piece of shit TV/movie/album/book/diet/etc. Call it the Howard Stern effect if you will.
>Even if it did, it was minor.
I don't think so. Pop music was always driven by the under-25 demographic, which also happens to be the most price-conscious. It makes sense that when a relatively risk and price free method of gaining music became available, this demographic would jump on that to the detriment of CD sales.
>I've stopped buying CDs ages ago. I'm not downloading music either.
You told me your singular (irrelevant) experience, so I'll tell you mine. Out of all my friend's kids, not one asks for CDs for birthdays or Christmas, yet they all have full iPods. From my perspective, this is unbelievable. When I was growing up, every gift-giving day would guarantee one or two albums (cassettes and later CDs) for my sister and I and pretty much all my friends. My 12 year old nephew does not have one legal CD (why would he when he has 10Gb of music on his computer?).
>Sorry, but in the 80's and 90's, we had reason to buy music. It was actually good. These days, music (that is being pushed to us, or advertised) is mostly total shit.
That's what my dad says about the 70s and what grandfather says about the 50s. Its an arrogant and untrue statement to make. I don't think mainstream music 'these days' is total shit. Most people still like today's music (that's why its referred to as 'pop' or 'mainstream').
What's interesting is that if everyone does it, no one will know. The centralized music "industry" will still show losses, think things are going badly, etc. while the overall distributed music economy will be rocking out. It could get bigger, and look smaller (even invisible).
This concerns me, because government will be pressured to do things to "help the economy," not realizing (or caring) that the economy is flourishing more than ever. The bands I saw on Saturday night, don't have lobbyists.
"I never heard of a business succeeding over the long term by periodically alienating its audience."
Well, now you have.
But seriously, MTV isn't the only one. By your logic, Playskool should have started out with pre-school toys, then moved into action figures, then video game consoles, then cell phones and laptops. Instead, they alienate their customers by making the same-old preschool crap despite an aging audience.
And that's just one example of many.
What you're opposing is niche marketing. Doing one thing and doing it well. MTV knows how to market to teenagers. It's incorrect to assume they'd be just as good at marketing to 20somethings and beyond. You've laid out a false dichotomy:
The choice is not between staying the same and keeping the same audience. Peoples tastes and needs change as they become older and (usually) more affluent. The choice is between constantly changing to appeal to the teenagers of the day, or constantly changing to adapt to the changing tastes of their existing audience.