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Why the RIAA Really Hates Downloads
wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
Where do you get this misinformation? Rich Internet Applications Anonymous loves downloads. Can't get enough of them. http://riaa.buzztown.org/
I wrote a (very) short piece on this a while ago, in response to an article on El' Reg.
Again, looking at the list of 'discoveries' there, and at the reasons given here, it's hard to believe that the industry hasn't already fallen over in a big screaming heap. The only thing propping it up thus far are multi-album recording contracts, and their McDonald's inspired ability to foist very average fair on to the average user.
In the last couple of years with GarageBand etc providing the ability for anyone to make reasonable music at home, the iTunes Music Store and it's ilk providing the ability for almost anyone to publish their work, and social networking sites providing the marketing (often viral), it's time these commercial dinosaurs went the way of their reptilian cousins did millions of years ago.
The Mothership
a few spaniards got on some boats, and with some fancy new technology, subdued entire noble ancient civilizations in central and south america
technological progress was not fair to the aztec and incan nobility. you wonder what they thought when they looked upon the gun, the horse, the metal armor, the smallpox. well, if you work for the riaa or a major label, you know more of what it is like to be on the losing side of technological progress like perhaps no other class of people in the western hemisphere right now
so here's to you, music label suit
heres to your vanishing jobs, to the jobs of blacksmiths, to the jobs of chimney sweeps, to the jobs of telegraph operators, to the jobs of steam ship engineer
to the dustbin of history with all of it
please no banging on your coffin while we nail it shut. thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> If this were NOT what it has all been about, then I would be interested to hear any other intelligent suggestions.
Uh.. perhaps it's about them losing money from people downloading music for free instead of paying for it? The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them. This isn't true - it's hard work to get signed, and then a fair amount of pressure is put upon you to produce airplay friendly tunes etc.
We win. You lose. Hugs and kisses, Everyone
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
"...not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
I never thought one could get pithy one-liners from a video game, but I think the GTA writers had the nail hit on the head with one of the radio station's advertisements (I think it was from Liberty City):
"We tell you what's good! Then play it 'till you like it!"
I think that sums up the Label's business methods quite succinctly.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
One already exists in the format of a moderation system. Take a look at slashdot for a reasonable approximation of how such a system might work. Applying it to music should be no big leap.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I originally thought that the whole reason the RIAA hated P2P was not because of money but because of a lack of control. Namely, the lack of an ability to measure success and popularity. Because the systems are inherently decentralized, they could no longer figure out what the latest "trends" were in music and so they no longer had any way to know what artists to sign and what music was profitable.
But then I found out about Big Champagne, and that much more reasonable rationale for their fight against the Internet went right out the window.
The Spanish conquest of the Americas is often overly dramatized. In all instances I am aware of, it was *not* Spanish technology that carried the day.
Takes the Aztec's for example. Many story tellers will spin a glorious yarn about the siege of Tenochtitlan. Most of those will be glad to talk about how Moctezuma revered Cortés as a god. Most will also completely gloss over the fact that the Spaniards were only a small percentage of the force that laid siege to Tenochtitlan. The Aztec's were not very popular amongst their neighbors, so when Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan the Aztec's enemies came in droves to capitalize on a change to take them down. The Inca's were smack in the middle of a civil war over succession when the Spaniards arrived on the scene, and by pure luck, managed to kidnap the heir apparent. (They held him hostage for gold and then executed him.) Their timing was fortuitous, to say the least. However, the capture of Cuzco was the real fall of Peru, and by that time the Spanish had again picked up indigenous allies to fight for them.
Finally, there is the Mayans. If you watched Apocalypto then you probably got the impression that the Maya were living in big cities and making a mess of things when the Spaniards showed up and conqured/saved them. Nope. They had abandoned their cities centuries before. Even with their civilization an echo of its former glory, the Maya put up more resistance against the Europeans than, perhaps, any other indigenous people in the america's. Unlike the Aztec's and Incas, there was no single Mayan center which could be attacked and neutralized. The Maya were spread out in some of the densest, nastiest, most brutal jungle on Earth. The Spaniards would capture one town and move on to the next only to find that they had to recapture the previous town all over again the next time they went past it. It took centuries to subdue just a *portion* of the Mayan population.
Now, it would seem that we're way off topic, but we can draw some pretty interesting parallels actually. RIAA is a centralized body, much like the Inca or Aztecs. All it would take is for one major record label to withdraw their support to RIAA and that would be their end. Likewise, a change to copyright law could doom all the labels overnight. Music pirates, on the other hand, are by their very nature decentralized. You can squash as many individuals with lawsuits as you want, but the P2P network lives on. Finding those individuals and gathering enough evidence to bring a lawsuit that has a chance of winning if they don't cave and settle is also not an easy task. They are like the Maya. Hard to find, difficult to suppress, and resilient. If RIAA and the labels somehow managed to keep going as they are now, it would take centuries to bring piracy to and end at best.
Anyways, I'm at the point where I just want easy access to good music. If the labels brought back Oink in all it's glory at $30/month I'd be their first customer. If they insist that I have to spend $10 an album for lossy DRM'd tracks on iTunes or $15 for a CD, neither of which net the artist more than $0.15, then no deal.
The way I see it, there is an answer to music distribution. Say that somebody created a private torrent tracker site where the members paid a monthly access fee. Artists could seed their music on this torrent site and be paid a percentage of the gross according to how much their stuff is downloaded. No middlemen. No record companies. Just the artists and the torrent site. Potentially, artists could make a lot more money than they are now. However, there are problems. Perhaps the stickiest is that little issue of critical mass. If a handful of independents got together and did this, they'd fail miserably. Such a site would need a *massive* catalog to get off the ground. It would have to include a very large number of artists from day 1. Still, it is a beautiful dream.
Firstly, I'm pretty happy with the price of CDs. Because I research my music well and, yes, I do use BitTorrent and Usenet to preview any albums I intend to buy that I cannot hear otherwise, I always buy a CD that I know will be good before I buy it. And then I source it online as cheaply as possible, usually below £10. That means I'm never disappointed by any CD and, before anyone accuses me of doing anything wrong, I own over 1200 of them.
Secondly, I do listen to some modern music but generally I listen to (mainly British) hard rock, rock, psychedelia and blues from the late sixties to the present day. Currently, a lot of this stuff is enjoying a resurgence - not only are existing popular albums being expanded & remastered (for example the back catalogues of Jethro Tull, Yes, Black Sabbath, etc.) but also a lot of very obscure albums from the late sixties and early seventies are being released onto CD for the first time. Currently, I am totally spoilt for choice as to what to buy next and I think the record companies a doing a pretty good job with this.
Thirdly, I'm sure there are a lot of good independent artists out there but, in my mind, whether the big four record companies are there or not won't change a thing for them. Okay, so the record companies are too narrow-minded and money-orientated to give these artists recording contracts but either way, they are still faced with the problem of self-promotion and getting people to their web sites to buy their music. And in my own view, I'm more than happy to listen to some of these artists and buy a CD of theirs - but there's no way, I'm afraid, that I am going to pay for downloadable music. The fact is, I like my music in the best quality I can afford on a reasonable hifi and compressed downnloads don't do it for me.
Fourthly, the younger generation may have a hankering for downloadable music but please do not confuse this with them having a discerning music taste. The fact is that they are the "now" generation with short attention spans and a complete lack of interest in putting any effort into anything. The fact that the charts are filled with plastic manufactured music shows that the majority will buy anything that is put in front of them purely because it is deemed fashionable and is easy to obtain. Anyone who believes these same people will go searching the the Internet for new independent artists rather than just going to iTunes for the latest fad music has no understanding of the way marketing and hype works on the minds of the younger generation.
Yes, the major record labels are killing their own industry because they're not interested in anything new but the latest Leona Lewis clone. Personally, I don't care, there's a huge back catalogue of older stuff to go out and listen to which I suggest the "discerning youth" should also go and explore a little rather than whining about modern music.
But downloadable music is also contributing to that death because it's turning music into a disposable commodity - don't like it any more? Then just wipe your iPod's hard drive and start again...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There's two clear reasons the RIAA hates the internet:
1. Digital forms of storage mean that they can't recharge for the same product on a different media every fifteen years - the revolving door business model of vinyl to tape to CD etc.
2. People can create without them. The labels have cooked up a good racket making themselves a necessary part of the distribution process. Online, anyone can get their work out to an unlimited number of people.
The only thing that will bring the RIAA into the late 20th century, much less the 21st is for the current crop of CEOs, weaned on 1950s business practices, to get old an die, allowing the younger generation to take over (but they might just be dickheads too).
I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.
For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.
Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.
I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.
You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
They are farmers, and the musicians are livestock.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
exaggerated.
Yeah yeah, I know, we've all by now heard a one-hit wonder who was NOT signed by a label. (Like the "Chocolate Rain" guy, who probably will go down for the most overplayed 3 notes in history. Choc-late Raaaaaain...) The thing is, when we buy (or listen to, ya dirty scallywags) music, who do we overwhelmingly choose? The same old Britstreet Boy , the same old Sir 50 Snoopenem, the same-old Avrilguilera. For every play, download, or purchase that the long tail Code Monkey type songs get, the #1 (and, for that number, the #40) pick up tens of thousands. That is taken *in aggregate*.
The labels didn't just get a lock on the market because they control distribution. They've got a lock because they realize that music is an experience people want to share, music is a status symbol, and thus people want to listen to the music that other people are listening to. This has the same network effects that a Facebook or AIM or Microsoft Office does. The core music consumer is a high school or college student, and God forbid you listen to something nobody else in your circle of friends does at that age.
(Look at the P2P networks, too -- people are not downloading the Collected Traditional Swahili Spirituals Remixed To The Tune of "Waterworks" Compilation. The top downloads almost invariably track, in lockstep, the top selling songs/movies/games which appeal to teenage males.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
There's no controlling of tastes, merely a promotion of fashion.
Now that there exists a means of subverting the business model of said scheissters, they are upset, and will tickle the tummies of their tame congresscritters with green until the law prevents the distribution of independent music.
It's the Jaffia, stupid!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Soribada. A P2P network you pay a few bucks a month for membership. Korea. Files authorized to be distributed by the program are tagged with a special code in the file and only files tagged as such will be recognized by the program. Except that, MP3s flow like water and most artists in Korea have signed on so the catalog is chock full of almost every major Korean artist... Most of it lossy (but high-quality) MP3 but some are FLAC and APE files...
In fact, there has always been a sort of uneasy truce between those two groups. In the beginning of the relationship, the music publishers cried bloody murder about radio stations playing their songs for free, since there was no legal requirement then to cover a case like that. Then, once a royalty system was finally in place, some studios realised that "air time" had a positive effect on sales, and payola was born. Today, there exists an equilibrium due to cartels on the publishing side and on the broadcasting side, and companies like Clear Channel ruling over a publisher-friendly airwave monopoly.
That's why I prefer internet "radio" when at home, listening to streams that friends make for friends. I don't want a gatekeeper to keep me from being flooded, I prefer a guide to help me to navigate on my own. Making it all about gatekeepers twists the argument, hides the fact that the self-appointed gatekeepers want to control all traffic, and aspire to be not merely bouncers but also jailers.
But hey, if you want to defend your employers, go right ahead. Just don't denigrate the fact that I prefer to listen outside of the prison they have prepared for me.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
1. "Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. "
We ourselves are our own filters. Some simple statistics about what others are enjoying would be enough to get a "big" picture. This argument shows no support for Record Labels, or any other "filters for hire".
2. "Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
You should be doing this already. Record Labels may decide what to sell, but you still have to buy it. You are free to pay the guy on the street an extra 20 bucks for his home made album if you like his music that much. You are also free to offer to become his agent and charge him the going rate if you think he is worth 10 million dollars.
I know this is knit-picking but I thought these angles deserved some light.
Get off my lawn!
Music is for everyone - it's just that they don't make decent music anymore ;o)
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
The control of media means more money for the record company.
When I ran the music department of an independent store, I learned first-hand just how much control they exercise over the music industry. I knew six months in advance what songs were going to make the charts, because those songs were the ones the labels pushed off on radio stations. The line from the salesman would sound something like this:
"This is the next album from Blonde Dance Clone #4. Tracks 5 and 8 are going to be all over the radio before it comes out, and 5 will probably be in the top 10. We plan to have five million copies distributed for release. We've got endcaps, freestanding displays, placards, hanging signs, and posters. Later we'll have a pile of promotional goodies."
What downloads do to that industry even with no impact on sales is they make demand less predictable, which means their margins are reduced. That's what scared them from the start...the loss of their ability to dictate our tastes in music and control the top 40 charts. Napster especially meant that they could no longer shove their choice of music down our throats via radio because radio was no longer a primary source of new music for millions of users.
A record label that sells hundreds of millions of albums a year doesn't care about someone who might move 10,000 or even 50,000. It's not even that an artist wouldn't make money that they don't sign them...it's that the artist wouldn't make *enough*
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
If course, that's only true if signing a band or musician has zero overhead. If there's a cost to the label for each signing, then they have finite capacity, and will want to pick and choose.
There's also scarcity economics at work at this level as well. If every high school wannabe rock band had a contract with EMI or Sony BMG, then the perceived value of that contract would plummet. Similarly, if every museo you met had a contract, and was nevertheless practically penniless, then no one at all would sign up, since they'd be taking on obligations with no expectation of recompense.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Blonde Dance Clone #4 is my favorite band. I didn't know they were on a major label, but then again, I download all my music from torrents.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It does seem that most people downloading music are true fans of the artists. The RIAA seems to have a closed mind when it comes to P2P file sharing. It does not see the need/desire for quick access to music and even faster promotion through online means.
The RIAA doesn't have to pay one cent for these virtual "employees," i.e., average Americans acting as independent online marketing teams on behalf of various artists, yet it reaps a number of benefits that they might not want to realize. Although, it has come around a bit with the popular iTunes model and other similar companies.
Perhaps the upcoming younger execs of these music corporations will have a better sense of how to "join" P2P technology and not "beat" it.
Oh, 'They' are still making great music... mountains of it in fact.
What is happening is that only formulaic music is marketed.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I'm going to try and not give off a tone of 'holier than thou' with this, but I have not listened, truly listened, to radio in about a decade. When things started becoming Clear Channel I noticed another change becoming more pronounced: More advertising. Sometimes it felt like ten minutes of music with 20 minutes of adverts. Since where I lived the only stations that didn't sound like you were trying to reach Alpha Squad with a WW2 radio were Clear Channel owned, it ment they pretty much had your ears by the balls. What ten minutes of music I was allowed to hear was the newest 'hot new song from X!' that was played at least once an hour. I just stopped listening to radio then. The gatekeepers which I had pretty much trusted since childhood to introduce me to new music failed.
Around that time I started discovering Napster and 'other' means by which to find new music. A friend goes "Hey man! Check out X by this band, their lead guitar kicks ass!" or "Pick up a song or two by Y, they have a female lead and her voice will make you cream your pants!" and I will most likely try it on their recommendation... My friends are the new gatekeepers and I am probably one of theirs. Now I listen to a lot of bands I probably would have never found it if weren't for listening to friends or just trying something new I see off of a Napsteresque style program. Whenever possible, I try to buy the CD from the band themselves, and if I really like them, buy t-shirts and the like. (I am not sure who they are with now, but I still love Nightwish.)
Does anyone know of any good metal band with a female lead vocal? Just askin...
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
The Recording Labels used to provide four services to the artists and public:
1. Production. They would hook up artists with the equipment to produce professional sounding albums. A few decades back, this equipment was pricey so the artists could only dream about having access to it outside of a recording contract. Nowadays, though, you can buy equivalents to most of the equipment off the shelf for around $1,000 or so. You might not get a "100% professional" sound, but you'll get an album that sounds professional enough for 90% of the listening public. So a recording label isn't really needed for this anymore.
2. Distribution. If you wanted your album to get on the radio and in the stores, you needed contacts. This meant that you needed the recording label to contact the right people for you and set up the distribution channels. With digital distribution, though, any artist can upload their own music to their own website and instantly be their own distributer. If they want to parter with someone else, they can use a service like eMusic, iTunes, or Amie Street to distribute their music. They give up some of their revenue to do this, but not nearly as much as the recording label would take. A contract with a major label is no longer needed for this.
3. Filtering. Also could be called Separating the Diamonds from the Coals. Traditionally, the labels would promote the good music and filter out all of the bad stuff. With the Internet, the "bad stuff" problem grows exponentially since anyone can put their awful attempts at making music online. However, services like Amie Street are already coming up with ways of letting users themselves act as filters. (Amie Street's model increases the price the more people buy the song, to a maximum of 98 cents. So a bad song won't rise in price much, but a good song will rise in price quickly.) There's also an argument to be made that the traditional labels have failed in this service recently by releasing so many bad albums and so many bad artists.
4. Promotion. The labels would market new artists to get their names out and encourage people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. While Internet marketing and word of mouth might be nice, this is the only area that I can see a future for the labels. I think that they will eventually change into glorified marketing firms. Of course, their reduced roles will mean that a lot of fat will be trimmed from their organizations. It will also mean that they will have to accept less control over artists. I predict that, eventually, they won't seize the copyrights of the artist. Instead, they will enter into deals with artists to get a cut of album sales. (A much smaller cut than they currently get.) Artists will also be free to leave labels at any time if they are unsatisfied with their performance without worrying that all of their old music is "tied up" in the old label. I think that our grandchildren will grow up with music promoted by record labels, but will look at us oddly when we describe the power that record labels exerted over artists when we were their age.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I have long maintained that the label's real concern is loss of control, not the money that is lost. The major labels have managed to snuff out the minor labels and effectively control the industry. Once they got control they have perpetuated formula bands and contracts that favor the label over the artist (it has always been that way, but the current contracts pretty much reduce the "artist" to a minor contract employee). The Internet is a huge threat because it is hard to control. The labels did manage to get rid of a lot of the small music streaming sites, leaving them with a smaller number of larger players. But P2P and torrents are largely uncontrollable and represent the major threat.
I'm 55 and still listen to the music I liked 20, 30 and more years ago, and I'm not the only one. While many of the artists that produced that music are retired, dead or just not interested in being in the business, I'd still be BUYING similar music if someone would make it, produce it and make it available for download so I could put it on my MP3 player, in my car or office player - just like I used to do with my vinyl before the digital age.
I've said it before on here and it's worth repeating - the music and movie industries are leaving a whole lot of money on the table by not marketing to the over 40 audience. We bought the hot stereos, put them in our dorm rooms, later in our cars and apartments. We didn't stop loving the music - it stopped loving us, or more correctly, the industry ignored us. We've got the dough, we own iPods and all kinds of digital stuff. Now we need legal, quality content. The business may never be like the old days, and that's probably a good thing, but there is a business if some smart 20-something wants to be the next digital millionaire. The music and movie industries will be in their final death twitch asking "what the hell happened?" and we'll be saying "you didn't sell to your long time loyal customers, you jerks". Hell, even my parents' generation got more attention from the music industry than us boomers do. All the Sinatra, Bennett and Welk albums in my collection came from them.
So, if you're going to hang out on my lawn, I'll provide the suds and dig out the old Harmon Kardon stereo but you bring some good vinyl and we'll have a hell of a party.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
RIAA, they do still act as a filter, keeping some of the crap down
Crap like John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, none of whom got airplay in theur day (let alone whole genres like Raggae, Skla, and punk), while great music like the Backstreet Boys, the Archies ('60s version of the Backstreet Boys on the radio while Zeppelin wasn't), and Britney Spears get airplay?
Where do you get this stupid idea that the RIAA keeps the crap out and lets the good stuff through? It looks like the exact opposite to me.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters."
Ummmmmmmm, why? I would suggest the only people arguing are those subjective gatekeepers, which are completely unnecessary.
dB Masters
Personally, I don't give a flying fig about music or edgy new content models, nor am I "excited" about the possibility of create, edit, and share my own music
Well, I personally don't give a flying frog about 3G iPhone or the Asus, so I just don't click those links.
If you don't care about the RIAA then just don't bring those articles up. Many of us care about computer illiterates being sued for "illegal" downloading.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them
Intelligent musicians are now turning the labels and their thieving contracts down. I believe this may explain the dearth of much listenable RIAA music this century; the bands with talent realise they have no need of the majors. I know at least one local guy who told two major labels to go fuck themselves, and I'm sure for every Joe Frew there's a thousand more non-idiots out there.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The New World Order is more interested in control than in money. Money is just one means of control they use. This is why, for example, they hate Google Book Search. Google Book Search is very lucrative to Random House (Bertelsmann), but it threatens big publishing's control over what information gets disseminated by the public. Giving people better tools to find older, published material has the danger of people breaking from from the NWO's brainwashing.
Unfortunately, when I look for someone to tell me what to do I find... a vast array of products and services that will do so. How do I know which one to listen to? I really need one large entity that answers all my questions with certainty and finality. Freedom is highly over-rated. Give me the security of being a nameless, faceless member of the herd. Give me the warm, fuzzy feeling of having a benevolent daddy figure watching over me and telling me what to do and what not to.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It just seems like there's a serious assumption at the core of this, and a rather elitist (and therefore suspicious) one at that. In order to accept the premise that the RIAA "controls" music I'd have to accept that people don't decide for themselves what they like. I reject that as grousing by disenfranchised nerds who habitually reject anything anyone else likes as "not obscure enough."
Damn I hate the RIAA; I just searched for Blonde Dance Clone torrentz and they've removed them. Why is the man keeping us down like this? Why wont they let me listen to music I have already heard before for free? wtf?
andy
Sorry, I have no idea how my earlier post got formatted like that. Here's how it should have appeared.
The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them.I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.
The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music.
And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02
Regarding "Independent" labels, see the following two URLs:
Some of your friends may already be this fucked:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/
Who owns who(m):
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho.html
Your favorite label may not be independent at all, but a shell company of one of the major labels.
There is good reason the RIAA members want to outlaw P2P networks, or if they can't squelch it, get the ISPs to pony up a levy to them; they are rapidly losing control of the music industry; it is quickly becoming a direct creator-to-customer venue, where a truly independent band can make a very good living playing small, intimate clubs - and can maintain more creative control over their work, without having to settle for a tiny percentage of their sales. They don't have to worry about appealing teenyboppers and having a manufactured, socially-engineered sound and rely on sex-themed promotions to sell their work. They can produce their best work, engage in long jams on gigs, and make a very good living selling not only their studio productions, but recordings right off the sound board (hope they have a good sound engineer, see below). Labels don't want bands that can sell a couple hundred thousand units and gain popularity over time; they want a major, earworm-inducing syrupy-sounding bubblegum band that they can heavily market through kids' shows and magazines and have a major hit to make some quick money, and who cares if the "artist" ends up a train wreck in 4-5 years and no one wants to hear them any more? They'll just hire some other skank or boy band and sell a new image. No big deal on the record companies' part. What we end up with is crap on the radio and getting innundated from all directions with these personalities, until they burn out.
Bands with staying power are usually the ones who started small, and gained popularity over time, due to contemplative lyrics, experimental sounds, or simply having GREAT talent. Bands like that have been Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Phish, and even No Doubt (Gwen's sucky solo work notwithstanding - without the rest of the band she SUCKS). Members of some of them (Pink Floyd and Phish notably) have bemoaned having lost "intimacy" with their fans in the big stadiums (that's what much of Wish You Were Here and The Wall were about) and the "evils" of the music industry. Think the big labels as they exist (or wants to exist) will ever produce another Pink Floyd, another Queen, or another Led Zeppelin? No; the way those bands start out don't appeal to the masses right off; long experimental jams, studio pieces that are "too long" for radio play, sounds that are just "too different," and in some cases focusing SOLELY on the music, and not so much on the personalities - or if they do make it, people will be only familiar with short, poppy-sounding pieces, and will probably never hear the less-played but far superior back tracks.
There is a plus to big labels: they generally have VERY good sound engineers; that is something lacking in smaller venues. It's one thing to know how components interconnect, it's another thing entirely setting it up to enhance the band's sound and not detract from it. A lot of sound guys in small venues SUCK - I've been at several shows friends' bands performed at where I had to go to the sound guy to tell him to fix something, or SHOW the idiot how to fix it, and at one I even had to move a mike because he had no clue what to do. However in gaining access to good engineers and good equipment, you often have to go with big labels, and end up in debt to them.
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This also keeps alive the myth that independent music is of poor quality, and only appealing to a small group of people. The truth is that a lot of people aren't aware of the struggle that most bands went through to get on the "local" corporate stations, and that they were at one point, most likely, an independent artist trying desperately to get noticed!
Anecdotal example: Death Cab for Cutie. Most people are shocked to learn that they have more than one album when I ask them which one they favour. Most people are MORE shocked to learn that the band has been around longer than their children have been alive...
No. Humans are primates, and are social animals that form groups. Primate groups are united by "group calls" (somewhat like wolf packs). Whatever music you hear over and over again is subconsciously recognised as your group call, and you instinctively want to hear it more. What the record industry does is saturates your aural space with particular tunes, which your monkey brain then picks up as "your" group call. You could "choose" which group you belong to by picking particular radio stations, within strict limits. Nowadays, that's been shattered by the internet (thank fuck), but it's a genie they _really_ want to put back in the bottle.
Great post that I think illustrates a greater point -
" That's what scared them from the start...the loss of their ability to dictate our tastes in music and control the top 40 charts."
This is not only true for the music industry - it is even MORE true for journalism in general - because, right now I think anyone who in an even halfway savvy media consumer, (or really anyone who doesn't have blinders on) can see that the mainstream media is operating almost EXACTLY in the same way...
Blogging and other indie media have allowed the masses to get and produce news that is REAL news and that is relevant to them, not that "infotainment" Paris Hilton bullshit.
The government and MSM (via their symbiotic partnership) both do not like this - they lose ability to control the agenda, to list the plausible opinions which the sheep can debate at the water cooler - as I have heard said often back in school "the media doesn't tell you what to think, the tell you what to think about, they set the agenda" - Well, I would go further, I would say that now, for most Americans who are brain dead television receivers - they set the agenda as well as providing a "multiple choice" format what what the possible opinions of the public can be - then reinforce this with bullshit polls.
If you take it to the core of what I am saying - it is information in general, and the ability for the masses to access it readily, unflitered, and to share and create it in the same manner without it being sanctioned, filtered, and controlled by authorities (be they govt or corp) that the powers that be are goign to try to destroy.
When you look at the corporations and governments we have on earth right now, how long do you think we have before they find a way to subvert the freedom of the net? I have already seen the fear campaign is in full force from all angles - whether it's "Hackers shutting down the pwoer grid" to "Pedaphiles are EVERYWHERE on the net looking for your children" to "identity theft is everywhere" to "terrorists use the net to learn about nukes," - then you see the economic control side - the debate about "net neutrality" etc....Personally I wouldn't cal America a democracy or a democratic republic anymore. I would call it a corporatist feudal system....and there are many synonyms for such a system.
Well, I'm another kind of downloader. I have a rather substantial collection of cassette tapes. Most are getting to the age where transfer leaves a lot of hiss, and I have little time or interest in attempting to remaster them after the fact. I've bought two copies of Steely Dan's Aja in the last twenty years, but rather than buy a third, I just went and downloaded the MP3s. The record company and the band have received their money from me already. I'm stealing buy RIAA's definition, but so far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for the product... twice.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No don't mod parent up.
As someone else already noted, the record industry uses Radio to control what we hear. There might be some great garage band out there, which would go straight to number one on the charts, but since they don't get any airplay they don't get heard. Thus the average citizen remains blissfully unaware of many great artists, simply because the record companies don't play them.
The corporations control what we hear.
Internet sharing puts the control back in OUR hands (we can try whatever we feel like trying).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
I don't think the argument is so much that "people don't decide for themselves what they like" but rather that people don't get a say in what choices they get to choose from. Through the Internet, not only have I found contemporary music that I never hear through industry channels, I've found a lot of music from many years ago that I'd had never heard of at the time because the industry didn't deem it worthy of my consideration. I certainly decided for my self what I liked out of what was available to me, but I did not get to decide about the stuff I never got to hear due to corporate control of music distribution channels.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
They had a rudimentary form of track selection
You had a "skip" button that skipped to the next of four stereo tracks. In many (iirc, most) cases the skip was in the middle of a song! You still had to sit through half an album side. If it was a double album you had to sit through a whole album side. No rewind like cassettes had, only fast forward. If you forwarded past the beginning of the song you wanted, you had to keep fast forwarding.
With an LP you could lift the tonearm and place it at the beginning of the wanted track. Where songs started was clearly visible.
A few rare players could play a special version of 8-track: quadraphonic sound.
Believe it or not, quadraphonic sound was available on LPs, too. Stereo LPs were backwards compatible; if you played a stereo LP on a monophonic player, both channels would play (through the same speaker of course). This was accomplished by having both channels from the needle going up and down, and one channel with the sideways motion. The two signals were fed together to phase out one channel from the channel holding the up and down motion.
Quadraphonic was possible by modulating the two rear channels with a 40 khz tone and demodulating it on playback. Compare that to CD's 20khz ceiling. They used to have speaker enclosures with supersonic speakers called "super tweeters", which are no longer necessary since CDs can't reproduce frequencies that high.
Quadraphonic never took hold because of the expense of the equipment - you needed four of everything instead of two of everything. So a $1000 stereo sounded almost twice as good as a $1000 quadraphonic setup. That, coupled with the fact that in a live performance the audience is not usually in the middle of the orchestra makes the whole idea stupid on its face.
Surround sound happened because they've figured out that you don't really need more than one woofer. The woofer is the most expensive speaker, and speakers are the most expensive part of any stereo, especially now. The other electronics have vastly come down in price; in 1977 I paid $600 for a twenty five inch TV.
I knew a guy with quadraphonic cassettes. That's possible because a cassette has four channels. But you had to either rewind the cassette or listen to it play backwards when it was done.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What you're looking for probably being produced, but it's just damned hard to find. I'm 44 and grew up on country music. In the late 50's and 60's Nashville was churning out a bunch of over produced, string backed stuff that was closer to Sinatra than Hank Sr. And the west coast movement was started by Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard, and those types, eventually dubbed "The Bakersfield Sound." This eventually spawned the whole "Outlaw Country" movement of Willie, Waylon, David Allen Coe etc. In other words country became more country again. Thing was, they were still signed, and promoted by labels. So it was still out there and available. These days country is just twangy pop music for the most part, with a sub-genre of Jimmy Buffet wannabe's (can you say Kenny Chesney?), and any band that sounds like real honky-tonk music can't get any action from a major label. The best way I've found to find these bands putting out old sounding new stuff is through internet radio. My favorite is Boot Liquor which is part of Soma FM. A great source for what is now called Alt-Country which ranges from country sounding country, to country sounding music with socially aware lyrics, to rolling honky-tonk stuff. My recommendation is find an internet stations that play the type of music you're into and you're likely to find newer stuff that fits your interests.
I want to shoot the messenger!
Your statement is, being completely serious, profound. I often scan the usenet newsgroups and over the years, have discovered a world of music that was never available to me at any record store, with the exception of a few of the very largest like in LA or New York City, or in small mom-and-pop stores scattered here and there. But, I don't have time to go from place to place looking for what I like, and neither do many others, I'd guess. That's why the internet should be a boon to music lovers like us.
I suspect many of the artists from bygone days would still be recording if there was a way for them to get their music into the market, but having been weaned on the record company system, and probably not being 'net savvy, they either don't understand how or haven't figured out who they can trust. The record business is littered with stories of how so many musicians were screwed over by unscrupulous promoters - John Fogarty and Ray Charles just to name two.
Subscription-based music is probably the business model the music business should follow, I'm just waiting for the next Jeff Bezos to figure out how to do it successfully. It doesn't seem like it would be rocket science, but perhaps it is.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
I think you've hit on perhaps the key point in all this.
The big labels became what they were because of the "rules" of the music business - it took corporate money and muscle to create and distribute high-end music. They grew to fill a need, and became rich doing so.
Thanks to modern information technology, though, the rules have changed - it's much, much easier to create and distribute music now than it was 30 years ago. They got rich under the old rules, so obviously they don't want them to change. They were comfortable. But they have no choice.
IBM didn't want the rules to change, but they did, so - eventually - IBM changed to survive, but lost much of its power to a more agile competitor (MS). Same here - the labels cannot enforce the old rules, and while they will eventually adapt, there's no guarantee they'll have the commanding position they enjoyed before.
They don't like that, obviously, so they're fighting it, but it's not a battle they can win. Not because "information wants to be free" or anything like that, but simply because the rules of their business have changed, and the market won't let an inefficient company live for long.
Which raises the question, of course, of what are the new rules? Are the new gatekeepers sorters, like Armin, Google, and Bob-on-Myspace? How concentrated - or dilute - will power be when the market adjusts to these new rules?
Should be interesting.
"If good music were popular, we'd hear a lot of good music around. There's a reason we don't..."
I disagree that the reason is because people prefer mediocre stuff. Good music is unpopular because it's not played on the corporate-owned radio. Good music is unpopular because it's not exposed to the masses.
If it was played, it would be on the top of the charts.
Radio's purpose is to provide free advertising for the record companies' latest offering... they control what we hear on the radio. And if they decide to ignore good music, then it will sell poorly. It's the CEOs that control the music, not the people; not free choice.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.