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The Music Industry's Crisis Writ Large
The NY Times has an opinion piece that makes starkly clear the financial decline of the music industry. It's accompanied by an infographic that cleverly renders the drop-off. The latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the music business is free, legal online music streaming. "Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna's 60th birthday. ... 13- to 17-year-olds acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent. ... [T]he percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music 'regularly' and nearly a third listen to it every day."
There, fixed that for you. The record industry is the one that makes money on recordings. The music industry is the one that makes money on music in general including concerts. The music industry is fine and will be fine. The record industry is fucked.
I got out of the retail record business over 25 years ago because the industry was rapidly losing its customers to consumers. They weren't choosing better music; they were choosing cheaper music. Saving 50 cents on Saturday Night Fever was more important than their store actually having a wide selection of interesting sounds. Eventually, it wasn't worth it to stock the better; only the popular.
I blame the Decline of Western Civilization on the Rise of the Consumer. YMMV.
For most purposes, 355/113 is close enough.
I bought the first Velvet Revolver CD, which installed a rootkit on the computer to prevent you from doing anything other than listening to some shitty WMA files. After that I swore I would never buy a CD again, and I haven't. You only screw me once. So until we have no DRM and a perpetual license (buy the music once, have the rights to any format) I'm done playing their game.
No, let me repeat that, advertising is very expensive.
Why is this? I know this probably sounds hopelessly naive, but where do these "marketing" funds go to? I'm not talking about advertising a live show. More along the lines of how any of us ever heard of Miss Spears in the first place.
It may be the more interesting aspect of this story isn't the record industry losing customers, but the younger generations skipping the main marketing arm of the recording industry, FM radio. The overtly corporate and hopelessly generic radio stations across the country all playing the exact same line up paid for by the "recording industry". I'm old enough to have witnessed this transition from edgy to safe FM stations in my life. Due to this I have satellite radio in my car, and I listen to streaming Internet stations at home.
If FM survives the fall of the RIAA giants it will likely mean that stations will go back to when they chose for themselves what they would play. I think we'd all be better off if that kind of marketing money were to vanish.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.