Slashdot Mirror
MP3.COM signing A. Morissette, T. Amos
Tony Garcia writes "According to this article on USA Today, MP3.COM is
signing deals with Alanis Morissette and Tori
Amos. Seems like "big time" artists are joining
the mp3 wave "Now, if only DJ Shadow and Tom Waits would agree to that-Nirvana reached.
I hope your right about them losing hold. Recording costs have fallen considerably in the last several years with adat and digital audio i/o cards showing up in more and more peoples home rigs. MP3 kind of completes the circle, so we've got low cost production and distribution. The one area that won't be wrested from them so easily anytime soon is their marketing muscle and influence on radio. They're going to have to do something soon though because this tide is turning fast.
It's nice to see major artists joinging in the MP3 fray. I DJ part time and MP3 has been a HUGE hit in the DJ community, it allows us to compile massive amounts of music on a small number of CDs. With the support that MP3 has now I don't see it disappearing anytime soon, and as long as major artists continue to migrate this direction the music community will benefit more and more, with lower prices on our music, releases of singles will be quicker and the corporate monster of the recording industry will slowly fade from view. This won't happen quickly, but if an artist can release songs as they record them without all of the cost of pressing vinyl, burning CDs, and recording tapes then the record companies are going to lose their hold_ ____________
___________________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
A few years ago, there was an article in The Economist about the economics of the recording industry. Basically, their take on it was that the introduction of CD's had greatly increased the variety of music available. As we all know, even though CD's are cheaper to make than vinyl ever was, you still pay more for your music. Of course, the physical medium costs little in either case: 10% or so of the total consumer price.
The Economist's take on this was that, in effect, the extra cost of CD's was subsidizing a greater variety of music. Getting everyone to pay $15 for that Nirvana CD meant that the industry had a little cash to use on experimenting with . Vinyl had found an equilibrium point with a much more mainstream-oriented music culture. CD's, having an initially higher price in the 80's that was never really reduced, eventually came in far greater variety (they backed this up with stats -- vinyl never had nearly the number of titles that CD's got).
What interests me is, what economic equilibrium will be found by digital distribution? I like a lot of pretty obscure music, so I am a big winner from a system that overcharges the Celine Dion fans in order to take a chance on promoting smaller artists! But Celine Dion doesn't benefit from that -- she would certainly prefer NOT to subsidize them. If she can distribute directly, she can choose not to.
Ideally, those smaller artists will be able to promote themselves, at least enough to catch my attention. I can then pay whatever premium necessary to get their music, and Celine Dion can sell her own music directly to the fans for less. That may also eliminate lots of gross inefficiencies in the sort of indirect subsidies the CD medium has -- record companies are really pretty inefficient at turning big-artist profits into small-artist promotion.
Potentially, what will happen instead is that small interesting artists, deprived of any marketing savvy from a system that can now get away with just squeezing whatever profits it can from the big names, will disappear into obscurity and the noise of the net. That would make me sad.
While I'm no big fan of the music industry, I think we all need to sit back and think before carrying this MP3 torch to total revolution. MP3's seem to be a common rallying point among Open Source people but a world dominated by MP3's makes me uncomfortable in several ways:
1) The sound quality is *not* sufficient. Why step-back again? LP's had the widest dynamic range of any mainstream music format, but suffered from limited portability. 8-tracks, cassettes, and yes even CD's have offered less dynamic range for more convenience. It's a shame that most people under 30 are convinced that CD's are the highest quality audio. It was a lame standard to begin with and MP3's really don't even compare to CD's when played on anything more advanced than computer speakers.
2) The artist is *still* losing. Instead of the major record company pimping the artists you now have a bunch of hackers with hard drive space becoming the pimps. Sure MP3.com is a professional organization but we all know where the real traffic for MP3's is: illegal copies of pre-recorded music. For all the terrible things one can say about the record industry, your favorite artist is benefiting much more from you buying the CD than downloading a MP3 copy of it. Before the portable players arrived you could make the argument that illegal MP3's increased CD sales, but now we can bypass the CD completely.
3) The standard is too young and too unstable to support industry acceptance. Granted, this might change soon, but I would hate to reinvest yet again in a new music format that changes as quickly as technology. Music media formats usually last 15-20 years - do you think people will want to listen to crappy sounding MP'3 in 2015? Probably not. But then again would you want to purchase your music collection over again everytime a new version comes out? I realize this is the weakest of my arguments but it still bothers me. Music is timeless, unlike computer programs. The media should be more stable.
With all that said, I'm for shaking up the music industry. I just don't think that MP3's in their current incarnation are the way to go.
1) The sound quality is *not* sufficient. Why step-back again? LP's had the widest dynamic range of any mainstream music format, but suffered from limited portability. 8-tracks, cassettes, and yes even CD's have offered less dynamic range for more convenience. It's a shame that most people under 30 are convinced that CD's are the highest quality audio. It was a lame standard to begin with and MP3's really don't even compare to CD's when played on anything more advanced than computer speakers.
;P _ ________
I'll adress this FUD first, if you are releasing music as MP3 you are not limited by the 44.1 that you are limited to on CD therefore you can actually make an MP3 that is of higher quality than CD. If you care to argue this point I can you spectral analysis of stuff from CD and stuff done digital direct to MP3. I work in the recording/sound industry as a DJ/sound tech/studio musician/and remixer so I have researched this fairly well.
The artist is *still* losing. Instead of the major record company pimping the artists you now have a bunch of hackers with hard drive space becoming the pimps. Sure MP3.com is a professional organization but we all know where the real traffic for MP3's is: illegal copies of pre-recorded music. For all the terrible things one can say about the record industry, your favorite artist is benefiting much more from you buying the CD than downloading a MP3 copy of it. Before the portable players arrived you could make the argument that illegal MP3's increased CD sales, but now we can bypass the CD completely.
FUD again I say. the prohibitive cost of the portable devices along with the fact they can only carry about the same number of songs as a CD has made them not much more than a cute toy. If an artist releases a song and charges, hmmm lets say $ 0.75 to d/l it, people will pay it, when calcualte that out to full album ( ten songs for the sake of this argument) thats $ 7.50 for the whole album, 90% of which is kept by the artist. That works out to be more than the artists make now per CD/cassette. If you want more info on why MP3 is good for the artist and the industry check out Chuck D's MP3 commentary on Wired.com.
3) The standard is too young and too unstable to support industry acceptance. Granted, this might change soon, but I would hate to reinvest yet again in a new music format that changes as quickly as technology. Music media formats usually last 15-20 years - do you think people will want to listen to crappy sounding MP'3 in 2015? Probably not. But then again would you want to purchase your music collection over again everytime a new version comes out? I realize this is the weakest of my arguments but it still bothers me. Music is timeless, unlike computer programs. The media should be more stable.
MP3 will be the door to digital music for the masses, it might not be on top in the end, but it is the start of a new era in music. I will refer to the afforementioned Wired.com article to dispense with this further.
Flesh 99, flinging MP3 FUD right out the window
_______________________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99