The record industry + distrubtion chains + media conglomerates serve as one giant middleman that is effectively rendered obsolete by file swapping. Fans do not want to pay $12-17 for a CD--and rightly so. Recording artists don't want the industry to absorb a huge percentage of the profits on an work of art that was their creation alone. In addition to Napster, you have Don Henley and Courtney "Lawsuit Crazy" Love threatening to sue to get out of their contracts and forming the Artists' Coalition in an effort to give artists more leverage vs. the record industry.
When you buy a $15 Cd, why should $14.80 go towards the middleman? Wilco fans went out and bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as a show of support for the artist, not to pay the salaries of the shithead executives at Warner Music Group.
What's going to happen in the next ten years is all these frustrations with the middleman will result in a huge paradigm shift in the industry (that has already begun.) The record industry, completely out of touch with the technology and the demands of your average music buyer, will continue to drag its feet regarding online distribution. You will then see mass defections of artists from their labels.
Artists will then beef up their web sites to include pay-for-download schemes for fans. You will either pay one time fees for album downloads or pay yearly membership subscriptions to the artist's web site. A yearly subscription fee of $35 for example, could include all material an artist has to release that year (album + b-sides and alternate takes) plus access to concert ticket presales, news, message boards, studiocams, chances to win autographed stuff, etc. Pirating and file swapping would still occur -- there is no getting around that -- but most fans with any degree of conscience and common sense would continue to support their artist and pay for content. In addition, sites would allow fans to buy t-shirts and other merchandise from the artist directly.
This would result in much greater profit margins for artists. The only "middleman" would be the company that hosts the website and the high speed access providers. Even still, the costs to run the site will be a tiny fraction of the costs to manufacture, distribute and market millions of compact discs.
The mechanism for promoting artists that currently exists will exist no more. Instead, word of mouth, independent news and media sites (like All Music Guide, Ain't it Cool News style sites) will help inform fans about new artists. Media conglomerates like AOL Time Warner will, of course, react to this phenomenon by refusing to carry news or information about defecting artists. The grass roots, non-corporate news sites will continue to thrive and eventually surpass corporate rags like Rolling Stone.
The key is that if and when this happens (and we can only hope it does), music of QUALITY will sell - and quality, not marketing, will be the determining factor in whether an artists thrives or does not. The Backstreet Boys and Britneys, without large marketing campaigns to prop them up, will not survive. The Wilcos, Radioheads and other high quality artists will.
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The record industry + distrubtion chains + media conglomerates serve as one giant middleman that is effectively rendered obsolete by file swapping. Fans do not want to pay $12-17 for a CD--and rightly so. Recording artists don't want the industry to absorb a huge percentage of the profits on an work of art that was their creation alone. In addition to Napster, you have Don Henley and Courtney "Lawsuit Crazy" Love threatening to sue to get out of their contracts and forming the Artists' Coalition in an effort to give artists more leverage vs. the record industry.
When you buy a $15 Cd, why should $14.80 go towards the middleman? Wilco fans went out and bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as a show of support for the artist, not to pay the salaries of the shithead executives at Warner Music Group.
What's going to happen in the next ten years is all these frustrations with the middleman will result in a huge paradigm shift in the industry (that has already begun.) The record industry, completely out of touch with the technology and the demands of your average music buyer, will continue to drag its feet regarding online distribution. You will then see mass defections of artists from their labels.
Artists will then beef up their web sites to include pay-for-download schemes for fans. You will either pay one time fees for album downloads or pay yearly membership subscriptions to the artist's web site. A yearly subscription fee of $35 for example, could include all material an artist has to release that year (album + b-sides and alternate takes) plus access to concert ticket presales, news, message boards, studiocams, chances to win autographed stuff, etc. Pirating and file swapping would still occur -- there is no getting around that -- but most fans with any degree of conscience and common sense would continue to support their artist and pay for content. In addition, sites would allow fans to buy t-shirts and other merchandise from the artist directly.
This would result in much greater profit margins for artists. The only "middleman" would be the company that hosts the website and the high speed access providers. Even still, the costs to run the site will be a tiny fraction of the costs to manufacture, distribute and market millions of compact discs.
The mechanism for promoting artists that currently exists will exist no more. Instead, word of mouth, independent news and media sites (like All Music Guide, Ain't it Cool News style sites) will help inform fans about new artists. Media conglomerates like AOL Time Warner will, of course, react to this phenomenon by refusing to carry news or information about defecting artists. The grass roots, non-corporate news sites will continue to thrive and eventually surpass corporate rags like Rolling Stone.
The key is that if and when this happens (and we can only hope it does), music of QUALITY will sell - and quality, not marketing, will be the determining factor in whether an artists thrives or does not. The Backstreet Boys and Britneys, without large marketing campaigns to prop them up, will not survive. The Wilcos, Radioheads and other high quality artists will.