The Record Industry's Decline

Very good read. The past seven years or so have been pretty fascinating regarding all this stuff.

The Internet appears to be the most consequential technological shift for the business of selling music since the 1920s, when phonograph records replaced sheet music as the industry's profit center.

Well, that took a long time. Record sales didn't surpass sheet music sales until the 1950s. And in the early 1930s, the record industry was in just as much a jam as it is in now, maybe even worse.

The RIAA maintains that the lawsuits are meant to spread the word that unauthorized downloading can have consequences. "It isn't being done on a punitive basis," says RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol.

Yeah, and the consequence is...punishment!

Thanx for posting! Fascinating stuff.

great article

Very interesting but as always the labels are masters of misdirection. If nothing else many of the people downloading, file-sharing, etc. are MUSIC LOVERS. Not all download exclusively and to spread one's love of music used to be something record companies valued and promoted. We DO now have about 10 years worth of music listeners who didn't change from CD to digital--they were digital to begin with and that's got to be dealt with. I own a small used/new shop and if digital download of new hit releases happened tomorrow I'd welcome it. I can't make money selling new CDs, especially hits. They're usually available at "America's One-Stop", also known as Target, for two bucks less than I buy them from my wholesaler. I'd really just as soon not carry them. Downloading is a problem but I've always believed the majors's four biggest problems are price, price, price and bootlegging. Go to any flea market in a neighborhood where the locals don't have honkin' computers and DSL connections, see if you can't find any big hit CD, with no generation loss and color-copied artwork for 5 bucks. You can in Atlanta.

I own a small used/new shop and if digital download of new hit releases happened tomorrow I'd welcome it. I can't make money selling new CDs, especially hits.

My favorite local store eventually went this route, concentrating solely on used CDs and new and used vinyl. It wasn't enough for them to keep their head above water in the end but it kept them going for longer than other spots would have done.

Go to any flea market in a neighborhood where the locals don't have honkin' computers and DSL connections, see if you can't find any big hit CD, with no generation loss and color-copied artwork for 5 bucks. You can in Atlanta.

or ride marta & buy from dude carrying a garbage bag full of cd-rs

what you need, man? what you like?? you like that t.i.??

i got t.i., pimp c, tupac, maroon five...

I'm tryin' to do all used but there just aren't that many recent "indie" and hit major label CDs out there yet. Have to have the friggin' White Stripes even though you gotta pay 12 bucks to make 4 on those. Selling good used CDs that 12 bucks should make me at least another 12. I do get people selling me a big box of good ones from time to time but that's a one-time boon--the guy's decided to trust his music to hard drives and so he'll not be shopping here any more. Until maybe the drive crashes, heh.

what record store do you have??

Same as my ILX name. In Toco Hills, if you live in ATL.

sometimes i wonder though...say they had totally done everything different....embraced downloaded, basically done every laundry list of things that everyone on the internet says they should have done different...reduced prices, etc etc etc....sometimes i wonder if things would even be that different....i mean, people like shit for free at the end of the day.

"We expect to be a brand licensing organization," says Cohen of Warner, which in May started a new division, Den of Thieves

arf

xp
ppl currently pay subs to filesharing sites and rapidshare.

you do? no one i know pays for rapidshare and stuff...it seems like it's free.

or ride marta & buy from dude carrying a garbage bag full of cd-rs

-- and what, Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:51 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ otm

I would like 1 YYT CD and 1 bag of Skittles

sometimes i wonder though...say they had totally done everything different....embraced downloaded, basically done every laundry list of things that everyone on the internet says they should have done different...reduced prices, etc etc etc....sometimes i wonder if things would even be that different....i mean, people like shit for free at the end of the day.

Word. But what I'll always wonder is if just one person at Elektra Records had thought about what it really meant to have 300,000 (or whatever it was) working e-mail addresses of Metallica fans (and the hardest of the hard-core ones at that) during the whole Lars/Napster thing. I mean, direct mail is supposed to be successful with a 2% response, something like that. What if they'd have made some choice Metallica goodies available to those people in exchange for considerations regarding future "pirating", something like that. You'd have had a hell of a bigger success rate than 2%, for sure. You know, build a little customer loyalty, a little give and take.

But they sued 'em.

yeah i mean i don't doubt this could have been handled better. and that, if they would have done a lot of things differently they would probably be better off for it. but, somehow, i'm not sure if i buy the whole "people LOVE music and would pay for it if you would have done X, X, and X"....i don't even think it's the music nerds that download tons of shit that really hurts anyway...it's more casual fans that used to buy like 4-5 CDs a year that now have really zero invested in caring about music that are more than fine with just getting burns or DLs of stuff....

I think Matt's right on the money. It's the millions of 5-10 CD a year people buying nothing that are crippling the industry more than the hardcore music nerds who buy half/download half the music they hear.

Agree that the casual downloader isn't often more than a Top 40 fan, listens to tracks, not albums, yada yada. But the majors have bet a lot of their chips on the idea that the superstar releases have to float the whole operation and incredibly when the new Kelly Clarkson sells 4 million instead of 10 the shit starts flowing downhill. And if the label frontloads the marketing of these records, all the budget blown to get that couple of weeks at the top of the Billboard chart (just like the movie business), then stops working the record after one or maybe two singles then Kelly C.'s artistic output has been devalued in the eyes of the music listener to, well, the price of one CD-R. It's not a new problem: I mean, not many of us bought the whole 1910 Fruitgum Company LP, we bought the single we couldn't get out of our heads, or radios.

Oh, wait. The labels say releasing CD singles cannibalizes CD sales. No singles. Idiots. There's a transactional cost to downloading (time, 'puter, DSL, CD-Rs): how many copies of, say, "Hey Ya" b/w "The Way You Move" as a $.99 single could they have sold to people who never intended to buy the CD but ripped and burned those tunes? I guarantee they'd have sold millions and not have lost 10% of that in CD sales. There it is! On the counter at Target or friggin' QuikTrip, for God's sake! 99 cents, the cost of a candy bar. Idiots.

music fans have preferred singles to albums from the dawn of time. a fact that record industry has hated from the dawn of time. one day, perhaps, the industry will discover that delivering the exact products its customers want will be a pretty nice way to make a profit.

I dunno, you think people buying 4 or 5 CDs a year are downloading them illegally? Why go to all that trouble just for a few songs? Downloading from iTunes, perhaps. But I always pictured that crowd as being a bit older, and now they're buying those 4 or 5 from Starbucks or Target.

I'm just bummed that its been pretty firmly established now that the majority of music listeners prefer music in short, convenient bursts without any context or artwork or packaging or anything. Watching Ice Cube rhapsodize about how the comic books that came w/Funkadelic albums drew him in ("cuz now you had something else to do besides listen to the record"), I was struck by how a medium I really love and get a lot of enjoyment out of is basically being forced into extinction.

<i>I dunno, you think people buying 4 or 5 CDs a year are downloading them illegally? Why go to all that trouble just for a few songs?</i>

i work with a lot of people as i described, all about mid to late 20s. they are very casual music fans, listen to their ipod but music isn't a huge deal to them - never go to concerts, etc etc....as far as i can tell they get 100 percent of their music through discs burned to them from friends - not downloading actually but same diff....one even said once "i mean, there's just no reason to buy anything now" - they all have ipods and know about itunes, but why buy stuff when it's free?

I know several people like that too.

the thing is - they don't go to the trouble of downloading for a few songs...they just hear something at a friends house and say 'hey burn that for me' and then that's it....they're not into searching out stuff...whatever comes to them that they like they listen to, but it's not a big deal either way. and they used to buy stuff too...they all have those black cd booklets and all the purchased CDs are from the mid/late 90s/early part of the 00s - then all burns.

M@tt OTM - that is pretty much everyone I know right now, barring my fellow musicians/record collector friends

its kinda the equivalent of trading taped copies like my friends and I used to in high school - except WAY faster and ridiculously more convenient.

also, i guarantee that none of these people have ever bought a single - CD, vinyl, itunes, or otherwise - in their entire lives. i really doubt they ever would.

I know I've written about it loads but I really think the WAY people listen has affected how much music people buy; music for most people is just something to have on while you do something else, be it travel, cook, talk, take drugs, etcetera. Now I'm sure this has always been the case for an awful lot of people, but I think for people under, say, 30 now, it's even more of a peripheral to even more people than ever before. We're too busy, too fast, doing too much, to view music as an important thing worth spending money on in its own right. It's kinda the same with alcohol, perhaps; for everyone I know who really enjoys a good glass of wine or pint of ale, there are ten times that number of people chucking pink sweet booze bombs down their gullets as fast as they can, the point of the exercise being not enjoying drinking but the extreme release of being very, very drunk.

Now I'm sure this has always been the case for an awful lot of people, but I think for people under, say, 30 now, it's even more of a peripheral to even more people than ever before.

I am curious about this and wonder if its true - its ubiquity does seem to have decreased the value invested in it. I work with younger folks and have friends with teenaged children and none of 'em seem to invest the emotional intensity I used to associate with young music listeners... or maybe they do and I'm oblivious to it (entirely possible).

The kids (18-22) I work with at uni all dress like they're in emo bands but never show any interest in the 6,000 LPs and 2,000 CDs in my office. Except the one intense dude who doens't dress like he's in an emo band.

xpost OK, that makes sense, the 5-6 CD consumer.

Except the one intense dude who doens't dress like he's in an emo band.

SOULMATES

it's not just the casual fans anymore -- this is the first year my record spending took a small hit. it's two things -- the stock at certain local stores are going stale in my favorite sections, experimental / classical / electronic / world. perhaps the result of the flood of people selling off their entire CD collections is that stores can only afford to take the sure-fire CDs, and are passing on the overstock obscurities that lure in fanatics -- in any case, I'm just not finding cool stuff by browsing. and the second thing -- I never got into ptp or torrents, but now that album blogs have hit google, my iPod is filling up with albums I've been searching out for years that I've never even had the option to buy -- there's no competing with that.

but it's upsetting, because without major labels we're really going into the hall of mirrors -- the most pernicious words on ILM are 'overrated' and 'underrated' and they're increasingly applied to records that either almost no one has heard of or that are revered & treasured by tens of thousands respectively, but we're all just in our caves watching the shadows and griping about what we think the rest of the world is listening to

I will say that as a musician this situation makes me not want to bother investing a lot of time and energy in making a physical product available to the public - making limited amounts of things I enjoy seems vastly preferable, and if people find it somehow or wanna hear it hey great, but why should I bother trying to reach them.

seriously

never been more schitzoid as a musician / music listener. serious fucking trauma is involved with realizing a physical edition, so many compromises, and no one even cares anymore, yet it's still a required step, you feel devalued by your audience. on the other hand as a listener I'm overflowing with more affection & gratitude for the music I'm getting into than ever before. at times, it even feels like more of a direct connection, especially when you're suddenly in a position to encounter things like this

The small outfits like Time-Lag and Foxy Digitalis emphasize the physical release, but then again, they are small outfits and geared towards this approach.

The kids (18-22) I work with at uni all dress like they're in emo bands but never show any interest in the 6,000 LPs and 2,000 CDs in my office.

Why do you keep them in your office?

On the main point - I'm 46 and have thousands of Lps and a few hundred CDs and I still spend a fortune on records; though I haven't bought a new CD in a year - I also DL stuff, more than I get a chance to listen to. My daughter - just 18 - never buys any music but she's not 5-6 CD a year girl either; she 'has' lots of tunes and knows a fair bit, but neither she or any of her friends - even the nerdiest of boys -have the collector gene; music and its material instance have become entirely separated

I run a library film & music department at a university.

it's not just the casual fans anymore -- this is the first year my record spending took a small hit. it's two things -- the stock at certain local stores are going stale in my favorite sections, experimental / classical / electronic / world.

Me too, that and because the local shops are all closing and I don't feel like CD-shopping online because I know I'll end up buying a big parcel full of stuff and I already have too many CDs and can't shift the ones I never listen to any more. (OK, I had a kickstart in this respect because I was unemployed starting last autumn and cut back on the spending and haven't really felt the need to get back into it yet.)

Though looking at my cd racks you could be forgiven for thinking I was one of those stopped-buying-in-2001 types, because for all that I kept buying a lot of stuff, most of it was used and old.

It's worth remembering that the type of music which is downloaded illegally pretty much echoes what is on the charts, so you can still ascertain with some accuracy what the masses are into by browsing them. I think Scik Mouthy's drinking analogy is good: this is part of a general societal trend, and not something which is unique to the music industry.

If I remember correctly, about 5 million people bought the Justin Timberlake album. Well, I would guess that about 50 million people have it -- or parts of it (like I do) -- on their computer.

I run a library film & music department at a university.

Thanks - I was thinking jealously that you must have such a huge collection that you had to keep some of it in work.

Was thinking this last weekend, as the Arctic Monkeys sold out two open air shows here in Dublin, that they are probably 'bigger' in terms of being heard and seen than - say - Bowie ever was, but with a tenth of the cultural weight, something which seems linked, in a way i can't quite figure out, with the fact that 'everybody' is into music now - when i was at school, being into music was a distinction; now its like television - another thing people resent paying for

or as Bowie said with some foresight "music will be like water, it will come out of a tap" (or something)

no way bowie coined that one.

and no way arctic monkeys are any kind of equivalent of bowie as a musical or cultural or generational force. there are other musicians working today you could make the case for. arctic monkeys are not among them.

David Bowie, June 2002 New York Times article:

"The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within ten years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in ten years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. [...] So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen..."

Matt H. completely OTM.

We can all rattle off our favorite anecdotes and statistics and factoids about what the record industry did wrong and how they "brought this on themselves," and yeah, they fucked up in a lot of ways. And that makes us all feel a lot better.

But ultimately there was no way the labels could stop this, and they'd be hemorrhaging profits by now no matter what.

I mean $10 a month at 35 million subscribers sounds great - until you realize that a lot of them are going to wind up flocking to the other free platforms once you start charging, not to mention burning, downloading from blogs, etc.

I do, however, see a potential bright side, especially for smaller labels. The upside of downloading is that it's going to put the same music in a lot more peoples' hands - the way to take advantage of that is for the label to have more of a stake in the artists' touring (which makes sense on other levels anyway), since the promotional efficacy of downloading can help ticket sales. So I think hybrid labels that are also somehow involved with booking are the way forward.

Even for me, a person who doesn't download illegally and rarely burns CDs, the net result of my having an eMusic subscription is that considerably less of my money goes to record labels.

I got rid of my emusic subscription this month cos I either wasn't using it or wasn't listening to what I did d/l.

and no way arctic monkeys are any kind of equivalent of bowie as a musical or cultural or generational force
That's kinda what I said ..... what I meant was, they're probably as popular, that's all.

Well, there were things in Bowie's heyday that were as popular as Bowie with far less surviving cultural significance too, but I see your point.

the stock at certain local stores are going stale in my favorite sections, experimental / classical / electronic / world. perhaps the result of the flood of people selling off their entire CD collections is that stores can only afford to take the sure-fire CDs, and are passing on the overstock obscurities that lure in fanatics

...and when you think about that isn't it just colossally stupid for used stores to do that? My God, I buy every capoeira, Honk Horn, Harry Partch and hot-rodded thumb piano CD that walks in my door. My God, it's just a few bucks, it's one copy and whoever comes in my shop to find stuff like that thinks "Whoa, here's a place to check in on from time to time." What's kept me in this ten-cent life is the attempt to give music fans that sense of ownership we all get from finding out about something strange, new, thrilling...there's no feeling like it for me and I love to pass it on. So do those who buy that stuff. I mean, I've been doing this for a long time and know some stuff but I have customers with more CDs than I carry in the shop--who am I to think I know everything the true freaks are gonna want? Lord, let the entire Sublime Frequencies, Buda Musique or Pressure Sounds catalog walk into my place used and I'm a delighted little retailer. Oops, got to go--here come more used Dave Matthews CDs :)

the way to take advantage of that is for the label to have more of a stake in the artists' touring (which makes sense on other levels anyway), since the promotional efficacy of downloading can help ticket sales.

Does this strike anybody else as being a funny kind of reversion to jazz-era models of music-making...? where musicians have to work and play live all the time to make any money, with recording as kind of a adjunct/promotional thing...?

I am going to hit up Ella Guru sometime soon

Lord, let the entire Sublime Frequencies, Buda Musique or Pressure Sounds catalog walk into my place used and I'm a delighted little retailer. Oops, got to go--here come more used Dave Matthews CDs :)

LOLZ - you give me hope man!

Featured in the eight-minute video is J0n "WIZ4RDISHUNGRY" Wms., a University of Rochester student sentenced earlier this year to six months home confinement as part of the federal music piracy crackdown “0peration F4stL1nk.” Available free of charge for use by colleges and universities beginning this fall, the video can be ordered from http://www.campusdownloading.com/.

wrong thread ;_;

On the counter at Target or friggin' QuikTrip, for God's sake! 99 cents, the cost of a candy bar.

OTM, pop songs as impulse buys. It's part of what makes downloading so much fun: you have a song in yr head? in two minutes you can crank it.

Does this strike anybody else as being a funny kind of reversion to jazz-era models of music-making...? where musicians have to work and play live all the time to make any money, with recording as kind of a adjunct/promotional thing...?

We're basically at a point where it's easier than ever to be a sort of *serious part-time musician*, i.e. work a day job, put out your stuff yourself (or on a small indie label), promote via the internet, and with hard work and talent maybe turn it into a secondary income stream. If you want more than that though, it seems like hardcore touring is pretty much the way to get it at this point. Course there's also licensing and all that, but with more competition for that money than ever it's probably not likely to become a reliable source of income for most.

I was struck by how a medium I really love and get a lot of enjoyment out of is basically being forced into extinction.

I was saddened to see this sort of sentiment reduced to "fetishism", I think it was in a recent thread.

Odd isn't it then, that while people are reluctant to pay even peanuts for recordings, they'll fork out huge monet for live tickets - when I was young, gigs were cheaper than records, now they're a multiple thereof.

eh, 'money'

We're basically at a point where it's easier than ever to be a sort of *serious part-time musician*, i.e. work a day job, put out your stuff yourself (or on a small indie label), promote via the internet, and with hard work and talent maybe turn it into a secondary income stream.

well this is basically what I do now (although "income stream" is perhaps an exaggeration - more like "break even stream")

I was saddened to see this sort of sentiment reduced to "fetishism", I think it was in a recent thread.

it isn't just fetishism tho - its not that I prize the object itself, I like that it contains additional information that supplements the listening experience. This is why those Funkadelic albums, for example, are so great to me, they're packed with stuff that amplifies and informs the music.

WTF is wrong with fetishism anyway?

And wtf is the ipod about anyway?

its the same with the Sgt Pepper sleeve, or anyhing written by Leonard Feather, or Big Black's hilarious "The Rich Man's 8-Track Tape" collection, or or or ad infinitum

x-post

Odd isn't it then, that while people are reluctant to pay even peanuts for recordings, they'll fork out huge monet for live tickets - when I was young, gigs were cheaper than records, now they're a multiple thereof.

The price people pay to stay in their comfort zone, mostly, in my opinion. Know so many people who wouldn't dream of seeing a group play a 300-seat club for 8 bucks who're setting the alarm to get up tomorrow morning to log on Ticketmaster to try and get Police tix for, what, a couple hundred? They're probably going to be good and all, so are the Eagles or Stones or wotever I guess but in the end it's an oldies show for classic rock fans. Although I don't think you'd have to sell one of your huge Monets for even Police Gold Circle brought to you by American Express tix :)

well my understanding is that fetishism implies an attachment to the object itself, the object is loved for what it represents and not for its function...? I dunno, its been a long time since I read up on my marxism...

x-post

THE POLICE
balc 1 - $80
mezz - $120
orch- $200
elite box - $WATER LILLIES

I'm just amazed/saddened that the majority of listeners want a less enveloping musical experience - they don't want MORE, they want LESS. so strange.

I'm just amazed/saddened that the majority of listeners want a less enveloping musical experience - they don't want MORE, they want LESS. so strange.

Except at live reunion shows in arenas, it appears. The peeps love them some explosions!

hey who doesn't

haha our next album will EXPLODE when you listen to it

I think one significant issue that no one ever mentions (i.e. anywhere I know of) is not that the labels were slow to adapt to filesharing (although obv they were and didn't remotely handle it correctly).

I can remember back to 1997 or so when I was basically into stuff like snatching up fonts and warez off of usenet and hotline that I first learned of the mp3 file format itself.

I called my one friend who worked at a major label to essentially warn him about it (so he could bring this to the label president's attention thus making him look like he was really on top of everything-- because he was actually my friend and I wanted him to look good so he could hold on to his as-it-turned-out-tenuous job, not because I wanted to help the majors out in any way).

Anyway, he basically said "ah, that's not gonna mean shit" and i was kinda like, ok, I am really trying to clue you into something that is really happening out there that your company should have a strategy for but whatev., I ain't getting paid for this level of "consulting" so fuck it.

Thing was, all of their technology consultants who were net-booming it up doing for the majors had no vested interest in bringing the issue to their attention (maybe because they wouldn't have known how to integrate a download store into the piss-simple html sites they were building at $250,000 a pop), or else it was just still a really underground (mainly Mac) thing.

I remember there used to be a document floating around the hotline servers called "mp3 wtf?" and i can remember DLing it and being thinking hmmmm, this is interesting. I remember it was quite a while before I actually found any mp3s I actually wanted though!

So Saxby, are you saying the labels were slow to adapt because they couldn't really feasibly adapt at the time? Because that's an interesting point.

Something I've found interesting, and I haven't seen much written about it, is how, now that people talk about brands and the importance of branding, major labels now have virtually no brand association whatsoever. I thought of this when Ahmet Ertegün died, how he built Atlantic records and what that name came to mean. And it was a big record label eventually (though not a major), with a lot of money and a huge acts, and to be on Atlantic was a very important things for bands like Zeppelin. Columbia too, with John Hammond. But now, Jesus -- Epic is still a label in some fashion, and what does it mean to be "on Epic"? Or to be on Sony? Warner Bros. has a little, b/c they took some changes w/ alternative music in the 90s.

it isn't just fetishism tho - its not that I prize the object itself, I like that it contains additional information that supplements the listening experience. This is why those Funkadelic albums, for example, are so great to me, they're packed with stuff that amplifies and informs the music.

Oh I knew you meant that. I was saying that I didn't like the idea that someone could get enjoyment out of the physical product in whatever manner could be reduced to the same level as someone who enjoys feet.

I'll never forget when I found that duffed up copy of America Eats Its Young on the wall at St. Mark's Sounds! It was $40 and I had to make the dude SWEAR that he wouldn't sell it to anyone else while I RAN to the nearest ATM to take out what I am almost sure would have been my last few $.

Wait no, I guess you're saying the tech people at labels just had no reason to alert their bosses. Which might be true. But I've also heard it pointed out that most labels just didn't really have enough tech people working for them at all.

Matt, that's a good point - and ironically it's the indie labels who have been much smarter about branding (5RC, WARP, DFA, Drag City, Def Jux -- each brings to mind very specific musical associations)

@Mark:
That's what has been so pathetic about the major labels. Nobody says "I wonder what's coming out on Universal this month." Record companies have been focusing so much on controlling distribution (through retarded DRM schemes, radio consolidation and payola, destroying the indie record stores with crap like this, and a relentless consolidation of their resources behind a few (usually older) bands, that they have forgotten their whole purpose. Labels are supposed to be a trusted filter for all the crap music in the world. Insanely, they thought they could control the distribution channels so completely that people would have no choice but to listen to whatever crap they were pushing. I mean, how much sympathy can you have for corporations that aren't even interested in maintaining their brand value?

And the same applies to radio. They forgot their purpose, and thought that they could eliminate risk by buying into the corporate payola scheme. The whole point of radio is to hire music lovers as program directors and sell advertising around the music those people chose. The frickin' radio stations were so greedy they thought they could make money on the music too.

As far as I'm concerned, all of these a-holes deserve their fate. They took a perfectly profitable business, tried to create a risk-free monopoly, and got burned. Boo-hoo.

whoops - I forgot to close a parenthesis.

or maybe I shouldn't have even opened one in the first place...

And the same applies to radio. They forgot their purpose, and thought that they could eliminate risk by buying into the corporate payola scheme. The whole point of radio is to hire music lovers as program directors and sell advertising around the music those people chose.

Word. I'm 52. I was looking at the book that came with the first Nuggets box one day, every track with their highest Billboard chart position, how many weeks on chart--I heard every last one of those tracks on my AM radio station when I was a kid. No matter if the song peaked at 107, two weeks on the chart. They played the song and let the listeners decide. In about 1988-9 or so I was invited to some label dinner where I was fortunate to meet John Hiatt. At the dinner was a kid about 25, worked for Lee Abrams and was a radio consultant with one of the big rock stations here in Atlanta. Hiatt was just miserable and so was I. This child did not know shit from shine dope. The writing was on the wall. I think Public Enemy wrote a song about this kid shortly after.

As much as I'd like to believe that the industry's decline is directly proportional to its indifference to true music lovers, I'm not sure it's true. After all, Starbucks has done quite well ignoring true coffee lovers.

The big light bulb for me in this thread is the CD copying among friends. I keep forgetting about that, because no one in my circle does it, but I see those wallets full of cloned discs. Burning a duplicate of the latest RHCP for your office mate is the real p2p, but there's no way to make examples, or even find those people. They don't read music blogs, they don't even make mix cds. The rest of the whole RIAA vs Music fans is an echo chamber. The fan who has the wherewithal to figure out online trading is the label's best customer too. I bought my first CD in nearly a year the other day, because it wasn't on eMusic, hadn't got a promo for it, and I was chatting to the store owner and wanted to support him. I have to say, the packaging was crap, but it was a double disk, and worth it just to get that many tunes.

Which is to say, 25-50 cents is my price point.

re:online ventures, Okayplayer was already relevant when it started in 1999, with major label artists on board and although it looked & sounded nice, I remember thinking uh-oh, here they come, the majors have just figured something out. But no, it remains a cool hip hop community to this day. Somehow the web couldn't be co-opted that easily but proved a natural fit for open-minded artists, broadcasters... and their file sharing audience eventually.

Record companies sort of started digging their own grave with all those hit compilations dominating the market more and more from the late 80s, and the emergence from the late 80s onwards of throwaway teenybopper acts who were never expected to have anything but a few hits.

If they had rather gone for the early 70s approach of building album oriented long lasting careers over time, filesharing would have meant less as the audiences would have been more interested in entire albums (with intact sleeves and all) rather than single tracks. The entire "Now That's What I Call Music" and "Hit Album" thing turned the kids less into favourite acts and more into favourite tracks, and this has helped filesharing being a much larger disaster to record companies than had they chosen another path back then.

That's a common line, but I don't buy that one. Every era of music has had tons of crap, most of which is forgotten. So when you look back you only see the good stuff that has lasted and it seems better than it was.

Yeah, there was a HUGE failure to success ratio (both monetarily and artistically) for album-oriented rock.

true, but I think that ratio got worse as time went on. There's some quote in the beginning of one of christigau's record guides where he lists the number of new albums that came out by major labels in 1980 vs 2000...it's like 10x the number.

I think in the 70s they let some people cut a few more records before dropping them (c.f. springsteen) whereas in the last twenty years, either you hit big on your first try our you were out.

dood do yourself a favor and don't agree with Geir

I haven't read one of his posts in over a year.

I'm saying "every era has crap" is not the same as "the industry had different A&R practices in different eras"

Anyway, he basically said "ah, that's not gonna mean shit" and i was kinda like, ok, I am really trying to clue you into something that is really happening out there that your company should have a strategy for but whatev., I ain't getting paid for this level of "consulting" so fuck it.

Out of curiosity, did your friend ever realize how he read that totally wrong?

Yes I'd love to know if he had a moment of kicking-self too. Ah schadenfreude.

the audiences would have been more interested in entire albums (with intact sleeves and all)

the era of the compact disc is the real culprit here. the "sleeve" is this plastic thing with some paper shoved inside. also, compact discs have always been and continue to be overpriced.

I think the real reason the record industry is in decline is that most people simply aren't into new music anymore. People don't pay attention to the Billboard Hot 100 when the Billboard Hot 100 is nothing but music for 12-year-olds.

Stunningly insightful.

I think the real culprit is Mr. Mustard. In the pantry. With a pointy stick.

FWIW, I have it from a good source that Cl1ff B3rnst31n, manager of Metallica and head of QPrime, used to insist that the whole internet wasn't ever going to be of much importance to music - granted this was a long time ago.

what I'm surprised not to have seen years into this debate is some semblance of an ethical consensus surrounding these issues coming from 'music-loving' communities, even in the academic sense. It almost seems like people on all sides of the issue are waiting to see what 'the music business' will eventually settle into before they posit what it should actually 'be', which is making it more scary than exciting for everyone involved. I've caught wind of various models from patronage to all-you-can-eat subscriptions, etc.; is there any top-down models you guys have seen that seem sustainable/feasible(ie. people will actually buy into it)/equitable? we'll leave 'enforceable' off the table for right now lol) or is it actually better to have the myriad players grope at what works for them hodgepodge like they are now? I'd rather defer to some of you with more experience before i jump in so I'm being vague on purpose, just kind of tired of the rome-fiddlers-at'ers vs. finger-waggers tenor that these discussions tend to take on. Like, what is should be next?

in re: label branding, rap has kinda carried the torch for that, which I like - as a collector/fetishist/whatever, I enjoy feeling like there's more at play than just a business releasing a product

Like, what is should be next?

if anyone knew the answer to this, they'd keep it to themselves.

What should be next is that the majors should drop the prices of CDs...considerably. To five fucking dollars. Ellaguru (who the majors should be hiring as a high-paid consultant like yesterday) said it above: the four problems are price, price, price, and bootlegging. As soon as he mentioned flea markets in neighborhoods w/o DSL and fast computers, I was like "Where is this neighborhood on my town?" And I get serviced (very occasionally nowadays but still) by the majors with promos. So if CDs were $5, the majors may have a chance at beating the bootleggers at their own game. Also, those with DSL and a fast computer may just forsake the fear of getting sued and run out to buy the new T.I. album for $5. $5 is better than, what, $2000-$6000.

And put them in 7-11s, supermarkets, more gas stations, etc. The nearest 7-11 to my apt. sells almost no music (I remember seeing a Jessica Simpson [I think] Xmas CD near the cash register once but that's all). I bought a cutout Gary Numan album on vinyl at a supermarket in the early days of CD. Today, the nearest supermarket to my apt. has a decent sized DVD section. But I have NEVER seen one single piece of music for sale there.

And guess what a supermarket in a low income neighborhood in my town is selling? DVDs for $1 some of which include two movies on one disc. Yes, the quality is poor. But not unwatchably so (I know cuz I bought one). And yes, the selection is odd at best. But guess what you can't buy there? CDs at ANY price.

"Where is this flea market IN my town?" that should read. I know where the neighborhoods are.

Anyway, he basically said "ah, that's not gonna mean shit" and i was kinda like, ok, I am really trying to clue you into something that is really happening out there that your company should have a strategy for but whatev., I ain't getting paid for this level of "consulting" so fuck it.

Out of curiosity, did your friend ever realize how he read that totally wrong?

Yeah, every time I razz him about it! ;-)

Well, what does he say, though?

the four problems are price, price, price

yeah I've always believed this and am still willing to believe this, I guess -- the industry seems wedded to hellacious price points that they have everything to gain by throwing overboard, which goes quadruple-duple if we're talking about digital distribution(right? don't the hard numbers HAVE to favor pushing more digital units no matter what?). this is where someone needs to tell me it's waaaay waaaaaaay more complicated than that using as many insults as possible.
this is all assuming we're in 'save the music industry as we know it mode' which is as good a place as any to start, sure.

Wait no, I guess you're saying the tech people at labels just had no reason to alert their bosses. Which might be true. But I've also heard it pointed out that most labels just didn't really have enough tech people working for them at all.

Ok, on this I am saying that these "tech people" were all very highly paid outside web consultants (broadly speaking, obviously I don't know everyone), responsible for building these things called "websites" that every major seemed to feel they needed and had no idea how to do in-house (but which in retrospect were quite basic).

Now while these guys were raking in bare dough on one hand while reading Websites For Dummies in the bathroom with the other, they did not have the impetus to inform the companies that the mp3 file format existed (and I am not the least bit convinced they themselves knew about the file format,as it was still a largely underground and Mac-driven format, and we are talking the Gil Amelio years here!).

Well, what does he say, though?

Safe to say he is in another line of work now. He doesn't say anything particularly as this wasn't his responsibility in the first place. I was trying to school him and make him look good to the company's (crazy) president, but it's not as though this was his job. He was in A&R. He had the prez's ear so I thought it would be cool for my friend to make some points but he chose not to. He barely remembers the entire experience of working there to be totally honest.

One thing I think about sometimes is that the whole Napster thing happened in about 2000, right? The main demographic for a lot of music is 18-24. This means not only that everyone who was in that demo when Napster was really going is already OUT of that demo, but that anyone currently IN that demo really knows nothing BUT the age of Napster and if not FREE MUSIC, then certainly not necessarily the physical product itself either.

I think that interestingly, if you were to hang around Other Music for an hour or two, though, you would nonetheless see loads of people in that demo buying stuff, (although between 9/11 and Tower Records closing down not nearly as much stuff as they would like, I bet).

Inasmuch as the industry made its bed by building its entire stoopid businesses around the big hits, it is really more the Kelly Clarkson downloads (whoever that is) off of lowlife places like Kazaa or Limewire that is killing the business than anything Other Music might carry.

The one thing I don't get is: isn't in incumbent upon any self-respecting college student or young adult to have at least 30 or so CDs lying around their apartment, if for no other reason than to map their "identities" to guests? I mean, first thing I do once I have dispensed with the pleasantries of entering someone's home is go have a look through their books and CDs! I guess that's rude maybe but I can't help it, I am interested and it is a good way to start up a conversation too. (Although nowadays it's usually like "oh yeah, my son used to be really into dinosaurs too at that age"). ;-)

Does that type of thing just not go on anymore or do people just pick up the person's iPod nowadays and scroll through that? I am not just kidding, I would really like to know...

Also I want to talk more about that branding stuff but I don't have time right now. Anyone else care to revive that end while I vamp a bit over at this end? hope so, I think it's an interesting topic (and points made).

the last time I hung out with a 16 yo daughter of a friend of mine, the first thing she wanted to do was have me check out her iPod and guess what was on it. I haven't hung out with any college age kids in awhile tho (not since big pre-Iraq invasion anti-war protests anyway) so I'm no help there...

isn't in incumbent upon any self-respecting college student or young adult to have at least 30 or so CDs lying around their apartment, if for no other reason than to map their "identities" to guests?

Is it? Let's face it, 'identity' is constructed by the means of what's to hand -- and it wasn't like CDs (or recorded music period) was always around. If this is just part of the overall shift in what constitutes what you are, there ya go.

The advantage of working at a college -- I can ask a Real Life Young Adult right here, IE my student worker Ricky, who I know has a few favorite bands and all. His take:

* He likes having some CDs around because, as he puts it, it's like he has a 'piece of the band' that way (cf Ice Cube's comment re: P-funk)

* Most of his friends just have mp3 lists/iPod setups.

* He has a *real* disdain for people who live their lives all around music, ie people who create playlists and say 'this is the kind of music I listen to when I'm sad' -- he views music as a way to relax but not as something to live your life around.

* Verbatim: "gaining status for listening to a certain kind of music is completely fucking retarded to me! The whole underground scene of music I have no problem with, it's the fans I have a problem with -- it's all about status, 'Oh I listened to this band when they were in their garage and had only five fans.' You *want* your favorite bands to become known, and that's what any band wants, to be heard by as many people as possible." Plus further trashing of fans complaining about bands being 'sellouts' (using AFI as a specific example).

So there ya go.

hahahaha Ned I kiss you, very Marshall-McLuhan-in-Annie-Hall move there

Did you tell him AFI still suck?

do people just pick up the person's iPod nowadays and scroll through that?

resolutely yes. I'm a college stuent myself and the thing that always happens at parties now is someone has their mp3 player plugged into whatever system is available and insists on playing their music while others scroll through theirs looking for something they'd rather stick on, and sticking it on when the other person's back is turned. It's all very obnoxious. People pick up each others mp3 players and scroll through them, or even their phones or make you look though them.

I'm also of the "demographic" (it feels so dehumanizing) that had napster available when 16/17 but the difference between then and now is that I was on a slow costly dial up and had no way of listening to mp3s outside of using the computer until i bought a cd burner, meaning i was much bigger music purchaser than corresponding demographic is today probably in the age of broadband.

these days people my age are downloading whole series of tv shows like Veronic Mars (don't ask why 24 year olds are watching that) or weeds and burning them and swapping them. Music isn't the only business this is effecting, and I don't think tv and movie execs are really seeing it coming. They think if they amp up the definition and stick more copy protection on players that'll ward it off, but it won't.

haha thats true all the tech geek guys I know have given up paying for cable/movies and are just ripping shit for free off the web

which is great cuz if there's anything that needs killing its TV advertising

glad Ned is here to provide us with Real Life Young Adult example

You're 87, right?

the points he makes are pretty much OTM for me as well (though progressively less so as you go down the list)

though I know I am an exception because I buy most of my tangible music on used vinyl (because a) it's cheaper and b) the music I enjoy listening to is available on vinyl)

(I still buy CDs obv. but I'm less inclined to buy them on a whim because they are damn expensive)

and most of the music enthusiasts I know use soulseek/bittorrent

which is great cuz if there's anything that needs killing its TV advertising

Yeah, but I mean, like, just for argument's sake, ya know, it does take a budget to make a film or a tv show. Where do you expect that budget to come from if everything's free and there's no advertising?

slave labor. Harvey Weinstein could stand to lose a few pounds through hard work.

Its funny how file sharing has killed the industry but liberated musicians so much; we can hear more, the free software, knowledge, people from all over the world can hear our music and all that stuff.

Apart from people who know they'd be making more money if 100,000 people hadn't downloaded their latest album and maybe 20,000 had bought it, most artists I've spoken to don't really care about filesharing. I remember talking to a guy from round here (free improv drummer, been playing since the 60s) saying that most people he talks to get his music off soulseek., he didn't seem to fussed about it, this seems to be the case with a lot of people I speak to… just glad that people are listening and more people are coming to his shows.

Most of the really talented musicians I know, those that actually could call themselves full time musicians, in the sense that they actually put a 35 or more hour week into their music, get money through arts council funding and that sort of thing. Most of them belong to some sort of collective where they all share resources/talents, outside of that, they teach music to make money. I don't see where the record company is needed in this instance.

I can see new music being heard in the same way as those funny emails that go round, I guess we see it all the time with music writers bigging stuff up then suddenly its massive. Its fun to predict what might happen, record companies hosting nights, buying up clubs/venues, more integration with visual media, will be interesting to see where all this goes. I'd like to see music becoming more localized, more live music, better pay for performers, sound engineers, visual artists and integration of other arts into the whole thing. Now I've written this it seems a bit off topic, but oh well.

as a musician who grew up wanting to make albums - you know, pieces of music that came with artwork and an aesthetic and functioned as discrete objects - I don't really feel liberated so much as confused.

altho I'm glad to see major labels fail. Hooray!

I think most musicians who aren't shifting lots of records (i.e. over 99% of them) aren't bothered about filesharing because no-one ever gets paid anyway. It just means you have to admit it's a hobby rather than something you might make a living out of someday.

well, i think we're only only just getting into a time where musicians are starting to understand how they can make a living out of music. its only in the last few years where its been affordable to record you own music to a quality that rivals major releases. plus i think we're likely to see audiences grow.

i'd agree with shakey, its confusing. but most musicians either don't want to, or don't know how to run themselves as a business. i'm looking forward to having a decent van, studio, good enough tunes and a few hundred quid saved to see how well i can do. its like starting a business, a big risk, but i'm sure its possible... if you're any good that is

Like, what is should be next?
How to make money through the celestial jukebox (TM). All music streamed from anywhere, no storage needed. Please don't tell me phone companies will rake it all in due to sheer bloated- & cluelessness of all other major players.

The Celestial Jukebox (every piece of music ever recorded) has GOT to be the model of the future. All-you-can-stream over ubiquitous broadband wirless for a monthly fee. The big question is - how far are we from this? And is satellite radio a similar model that we can learn from?

Subsidiary question: will it give us cancer (the ubiquitous broadband).

http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg
http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg
http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg

did u guys know you can turn on the tap and 'download' a glass of water???

i have trouble getting all 'cry for me RIIAgentina' about this

uhh RIAAgentina

People (bands) are working (leasing rehearsal/studio space, buying equipment, spending time) to get you that tapwater (good music) deej, whether riaa-affiliated or not.

yes but the point is that you can market shit that people can get for free, and they will buy it

we do love buying stuff

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/fig1.gif

bottled water sales ^

point taken.

spoken like a true Volvic addict.

shit is addictive

To take the bottled water metaphor seriously, and examine it very closely, it is not so much that people are prepared to pay for something that's free - there would be uproar if people were expected to pay large sums of money for turning on their taps - but that, when a person is on the move, water is rather hard to obtain easily. One can of course duck into a public toilet and swig from a tap; or, take a flask of water from home; or, duck into a cafe and beg for a glass - but these are not really practical solutions for most people.

Now as we know, people can and do download large quantities of music at home, on their computers, for free. However, when on the move, they may well be prepared to pay a very small amount for music, as they may have the impulse to listen to an artist, and yet have no convenient access to their own computer. It may be cost-effective, therefore, to have music-dispensing online vending machines at train stations or in corner stores. One would duck into one, plug in one's portable listening device, download some tracks for a very small fee, and move on.

I'm an old codger, and well out of touch, and this is not what I would like to do. I would like to just turn on the radio and listen as I walk. However I would want to select the tracks myself, as per Last FM and Pandora. Neither of those models really suits me though, as about 80% of the music I want to hear won't be on those stations. They are hoist by the petard of their selection processes, which are getting more and more stringent - just like a record company lockdown on a station playlist - not nearly as bad, but heading in the wrong direction.

No, my radio station would have exactly what I wanted, and most of that would be unreleased music I've found on the web. It does not matter to me whether it's been released on CD or not. It must not be a service biased towards US and UK rock music. I want to select, say, 'Ugandan music', or 'power noise', or 'Partch', or 'unreleased Myspace' as a search phrase and then listen to that all day as I walk around. I think this would be a kind of Google radio station. How does anyone make money out of me? Well, I'd pay for the device, but it would need to be no more expensive than an iPod. I'd also pay for internet access, perhaps with a small subscriber fee for the right to do this. I wouldn't tolerate any ads, but perhaps there might be a cheaper subscriber rate for those who would.

<i>yes but the point is that you can market shit that people can get for free, and they will buy it</i>

this is key

I don't think the whole thing about bottled water is mobility - that's part of it, ok, but people also drink bottled water at home, and in restaurants instead of water they could have for free even though a restaurant's tap water is required by law to be drinkable - people in NY drink bottled water even though the tap water's famously good! So, there's more to it than that. It has to do with brand identity, or even product identification ("I am the kind of person who enjoys bottled water").

at any rate, I think that artists establishing a personal connection to listeners is the way forward - that making the product personally attractive to the consumer is where the labels have failed so spectacularly: such a connection can fairly be called a business relationship; filesharing dictates that recording artists consider listeners their employers. I think this is a healthy development, even though I dislike 1) the whole "I got the album the second it leaked and here's my opinion of it as I listen to the first track" blog/board-culture vibe that's come to be a big part of things and 2) the ethics of "look, no harm's done to anyone, so I'll do what I like" but that's a horse not worth riding

there are some depressing things about this of course - would one really have wanted to see a Joy Division myspace? Isn't some enigma a good thing? less so in the new market it seems.

About fifteen minutes ago I drove past the nearest McDonald's to my apt. Outside there's a brand new DVD kiosk where you can rent DVDs for $1. Yet again, there's nothing remotely like this offering music. Someone in Hollywood is trying to think ahead whereas the record industry...

A Joy Division myspace? I'm not sure I can get my head around that concept.

Branding is something the smaller labels do well. As a previous poster said, when you think of Universal or Sony, music isn't the first thing that pops into your mind. It's more like movies, consumer electronics, or "Ugh, corporate bloodsuckers." Music isn't part of the brand. Smaller labels, on the other hand, do this quite well. Think of the classic labels, Chess, Sun, 4AD, Rough Trade, Factory, Touch and Go, Mute, Motown, or Blue Note, all of them had distinctive looks, sounds, and at least in their early days, stringent quality control. They were able to make that connection with the consumer; something larger labels haven't been able to do.
Small labels are also better at niche marketing, since most of them are started by music fans. Music fans who are often closely connected with a particular scene, record store, studio, or band. This gives small labels an inherent advantage when building brand identities. Back in the day, every jazz fan knew that if you bought a Blue Note record it was likely to be good. Not to mention nice to look at. The same holds true for many other musical genres. There are dozens of small labels selling to noise, metal, psych, dubstep, reggae, or indie fans that make that link everyday by knowing their markets well.
The downside to all this, small labels are notoriously sketchy and unstable, since music fans are often lousy businessmen. Most of the successful ones are gone within ten years due to mismanagement (McGee snorts the profits and signs rubbish, Tony Wilson can’t pay the bills or his artists.) or swept away by changing markets. But, if you're a believer in the long tail theory, small labels might have a better chance of pulling through the digital collapse than the majors ever will.

Joy Division MySpace

JOY DIVISION has 119479 friends.

Awesome!!

One definite by-product of all this change is a change in the way fans will relate to artists. It's definitely much harder to be an enigma these days. It used to be that not only was it a lucky break to find the album you wanted by the artist you wanted (unless you ordered it, which was still a long anticipation process), but that you couldn't even find *information* about the artist until some magazine happened to have a story or interview, except whatever was in the Trouser Press book or whatever guide you had.

So artists, especially lesser known ones, lived on small, distant islands and once in a while you were lucky enough to find a bottled message from them.

Myspace and Google certainly take away that experience - give me a day and I could probably become proficient in knowledge of almost any artist. But artists can't afford not to be on Myspace, because the audience's attention span is too short and they have too many other choices, and if they don't find you there they'll just look for someone else. And you just can't escape Google.

That line is heard and accepted too often without challenge. I know artists not on MySpace who are still doing well in terms of sales and recognition.

Well, I hope that's true. Maybe it's much more important for certain demographics than others.

Lots of good posts, where to start?

John's observations re: the relationship with the audience and the question of mystery strike a chord precisely because they grapple with the indisputable grey zone that now exists in 'the music business,' however conceived, and the rhetoric around it. From my perspective, I am conflicted a bit about wanting to remain an enigma/function away from (for instance) Myspace, to bring in blunt's point too.

Generally speaking as a fan of a fair amount of acts and performers I do not obsess over the minutiae of their lives, nor do I demand constant tracking and updates. I don't think it's incumbent on anybody to provide it, no matter who you are -- this ties in with my general belief in not blogging about every facet of my day, for instance. At the same time, wanting to be able to easily direct people to something of interest in a quick and easy fashion is kinda key for me -- I see it as a logical extension of my time as a DJ, and my switchover from that to concentrating on writing first and foremost was precisely because the AMG and other locales allowed me the chance to do so in a very broad fashion. This is still the case -- I encourage bands I like [many of whom I found through MySpace] to submit stuff to the AMG precisely so it can be listed and their name spread out further to folks, and hopefully I am also able to review it for the Guide then as well.

Hurting's description of the island metaphor resonates as a result because of my own experience -- I *did* use Trouser Press extensively in the late eighties and early nineties to get a grounding in more obscure acts and a toehold on a variety of styles I would not have otherwise known. Information availability was restricted not by intent but by default, a situation now irrevocably changed. And as I mentioned I actively seek to encourage ways to get, if not every detail out, then at least *something* out -- to my mind, the question seems simple: don't you want people to hear your music? If so, why not use the means available? MySpace in and of itself is ripe for all sorts of questions about what it is and who it benefits, but its usefulness in sharing music readily to those who are curious about a newly discovered name or band seems beyond question, though of course the distinction between official and unofficial pages is important.

And that said, two portraits of widely differing approaches (and I could cite plenty of other examples): the Maine band Visitations -- not the Elephant 6 group -- has been a favorite of mine for some years, and they have studiously avoided creating any sort of internet presence, not just a MySpace one. Their releases have all been limited edition CDRs that quickly sold out, they've not shown any interest in interviews, etc. I respect that but at the same time I'm also frustrated a bit, because to my mind they make excellent music and I'd love to share that more with people; when talking with Nemo of Time-Lag, who distributes their stuff, he indicated that sharing a few songs via YSIs was no problem with the band, so I did so on a thread on here. But that's only a temporary measure at best. Can I force them to do more? Of course not. Should I? Don't be ridiculous. That's the artist's decision. But that always runs up against my desire not to have the music be 'lost' -- especially in this time of sheer information overload, something I welcome but something that means to my mind that places have staked out somewhere, an attitude clearly the band does not agree with.

The complete flipside is a band like VNV Nation, who I saw last night. Like about ten million other bands they rely tightly on that loop which John rightly notes re: the personal connection to the audience, and they've done so extremely well from what I can tell. They're hardly the first group to so prioritize this way but when they finished their set and flashed up a 'thank you' screen to the audience, this was followed by two separate screens listing their website and their MySpace site -- and the MySpace site was first. They encourage people to visit and participate in that particular model, to use it the best of everyone's abilities -- again, not new, not unique, merely the most immediate example to my memory because I just saw it. But it is a cogent reminder of that embrace of a context and Net-based 'place,' radically different from Visitations, and doubtless reflecting a similarly radical split in what the two groups intend in terms of their audience relationship.

Ultimately neither approach is right or wrong but my sympathies clearly skew towards the VNV approach. A couple of weeks back, meanwhile, I got into an intense, interesting argument with a fellow attendee at the Bottling Smoke Festival about how I want to spread the word about shows, bands, etc. and how he felt that was an invitation to cheapen what was being done, that people would show up with the 'wrong' attitude or mindset, that they wouldn't appreciate what was being done. I appreciate where he was coming from but instinctively I kick against this vision, I think that runs the danger of a certain kind of elitism -- which is interesting too given my example just cited that a band like VNV clearly aims for their own particular 'right' crowd and does so very well. But ultimately I just feel you've got to allow for the possibility of welcoming all, of the *potential* if you like.

This said, by one's own thoughts, actions, deeds, one might find oneself creating a limitation on that potential without consciously trying to do so -- and for all I know I've done that myself my entire life, I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. So I don't think there's a final word on this, there can't be, and definitely not now. But the issues therefore remain all the more potent as a result.

you've got to allow for the possibility of welcoming all, of the *potential* if you like.

yeah! this would seem so obvious, a given in any creative endeavor, yet what turned me off about "indie rock" as the 80s wore on was its ridicule and/or outright abandonment of this principle. not so much for elitism implied as the built-in crippling limitation. but as ned also says, there's a sort of natural human inclination toward self-defeat. subconsciously we all shoot ourselves in the foot w/o knowing it.

do the visitiations object to the internet itself, or do they want to stay local, remain at a certain level because of other committments?

"it's hard to be enigma these days" -- hurting write this as a song!

speaking of self-defeating behavior: the initial article posted validates much of what I wrote in Playback four or five years ago but I take no satisfaction in the collapse of the big music companies, no matter how richly deserved or self-inflicted.

as scary and challenging as this all must be for musicians it's also got to be inspiring. like the post-punk era writ large, or the days just after the berlin wall fell the chaos presentes a chance to...

RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN. tho as that hoard old rock song went "it ain't easy when you're on your own."

do the visitiations object to the internet itself, or do they want to stay local, remain at a certain level because of other committments?

I'm guessing more the latter -- there is a small record store one of them runs which is on the Net, for instance, but it doesn't seem like said Net presence is the core of their business approach. And they do do a lot of local work and collaborations, so that might well fit into it too.

I take no satisfaction in the collapse of the big music companies, no matter how richly deserved or self-inflicted

I admit to schadenfreude, but it's kinda hard to resist after all this time. As it stands the bit in the article that strikes me the most is Rosen's 'having no economic value, just emotional value' bit -- it's pithy, sums up a fairly accurate state of affairs, and in light of all of Rosen's statements at the time she headed the RIAA incredibly telling.

everything that comes out of hilary rosen's mouth strikes me as disengenious and self-serving. I think it's less a question of "value" than ownership -- intially at least didn't p2p filesharing feel like souped-up tape trading rather than a grassroots assertion that information should be free? as spokesperson for the RIAA she never seemed to comprehend the basic nature of napster and file sharing, as evidenced in her quote from 2001 "What we want is someone to think twice before they start a business." wasn't the whole point of napster that it wasn't started as a business but as free software?

related lols:

NBC: 'Movie piracy hurts corn farmers'

Sunday, June 24 2007, 15:26 BST

By James Welsh, International Editor
NBC Universal has suggested that America's corn farmers would see a benefit from a government clampdown on film piracy.

The company made the claim as part of a filing in which it encouraged the FCC, America's communications regulator to force internet service providers to implement blocks that would prevent their subscribers from downloading pirated content.

"Because of our nation’s interlocking economy, two-thirds of the lost earnings and lost jobs are in industries other than motion picture production," NBC Universal's filing said. "For example, in the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment."

In rebuttal of the claims, Washington DC-based advocacy group Public Knowledge pointed to statistics showing higher corn futures and an annual consumption of "17 billion quarts of popcorn" in the US.

The Celestial Jukebox (every piece of music ever recorded) has GOT to be the model of the future. All-you-can-stream over ubiquitous broadband wirless for a monthly fee. The big question is - how far are we from this? And is satellite radio a similar model that we can learn from?

i want this too, but we're EXTREMELY FAR from the "every piece of music ever recorded" piece of the puzzle. as long as someone (consumer) is paying and someone (artist, via their label or their distributor or their manager or whatever) is getting paid, someone needs to control the rights to the music. and as long as someone controls the rights to the music, stuff is going to be going out of print in the celestial space just as often as it goes out of print now in the physical space. check itunes or rhapsody or any such store and notice how often records get pulled by their labels. the celestial jukebox will not change this; if anything it will make it worse, because it will be easier to pull records from print than it is now. when bruce springsteen gets his rights back from columbia, or when amy winehouse gets hers back from universal some day, they'll be able to pretty much hit an "off" switch and make the music go away in a matter of seconds, until they find another distributor willing to pay them more. as long as any kind of money is involved, that's how it will be.

i wonder what this might mean for music journalism...

recording artists wanting to make a living out of their music shock horror

http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=428162

Clear Channel Accused Of Making Artists Forfeit Performance Royalty

June 22, 2007

The Future of Music Coalition, an artists' rights group, is accusing Clear Channel Communications of forcing musicians to give up their digital copyrights in order to get the airplay that the broadcaster is required to give under the payola consent decree. The Coalition claims that Clear Channel is forcing independent musicians to sign a contract that gives up the artists' right to a performance fee when their music is broadcast over the Web.

"This is outrageous," Coalition Executive Director Jenny Toomey said, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Esq. "This is like the fox getting caught in the henhouse a second time and arguing that he shouldn't get in trouble because he was leaving the hens alone. He was just eating all their eggs."

However, a Clear Channel spokesperson said the Coalition has it wrong. "Clear Channel Radio has gone above and beyond to make this artist-friendly," explained spokeswoman Michele Clarke, according to the Reporter. "The artists are in complete control of their musical work. They control whether they just want it considered for broadcast over the air, whether they want it considered for streaming online, whether they want it to be available for download or all three, and (most importantly) they have the right to terminate their license at any time upon notice to us."

The language in question, obtained from the license agreement on Clear Channel's WWDC/Washington, DC, says, "You grant to Clear Channel the royalty-free nonexclusive right and license in perpetuity (unless terminated earlier by You or Clear Channel as set forth below) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display and distribute any sound recordings, compositions, pictures, videos, song lyrics ..."

The digital performance royalty, mandated by Congress as part of the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recording Act in 1996, provides money for artists and copyright holders for songs played via the Internet, satellite and cable. In March, the Copyright Royalty Board voted to increase the rates that Webcasters must pay each time a song is played, and the stiff increase has been a hot button issue among Webcasters ever since.

WAHT!

Good 'ol Clear Channel...And then there is this...

Internet Radio Makes Noise With Day of Silence
You may not hear the Day of Silence creeping up until it pounces on Tuesday, June 26.

You also may not believe there is much to be gained from having a day when most webcasters kill their streams. But, as protests go, this had better work. The Copyright Royalty Board's move to award so much in royalty rates for the right to play music online threatens the online radio industry's existence. To fail means that come July 15 you'll have far fewer interent radio stations.

If you're stuck in that broadcast arena, you will pay the amounts required by the new CRB rates if you stream your station's signal. And, simply shrugging your shoulders as the Day of Silence rolls by is going to set you up for similarly explosive royalty rates on the broadcast side. The RIAA-backed MusicFirst Coalition has already made that clear.

Despite this, broadcasters seem ambivalent to the new online royalty rates. Scanning Radio & Records and Radio Ink archives reveals no stories - June 1 to present - about how these new online rates will affect broadcasters. Industry leaders have only come out in the last few days to acknowledge the RIAA-backed MusicFirst Coalition's "performance" rate proposal as a "tax." (This is the same style of rate increase, but it's applied to over-the-air broadcasts.)

If radio doesn't ratchet up lobbying power concerning the online royalty rates, thousands of broadcast radio stations' streams will go silent. Then, over-the-air programming better look out.

If these royalty rates stand, there's a very good chance the online station you listen to will fold. Back payments, due through Jan. 2006, will force thousands of internet stations to give SoundExchange more money than they currently have. The word "bankruptcy" has cropped up many times over this fact, just about as many times as the phrase, "We'll just turn off our streams and walk away."

Here's the gist of what's happening, according to Kurt Hanson at RAIN: "...the rates set by the CRB judges equate to roughly 50% of revenues for large webcasters like Yahoo! LAUNCHcast (and probably many terrestrial station streamers), 150% to 300% of revenues for small webcasters like AccuRadio, Radioio, and Digitally Imported, and, for webcasters with large numbers of channels like Rhapsody and Pandora, well more than 1,000% of revenues."

I'd like to hear the discussion in a college finance course about the above increases. I'd be happy to supply a discourse with facts concerning the lack of revenue in the online radio world (how advertisers are few, and agencies aren't interested yet).

The Day of Silence is Tuesday, June 26. Spread the word that unreasonably high royalty rates are going to crush the online radio industry; do this whether you're a webcaster, broadcaster, or audience member.

Call your Congressman and Senators. You can find their phone numbers at SaveNetRadio.org. Tell them to support their version of the "Internet Radio Equality Act." Then call a friend and have them call Washington, too.

You may not hear the Day of Silence creeping up on June 26, but then you won't be hearing many internet radio stations on July 15 either if people fail to make their voices heard today.

http://www.audiographics.com/agd/061907-1.htm

(x-post)
i have no idea who's right in the first article curmudgeon posted -- notice that nothing the clear channel spokeswoman says refutes anything the future of music coalition is saying -- but this is interesting. artists have never received a fee for having their music played on terrestrial radio (songwriters get paid, but performers and labels do not), and whether they SHOULD get paid is far from a settled matter. if clear channel is asking artists to willingly give up their digital fees, so that they can play them on an internet radio station freely, just as they can already play them on a terrestrial radio station, that might piss off artists and record companies but it might be a good thing for consumers, no?

I guess it's a bit unclear what "royalty-free" means - no royalties to the performers or no royalties period?

From another posting on the Clear Channel thing:
http://reclaimthemedia.org/arts_activism/clear_channels_plan_to_stick_i=5314

As part of the settlement with the FCC, the radio networks agreed, among other conditions, to air 4,200 hours of local and independent music on their stations. ...

Per the settlement, the broadcaster set up an online application for local and independent artists to submit their music for airplay on each of its stations. The applications are on a web page attached to each Clear Channel station web site (i.e., www.dc101.com/cc-common/artist_submission.)

further irony is that Clear Channel’s move to require artists to sign away their performance rights is kind of redundant. In the United States, the commercial broadcasters have managed to avoid paying performance royalties for over the air broadcast of music. This means that when a song is played on the radio, only the songwriter is paid whereas in 75 other countries both the songwriter and the performer are paid.
.....
You may wonder why Clear Channel is asking artists to sign away rights they normally don’t have to pay because of their already negotiated exemptions. Well it may just be because Clear Channel’s move comes as strong momentum is developing in the artist community to demand that radio broadcasters come in line with the rest of the world and finally pay a public performance royalty for terrestrial and digital radio.

Ah ok, now it makes more sense.

The whole royalty system is based on somewhat outdated ideas about "songwriting" and "performance" that still fit certain music very well and other music not at all.

Hurting that's so nicely put that I have to tip my hat to you

Thx. I'm no expert on the nuances of royalties, I just always find the basic definitions kind of weird.

basic definitions kind of weird.

It comes down to the sheet-music peddling roots of the music industry mentioned in the article that started the thread. They haven't fully adapted to that last change in the 1930s, I guess.

Clear Channel’s move comes as strong momentum is developing in the artist community to demand that radio broadcasters come in line with the rest of the world and finally pay a public performance royalty for terrestrial and digital radio.

wait, "artist community" as in "RIAA" rite?

Thx. I'm no expert on the nuances of royalties, I just always find the basic definitions kind of weird.

The thing is, I don't know how weird they are at core - I think fifty or so years of theory has clouded the waters a little, and that you're right that there are some areas where the definitions get a little weirder, especially now that producers/production teams have so many tools at their disposal - dubs/remixes, for example: aren't they so far from the original that the writer's credit should be diminished and the producer's increased? But again, at core, one does write a melody and one does write lyrics, and if those are being used, then "authorship" isn't that slippery an idea

thing is, most bands have 100 percent control over who gets those credits. it's up to the band to decide whose name goes on the song and, therefore, who gets paid for radio play, tv play, etc. if band A thinks only the melody and the lyrics should count, that's their choice. if band B wants to spread the credit around to arrangers, players, etc., that's another, equally valid choice.

seems to me the issue in question in these posts isn't "who really wrote that song" but rather should radio be obligated to pay both performer/label and writer/publisher, i.e. two separate royalty streams? right now, terrestrial radio pays only the former and internet radio pays both. and under the current terrestrial model, nothing is stopping most artists from claiming performer credit and the accompanying royalties for anyone in their sphere who they think deserves it.

wait, "artist community" as in "RIAA" rite?

-- blunt, Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:28 PM (1 hour ago)

Hmmm, this is complicated. RIAA supports the new high royalty rate that medium size and small online radio folks say is exorbitant, while the "artist" community wants America to start paying performance royalties as 75 other countries do. I think RIAA and the artists(some would say they are represented by the Future of Music Coalition) disagree on the specifics of both how online operators should be charged for royalty payments (should big corporate folks pay one rate, smaller companies another rate, non-profits and universities a different rate) and how royalties should be distributed to artists (at at what rate). So they both want royalties to be paid but they disagree on how to do it. I think the RIAA sees no problem with one high rate for all online broadcasters (and most of those royalties distributed to mega-selling performers at a higher percentage rate than that for tiny indie artists).

For American terrestrial radio, Clear Channel opposes adding the 2nd performance royalty stream and I am not sure where RIAA stands.

right now, terrestrial radio pays only the former and internet radio pays both. and under the current terrestrial model, nothing is stopping most artists from claiming performer credit and the accompanying royalties for anyone in their sphere who they think deserves it.

Wait, so if I wanted to cover a Bob Dylan song and I arranged it for my band and copyrighted the arrangement, terrestrial radio would have to pay me royalties? Or are you only talking about original music where the band can divvy up credit however they want.

sorry -- i was talking about the original artist/writer. any given song has exactly one set of credited songwriters, written in stone at the time of publishing or registering. so if you cover a bob dylan song in any kind of arrangement, terrestrial radio could play it and not pay you a cent, but they would have to pay dylan.

so, yeah, artists who perform covers are currently shit out of luck.

Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead - Peter Jenner
By Andrew Orlowski (and✧✧✧.orlow✧✧✧@theregis✧✧✧.c✧.u✧)

Published Friday 3rd November 2006 17:04 GMT

Few people know the music industry better than Peter Jenner. Pink Floyd's first manager, who subsequently managed Syd Barrett's solo career, Jenner has also looked after T.Rex, The Clash, Ian Dury, Disposable Heroes and Billy Bragg - who he manages today. He's also secretary general of the International Music Managers Forum.

And he doesn't pull his punches.

The major four music labels today are "fucked", he says. Digital music pricing has been a scam where the consumer pays for manufacturing, distribution, and does all the work - and still has to pay more. Labels should outsource everything except finance and licensing.

But he's also optimistic that for almost everyone else - indie labels, musicians, songwriters and budding entrepreneurs - as well as network providers - the future's going to be pretty bright. The Big Four know that the DRM era is nearly over - and within two or three years, he predicts, "most countries" in the world will have a blanket licensing regime where we exchange music freely, for a couple of quid a month.

In the future, he also suggests, artists, co-ops and managers will raise their own investment on behalf of artists - and pick and choose their marketing teams.

Jenner is organising a conference (http://www.musictank.co.uk/bts_conference.htm) in London on November 15 to discuss these issues. Billed as an "Urgent Blue Sky Debate", for once a music event may live up to its billing. Earlier this year, France almost voted to legalise P2P and bring in a blanket license - the necessary stepping stone to the future.

While Jenner elaborated on these in a report for MusicTank recently - it's only available to the public for a fee. So we were delighted when he dropped by Vulture Central yesterday to lift the lid on the business. Strong language follows.

Q: You said that at In The City, the big label executives have lost their faith in DRM - they don't believe in it any more.

A: They don't. Not anymore.

And that was done by Sony BMG - what the fuck was that (rootkit DRM) about? The other was iTunes - and they've seen how kids don't like it. The unitary payment doesn't suit the technology, it doesn't suit how they're actually using downloads - which is to explore and move around. You don't want to pay a dollar for each track when you want to explore music.
Q: And they're pretty crappy services, too. eMusic works, but when the others time-bomb the songs it's more annoying than the per-machine restriction. Because it's suddenly robbing you of something you had.

A: Oh yes.

Q: And three years later you go, "Oh, shit!" - You basically have to pay twice for it.

A: Yes, that's outrageous. You've got to provide stuff that people can keep, and they don't mind paying you $3 a month for.

Q: So how long can the big labels keep up this charade?

A: Earlier I was talking about the ground moving underneath the industry. At In The City people are beginning to realise they have to do something. So I think in two or three years blanket licenses will be with us in most countries.

Q: And France nearly voted for it this year.

A: Yes, it got shot down - but the people who shot it down really shot themselves in the foot. They tried to get away from being too unpopular by saying "it's like a parking fine" - and the court said no - if it's an infringement of copyright, it's an infringement of copyright, and there's a huge fine.

So of course they can't enforce the law - it's completely unenforceable.

With the DRM, I think they've realised it just isn't working. People don't like the CDs, they find their way around it; they don't like the DRM, they don't use the DRM services; they resent - as you say - having subscriptions wiped.

Q: So do you think a blanket license will be introduced bottom-up through industry agreement, or top-down as in France - where there was some political leadership? It just isn't on the mainstream media, or think tanks' radar just yet. And I don't see much political leadership.

No, the political people have to be just well informed enough so they don't fuck it up, and they have to be encouraged to help it. I think it would be wonderful if the government could lock everyone in a room - the music industry, the unions, the performers, the record companies, the publishers, the ISPs - and tell them you can't be let out until you sort it all out.

They won't do that, but I think some way will be found to get that result.

Q: So it's a fear of losing the distribution channels?

A: They won't have any control over distribution. A blanket license is a blanket non-license, really - it's simply saying "we won't sue you". But if you have commercial services exploiting music, we will want to pay you more. You're licensing the anarchy.

It's interesting where we'll end up drawing the line between commercial and non-commercial, but in the end the numbers will be so huge it'll iron itself out. Someone from England might pull in a lot of hits from Spain - but again, it doesn't matter. I don't then worry how they'll pass the money to each other, but it'll all come out in the wash.

Q: Like it does today with collection societies?

A: Yes

Q: I saw some reaction to the first step - "Value Recognition Right" here in the UK, and very few people seemed to understand it - especially not from the value-for-money point of view.

A: It was a very important first move but it was also a bit clunky. "Value Recognition Right - what's that? You're inventing a new right to make people pay - but you're also suing people - huh?"

But if you say that if mobile phones and ISPs want to distribute music in a non-commercial fashion, then they should pay for that right.

And if you swear that you're not going to listen to any music, you're not going to pay. It's going to be very hard for you not to pay, and the network is keeping an eye on you to see you don't download any music. And if you do without a license, we'll sue the hell out of you - because you've been offered a cheap deal like the TV license.

Q: That's a lot cheaper than a TV license.

A: And fairer. If you don't have a computer, you don't have the internet, you don't have a 3G phone - and you don't listen to music - you're not going to pay!

Q: They had to do it I think, and it was necessary to flush out critics who have no realistic alternative - other than that artists should go begging...

A: The "freedom" people are telling us I have to go out and sell more T-shirts - it's an argument I find tremendously insulting.

Q: To me if someone gets some earning from their creativity it's one less person who's going to spend their life on a production line, or in a cubicle

A: Well, all the people who are writing this have salaries

Q: Or they're rich tenured American professors.

A: They're getting paid very nicely, thank you. No, I certainly agree.

I don't think the positivehello side of Recognition Rights came in. Here's some place you won't be sued - you can do what you like with it - explore the world's music, share it, download it.

Q: So the Big Four can't give up control?

A: Well, they know that they've built their power around their monopoly, and their manipulation of the market, and that's how they cover up their incompetence - by being "the only people who know how to buy stuff in", and so on. They've spent a lot of money establishing it.

And it's only through distribution, through black boxes, and their control of the existing copyright regime.

But it's not just that. You've also got this incredibly complicated rights structure. They've got to sweep it away online - they don't need to fuck with it offline - but they need to say there will be payment for music, and it's for the (artists) to claim under some kind of regulation.

We can have an 'OfRoy' - an office of royalties, or whatever you want to call it. Someone just to keep an eye on things to see people aren't be shafted, and that there's arbitration in the long run.

Doing it through the courts is just too complicated - it just becomes nit-picking. What we are doing today with radio, PRS, is actually riddled with holes. Money gets lost, misattributed, deductions are taken for this or that - but we can all live with it. It's not some malicious plot. It's just compounded human error.

Q: For readers who've never heard of the black boxes, what are they?

Any money that comes in through collective payment and you don't know who it belongs to for any reason - or you can't pay it to them because you don't know where they are - goes into what's called the black box.

Which everyone in the collection societies insists doesn't exist. You ask Fran (Richard, ASCAP) about the black box and he will give you the most fantastic bullshit. He'll say "We don't have a black box".

Of course he has a black box. With the best will in the world you cannot distribute all the money accurately.

In a blanket license system, there'll be huge black boxes, and we'll have to learn to hold the money for a long time. People will learn to register, then we can work out how to deal with the black box fairly - rather than giving it to people who know it's there. That's what's happened in the past, really.

We don't talk much about it - so no one know who's got it. And the people who get it don't say much about it - it's not top of their conversation at music conferences. They don't come in and say "we cleaned up on the black box". What they will say, is "our market share was fantastic." That's because it's divided up by market share. It's non-attributable income and it doesn't have go to the artist - it goes straight to the bottom line.

The industry dreams of black boxes! (laughs)

Q: But now it's going to be in the collection agencies' hands - or some intermediary.

A: If it's the publishing side, you get 50/50 at least, or 70/30 if you have a modern or newish record deal. And that 50 per cent is not recuperable against any advance. It's the same with PPL - you get some substantial proportion of the income. (The PPL is a members' society that collects royalties from public performances and and divides them between the recording rights holder and musicians) It's not quite as much as they try and tell you get, but it's quite a lot. So it's another income.

But it's quarterly and they can't wait to get rid of the money. The agencies know the regulators are watching them closely and can come in and ask "what are these pools of money you have here?" The EU watches them very closely.

So in collection agencies, while money can get systematically stolen, it's like petty theft. It's like retail losses from shoplifting. The agencies are really just shoplifters, but the major labels are burglars, and the worst of them are like armed robbers!

Q: You mention Clive Rich (Sony BMG) in your report who modernised the recording contract - but that cut the rate for songwriters, didn't it?

A: No, I don't think it cut the rate for songwriters. I think it kept the rates online very low - but it was much clearer, much simplified and absolutely a move in the right direction. But you see, because of the stock market, they're obsessed with "margin".

If you're talking about your margin you should be doing things completely differently. They should be talking about their bottom line. But they talk about "unit margin" because that's what analysts look at.

Q: That's true. It's a house joke at The Register when we cover earnings calls that the analysts have this Pavlovian response. I've been on calls where a company's sales have fallen 50 per cent and all the analysts ask about is "margin" Er, guys, what about your sales drop!

A: What's important is what's your bottom line, for Christ's sake.

The blanket licensing thing is obviously going to slash your unit margin. The record companies have increased their margin on downloads, because the costs have been ripped out. So they've cut the artists royalties and raised their margin.

But because they've replaced an album with a single they've helped destroy the retail industry, they're now in a position where they're completely fucked.

No one's got any sympathy or love for them, because they've systematically been shoring up their figures in the short run - squeezing money into Universal to make up for their catastrophies; Warner Brothers have been coping with huge debt; EMI have been desperately trying to hold their stock price up so somebody would buy them; BMG has been wondering how the fuck they're going to pay somebody back money for whatever it was, so they don't go public - and Sony are in a terminal mess.

So all of them have been draining profit. It's "get the money in, boys, get the money in. "

So they've raped them. They've raped their whole business model, and no one's got the time or energy to think about their business.

Then you've got people like Barney (Wragg) at Universal, their new technology man, and they've got these High Priests of DRM in there.

Q: One thing you strongly hint at is that the distinction between royalties for a physical thing, and performances, is out of date and needs to be rethought.

A: The difference between a download and a stream now is now purely just a question of what you want to call it. Both are streams, both can be downloaded and it's whether you want to call it a download and charge for a download.

The record companies have managed to establish, and I think incorrectly and it should be challenged, that a download is a replacement for a sale. Here's what they're saying - it's a mechanical, so it's the same as selling a record. Then the logic goes on: a download is a certain technical process that puts it onto your machine. So anything which does that is a download. Therefore, anything delivered in that way is a sale: so we'll pay you as a sale.

Which then means you've got to track everything. It's not discriminating - it's not looking at what people are using the music for. It's creating an artificial distinction so they can distinguish the payment of royalties. So you get paid 15 per cent of the dealer price net of some things - whether they call it "packaging deductions", or "new technology", or "Mid-Price", or some combination of those.

They have all sorts of ways of slicing down the royalty rate. And the net result is that if you're getting only five per cent of the dealer price actually paid to you - as the person who made the record - you're doing well. The writers, because they've got the publishers fighting for them, get more. They went to tribunal recently and got eight per cent of the dealer price. So if you wrote your own song you might get 11 per cent of the dealer price, and that's top money. If you allow for the Paul McCartneys, maybe 15 per cent. But that's tops for a big label.

Now, if you're an independent, you get in the region of 35 per cent of the dealer price, because they go 50/50. And that's what gives the game away.

And all your net is a payment to an aggregator - maybe 15 per cent, and paying the distributor, and paying the publisher. So instead of five per cent of dealer price you're going to get maybe 20 per cent of dealer price. It's a huge difference!

If you say it's a performance, however, it's a neighbouring right, it might be argued that it goes through PPL, in which case you get 50 per cent with many less deductions. So a performance split between members of the band, sessions musicians - a complicated formula but it goes to the musicians.

Q: In your report you suggest that a blanket license for digital will really begin to change relations fundamentally. You mention managers, and artists co-ops. Can you elaborate?

A: The key things that the record companies do are probably finance and distribution. Well, distribution is much easier because of the net. There's also marketing - and that's really finance. Then you have an issue of these complex rights - so who do you back? Do you put your money into the record or into the whole game? And I think everyone's moving into putting money into the whole game.

You can envisage a different investment model - imagine estate agents for IP. Someone wants to come in and invest £100,000 in Billy Bragg. And he goes to someone and someone says "Sure, Billy Bragg, it's safe to give him £100,000"...

Q: I can't see it working. We might live in four or five houses in a lifetime and there's only one Billy Bragg career for Billy.

A: There's one career - but the logic is sound. If you turned over 50,000 and made a 50,000 profit, he'd be safe

You can look up the recording part of it, and chop that up. Or you can just promote the brand. I think you call them consultants rather than estate agents. That way you're asking what is the key element of the equation - and the key is to "own the fans" - and the person who owns the fans is the artists. So it may be the best person to invest in is the management - you'll get the best return on your investment - and you can see what the manager did last year. Or they can say, Peter Jenner - I know what he does. Let's let him go out and find the promotion people and the marketing people.

I like the idea of doing co-ops to raise the money, too. If I give money to you to write a book, that's fairly high risk. If I lend it to 100 people that's much lower risk - someone's going to come through and I'll get my money back. The industry understands these issues. And you're less likely to rip each other off.

Small businesses working together strengthens the market.

Q: There are intangible things about physical music we're only just discovering we value. I'll tell you something. Have you noticed that digital people are pretty twitchy people. Recently I was reunited with all my old vinyl and it's much more sociable than running it off a computer or an iPod. People appreciate each other's company more, and appreciate the music more - we grow more patience and it's lovely. The tyranny of the playlist, of interactivity is horrible - it's a curse.

A: Well, without sounding like a clever clogs, I always said this was going to be a streaming media, which has even less interactivity.

Like what we're listening to now it washes over me. That's fine. I see music as a commodity as being the driver. There's far more casual access to music and for those people, you need all of the music. It's no good just having Sony's catalog. While for the fans, they want more from one artist. They want to get close to the artist, they want better packages. Real fans might want many versions of a song from a demo, to the final version, to the mash-up version, as many as 20 - it's a continuum. And you can give them it now. You've got that sort of market for the fanatics - they want the live recoridng, the backstage photos, the singer's blog when he's on the road.

That's a complicated bundle of rights - it's about bundles. You can't sell that individually, but it's a bundle. And people will want to give your their money.

Q: And mobile?

A: The real game in town is not online. It's a skirmish. The real game is mobile phones. If your mobile phone is a portable computer, which has got all the facilities of an iPod and a radio, and a TV, with some limits on their memory but as time goes it'll have huge memory. But you need access to everything.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/peter_jenner

Q: There are intangible things about physical music we're only just discovering we value. I'll tell you something. Have you noticed that digital people are pretty twitchy people. Recently I was reunited with all my old vinyl and it's much more sociable than running it off a computer or an iPod. People appreciate each other's company more, and appreciate the music more - we grow more patience and it's lovely. The tyranny of the playlist, of interactivity is horrible - it's a curse.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2006/09/senile%20agitation.jpg

nb I totally love vinyl and music in physical form but people who think that there is something inherent in the tangible format that makes the music more intimate/sociable are kidding themselves

otm

wait really? I think the point about the time it takes, about the necessarily higher level of involvement, is a decent one - sort of a manual-transmission-vs.-automatic-transmission divide

oh, well if that's his point, then that makes sense. I didn't catch that.

as soon as somebody says anything even marginally critical about digital anything, everybody gets out their auto-dismissal lol-old-guy book o' gifs

yes that's exactly it, I was reading too much into "digital people are pretty twitchy people," which isn't loaded language at all

not to be all cranky with you Curt1s! it's just, it seemed to me that what he was saying in the bit you quoted was "when you're handling the product, having to sort of be confronted with it, it introduces a level of physical involvement whose absence represents a loss of interactivity." I mean, I stream my music from the laptop to the player all night, but on nights when I'm actively putting stuff on & off - still CDs, mind - it's more fun, and can be something of an occasion-in-itself: because the process is more demanding, it's also more engaging.

you are right about that "twitchy" bit, that's kinda phoned-in

I'd agree with it being inherantly more sociable - just from experiences I've had it's a damn site easier for friends who come round to all sit in my music room and look through my shelves and pick stuff and use that to vibe off what to listen to next, then it is to all look at an iPod screen or iTunes menu.

although NB it's the interviewer not Jenner who says the bit we're talking about unless I'm mis-reading!

That's very otm. I just feel like he's a little off-base here esp.: "People appreciate each other's company more, and appreciate the music more - we grow more patience and it's lovely." I mean my friends and I can sit around and enjoy a whole album even if it's in digital form. When you've got company around the instant-gratification/"twitchy" aspect of it kind of goes away because you're not just broadcasting music to yourself anymore. I made my old-man crack because it seems like he's waxing nostalgic and attributing that loss of community to changing technology rather than the fact that, you know, maybe he and his buddies just don't listen to music together that much anymore because they're grown up and have different priorities. But that's just my very presumptuous and biased perspective.

xpost yeah I know it's the interviewer!

the interviewer could be some 20something dude who's way more OTM than I am, I really have no clue

I get the impression that kids share music much more - uni network iTunes sharing, etcetera - but that they listen to it in a much more isolated way.

Just from observing and talkig to my girlfriend's brothers and the uni kids I work with / for.

Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. There's a big difference in personal interaction between "here let me make you a mix tape/CD" and "go ahead and copy everything on my hard drive".

I will admit to being an old fogey and being kind of saddened by that transition.

Here's a question though -- is it best to assume that the sociability in the older way of things is lost? Or rather to say that it might transition in other, different ways? (I am obviously not assuming a one-to-one equivalency.)

If I had an audioscrobbler thingy/last.fm page I'd probably strike up conversations and exchange recommendations with people who have similar selections and preferences, just as it happens via 5oul5eek. For one.

I will admit to being an old fogey and being kind of saddened by that transition.

you're not an old fogey for being saddened by it, if it is indeed lost

(xxpost)I don't know about the sociability being lost, but I think some serious engagement with the music IS lost. Mix tape/CDs require a level of care that is simply not present in copying an entire hard drive. Is something similar replacing that in some other way? I suspect not.

<i>If I had an audioscrobbler thingy/last.fm page I'd probably strike up conversations and exchange recommendations with people who have similar selections and preferences, just as it happens via 5oul5eek. For one.</i>

My g/f uses last.fm and while she's probbaly not typical (she'd self-identify as very shy and unlikely to start a conversation in any context with a 'stranger') she doens't 'talk' to other users much; just browses their lists and then looks into stuff at Amazon / AMG etc. Having looked at a few people's pages there never seems to be masses in the way of public communication, not like Myspace or Facebook, but you never know what's behind the scenes, I guess. I ought to ask my friend Steve, who works for last.fm, about this kind of thing.

people still make mix CDs. Though I wish someone would make me a mix tape!

Damn my autotyping out of date tags.

Mix tape/CDs require a level of care that is simply not present in copying an entire hard drive.

In part because it's so focused, though -- a mixtape creator shows care in selection and sequencing (which is not that far removed from the creation of an iTunes playlist, say) in a certain time-limited frame. Then again someone who maintains a hard-drive might show some care as well just by getting the tags correct -- which may sound flippant but I'm not so sure, entirely!

*** art interlude ***

Jim Avignon, "Burning Record Companies"
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/196/493880550_85b0757f75_o.jpg

*** end interlude ***

Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. There's a big difference in personal interaction between "here let me make you a mix tape/CD" and "go ahead and copy everything on my hard drive".

Recently a younger friend of mine was complaining that she was bored with all the music on her iPod - I don't have an MP3 player, since I don't really like walking around with music, but I've amassed a fair bit of stuff in iTunes on my computer, through greed and curiosity. so I suggested she copy some of that. As it turned out, for greedy itunes technical reasons, the only option seemed to be to replace what was on her player with stuff from my drive - she couldn't keep what was there and add stuff from me. What astonished me was that, with barely a thought, she decided to lose what she had previously and replace it with largely unheard music of mine, stuff I wouldn't have necessarily thought she would like. This to me seemes like swapping ones entire record collection - she doesn't really own music in any other form - something I would obviously never do, but it didn't cost her a thought.

Aye, this is something I've come across too. Music isn't... I'm hesitant to say "character defining statement" or whatever, because as a 28-year-old man that seems rather silly... but it is... just something to have on while you're walking around, for a lot of people who would identify as "loving music". Lifestyle choice rather than unbridled passion, perhaps. Maybe I'm off the mark - I kind of hope I am - but part of me suspects that I'm not really.

uh isn't the point of things like last.fm that music IS a character-defining statement?

Well supposedly, yes, which is why it's an interesting dichotomy.

it probably depends on the person

which I suspect it always has?

xpost sonofstan awesome story but lol @ itunes pwning her via false dilemma. get one drag and drop media player!

nb sonofstan she still has all her music on iTunes on her computer

She might not - I know some people who update manually and don't backup.

Um I don't understand that story at all unless the iPod was her only music storage device wouldn't the songs still be on her computer hard drive?

Which is what Curt1s just said basically.

Maybe she got all her tracks from someone else?

I kind of like the idea of an iPod drifter

i think we're overestimating the changes in music as part of personal identity based on a couple of (interesting) anecdotal examples.

there's always been TONS of people to which music wasn't that big of a deal (like the ones I mentioned upthread)....so now it's just random stuff on the ipod, 20 years ago it was random stuff on the radio and whatever stuff they happened to buy on a whim.

a lot my friends in HS were not big music fans. they wouldn't have said anything much different than ned or n1ck's examples, minus obv. the ipod stuff.

I come across a lot of 18-22 year olds in my job though, and aside from a few serious music fans there aren't many over the last few years who seem to be into music in the way I was with a reasonably big group of friends at university. And the people I come into contact with would fit the demographic of the serious music fan - young, male, at university and studying arts (film / music / languages) subjects. I run the film & music department of the library - I'd hope to see way more music fans than I do.

Matt otm

I have a bunch of 18-22 year old music fan friends, none of whom hang out at the film & music department of the library (though they aren't lib art majors so that makes sense)

ha actually if digital media/the internet has anything to do with your lack of music-fan patrons it's probably the fact that scholarly film & music references are readily available online!

True, but our film collections aren't yet, and neither are our editing suites...

Ah, yes. Duh me.

Um I don't understand that story at all unless the iPod was her only music storage device wouldn't the songs still be on her computer hard drive?

stuff was on a computer on the other side of the atlantic belonging to her father, and she wasn't sure if it had been saved or not (and wasn't bothered)- should have pointed this out

Just saw what Matt said above - I kinda agree except when I was a kid if you weren't into music, you hardly listened at all; (on this side of the atlantic, pop radio wasn't ubiquitous the way it was in the states;) now even those who can take it or leave it still consume it in a pretty passionless way

Oh and in the post above, the first line is a quote from Alex which i forgot to italicise

This thread has inspired me to start this The Great ILX What Do You Do (mainly) In Your Spare Time? Survey

If people lose respect for the music industry, where will people get their fashion ideas from? If there is no mega or counterculture star sporting your look, who's to say it's not just as good as a hefty bag jumpsuit?

I just wanted to repost this from the ancient Usenet posts thread:

 hao!woods            Feb 20, 1983 4:59 am

 The problem with a "tape tax" is simply that there are a lot of other

uses for blank recording tape besides copying copyrighted material. Musicians

use it to record themselves, people actually even record things besides music

(God forbid!). It isn't really fair to ask everyone to pay for those who

use the tapes to copy records.

  The best solution to sagging record sales is to make the price reasonable.

I stopped buying albums when the price passed $7 apiece. I think it's

outrageous. Concert tickets average around $15 these days as well. Maybe all

the superstars will have to switch from Rolls Royces to Cadillacs for a while

(breaks my heart :-)  ). I realize that the non-superstar artists suffer more

than the superstars. I think what we are seeing here is more people want to

be musicians than the market will support, which accounts for the troubles

of the "non-mainstream" artists a lot more than taping records, and the

superstars are WAY overpaid. I love the Stones, but $20 to see Mick Jagger

prance around for maybe 90 minutes is a blatant rip-off. Those of you who have

sent me mail asking why I like the Dead so much, here's one reason. They usually

play for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Most bands, however, don't even give you 2 hours for

your twenty bucks. Cut down on the number of artists and lower the price of

records. I'd much rather have the album with cover and associated artistry

than a blank cassette with my hadwriting on the outside any day, but my

principles take over when the price is up around $8.50 to $12 a record,

I'll buy a blank tape for $2.50 (or even $3 if they imposed a tape tax!) over

paying a ridiculous price for a record.
                        GREG

                        ucbvax!hplabs!hao!woods

                        menlo70!hao!woods

                        harpo!seismo!hao!woods

                        decvax!brl-bmd!hao!woods 

"I think what we are seeing here is more people want to

be musicians than the market will support, which accounts for the troubles

of the "non-mainstream" artists a lot more than taping records"

This is probably an OTM constant in the changing music industry

Those of you who have sent me mail asking why I like the Dead so much, here's one reason. They usually play for 3 1/2 to 4 hours.

we would have also accepted 'average weight' and 'parking accommodations'.

We have the blank media tax here in Canada. It basically doubles the price of blank discs/tapes with the upside being that using such discs for copying copyrighted material is not illegal. The other upside is that if you get your discs from a flea market they're half price.

The guy's tax argument doesn't hold much water though. All taxes spread some of the burden to people who don't fit the purpose of the tax.

How are the proceeds from the Canadian blank media tax distributed?

Dished out to Canadian Artists/publishers etc based on sales if memory serves.

one question that hasn't really come up in this thread is...okay, so things have changed and the genie's never going back in the bottle...major labels and lots of indie labels are likely fucked in the long term, CDs we hardly knew ye, etc etc...

I'm wondering how people think this new environment effects the thing that likely everyone cares about on ILM - the creation of good music

do you think this new environment in more or less conducive to people creating/wanting to create great music, as compared to 10 years ago...or even, say, back in the 40s,50s,60s...

on the pro side:

1) musicians i guess will be more and more "free agents", figuring out how to reach their audience and getting them interested in the music and buying t-shirts or CDs or vinyl or ringtones, etc etc...This definitely is going to mean a lot less people are bound to A&R, and bad deals, and the old "We don't here a single" thing - Which is good for a lot of artists and being able to create - not all that different from, say, Fugazi and Dischord in a way, but in a "post material music" sort of way...

2) Obv. digital distribution (as well as really cheap and increasingly good home digital recording) makes it a lot cheaper to make music...more people have more access to making and distributing music over the net..hopefully, more people = more good ideas, more good music...

CONS:

1) more people making more music=more shit...harder and harder to sift thru it for the audience, esp. after the labels all die and you can't even hitch your boat to a label aesthetic

2) DIY is great and all, but at least one thing that the old bloated label situation did provide the really great (and frequently sort of addled, crazy, lazy, - but extremely talented artists) was sort of shielding them from the day-to-day realities of life - people pick you up in a limo, take you to the studio, fetch you things...which yeah they are pampered assholes but they were/are still allowed to concentrate on nothing but the music....thinking about examples like Brian Wilson or Ol' Dirty Bastard...I mean, shit neither one of those guys was going to exactly come up on their own self-releasing stuff and organizing stuff, right?

3) A lot of people I've seen make comments (esp. on more punkish boards I go to) that say things like "Who cares if people don't make money at music"...and there's great examples of pre-20th Century models for you know traveling bards or people that just created music for their little communities...obv. nothing wrong with that - I play in a band and devote a considerable amount of my time to a band that has never and will never even break even....That said, the idea or rock (or rap or country) stardom as a "way out" has been a powerful motivator for a lot of great artist...esp. in hip hop obv. I mean, do you think Jay-Z would have been a rapper if there was no promise of industry-funded stardom - like you know if you hustle really hard on myspace you might be able to be self-sufficient doing small club tours and selling cool t-shirts?? Same with, I don't know, a million examples...

anyway...sometimes I worry that - with all the good that's come of the internet music boom - that as music become devalued monetarily, it will inevitably devalued artistically....obv. in the US money is how we show what's important....if it's not worth anything dollarwise, won't it suffer on some end?

Well, trying to get yourself noticed solely via downloads isn't that much different from pressing up a small run of records and trying to sell them (apart from the lower overheads). It's all about promotion, and the big labels tend to outsource the promotion anyway don't they? As has been discussed already, it may mean that management companies will take over the financing role from labels (if they haven't already, I dunno).

Seems like there will always be Jay-Zs. People love stars and celebrity pays even if record sales aren't the main source of income.

wait really? I think the point about the time it takes, about the necessarily higher level of involvement, is a decent one - sort of a manual-transmission-vs.-automatic-transmission divide

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, June 26, 2007 6:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

haha but digital music is much more "manual" - at least in the sense that's being talked about here, as single downloadable tracks - you "shift gears" more often that way, while albums shift their own gears - "haha" because you'd think ye olde rockists would be in favor - morally, somehow - of both stickshifts and and physical albums

note awesomely useful rockist strawman err

ii. very little of this thread has anything to do with dance music, which has built an economy for itself that doesn't depend on major labels or albums, and it's been developing this economy for decades.

iii. this is the third time i've read that interview with peter jenner - sorry for missing out an "A:" or two in my pasting of it by the way - and i don't understand a good third of what he's talking about! i can't tell if it's because he's been edited strangely or what.

the dance music economy is fucked in the US. The dance market is probably the most turbulent market outside of hiphop. Every time it almost stabilizes the scene dies out and something new and fly by night arises in its wake.

Europe and Germany in particular are the only markets where dance music has been allowed to stabilize and build. They have had record production, manufacturing, distribution, touring, corporate sponsorship and promotion locked into a stable business model since at least 94-5. Japan also is a close second, but the small size of the market doesn't provide as many touring opportunities. The Japanese are fanatic record collectors and it is easier to get Detroit techno records in Tokyo than it is in Detroit.

The thing that fucked up dance music in the US is that the major labels threw their weight into rap and the liquor companies only sponsor rock and hip hop. Scion will sponsor all kinds of bullshit hip hop and disco punk in Austin, but they have never once supported underground electronic dance music. If the big companies would throw as little as 25k a month into underground dance events it would revolutionize the US scene. As it is, it just isn't economically viable to do multiple region tours in the US as a dance artist. You could do a lot with a few grand on a DIY scale if you just had a small subsidy.

If you think you are going to make any money as a recording artist in dance music, think again. Those days are over. Even the stars are only a little more than hobby musicians. The money is in touring.

We need to come up with a replacement term for "discography."

Which again, points to the editing/filter problem.

Also, I can't think of the last time I heard of something discussion-provoking in Rolling Stone. About music at least. Even though most of this information has been out there, there's something oddly authoritative about this article.

Someone from "Illumina Records" made me some sort of offer the other day on MySpace. It's funny, they might even be some semi-big label, I don't know, but I didn't bother to read the whole offer. It might've been a great opportunity for somebody or some band, but I have zero interest. Being a public buffoon for a dying industry is in no way appealing to me. I make music for fun, not to prance around on stage and con dollars out of people.

If you're looking for evidence of music's devaluation, there it is.

There's a lot of great stuff out there already, much of it free (tons of free classical music online). I haven't heard many records worth keeping for the past 20-something years. I have hundreds I have kept, but I"m pretty sure I've only kept them because I like the packaging.

I think the avid music-geekiness of the past that people above are claiming seems to be missing from the iPod youth of today was sort of a self-induced, self-perpetuated fantasy of ours. We know it's all one big illusion, but pretending makes life more interesting, I guess. But, I think the fantasy was perpetuated by self-doubt and self-loathing and leads to a sort of music dependency, so I'm absolutely fine with the idea that kids currently growing up don't seem to identify with music nearly as much as we did.

Remember how musicians used to admit that they just picked up a guitar because they wanted to get laid? And the ugliest wimp could look sexy as long as he's up on a stage and straps a guitar? Creepy-looking ugly junkies became a "hot look." The Rolling Stones were always ugly and creepy. Wasn't Malcolm McLaren's whole vision based on the fact that people wanted a look they could buy into in order to fit in? That's some sad shit. Maybe it seems like some basic human need, but I have a feeling it is only a basic need in a society that is fucked up and dishonest (and, yes, maybe all societies are fucked up and dishonest).

Maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe more people will go back to making music that is actually good rather than empty posturing and envelope-pushing for the sake of it or because it's expected. There will always be Jay-Z's, as someone said above... but why??? "Jay-Z's back. Expect everything." Oh boy, does this mean I can look forward to Jay-Z enriching my life in every way possible? Or maybe he's just another cocky dickhead pretending he is the sun and the moon.

And I kind of like Jay-Z, too. I kind of like a lot of these dickheads who've made all this dickhead music piled up all around my house, but the older I get I realize it's mostly just dumb shit with a beat. Most of it isn't worth much of anything, to me, anyway. If classical masterpieces are given away for free, what is the value of a few chords or beats and some mostly jerky lyrical ideas?

Given the option, it seems most people agree with me. They'd rather get it absolutely free or pay hardly anything as eMusic's success proves. The more I download, the more I realize how impersonal, in a way, music should be. It's just about whether you like a song or not. If the artist is able to speak to you solely through the song, it's a keeper. And you no longer have to keep a whole album just because you like a couple songs. And kids don't have to risk their allowance on some crapshoot and then force themselves to like a disappointing album they spent all their money on to make themselves feel better, as I'm sure we all did at one time. And people don't have the same likelihood of getting unhealthily attached to 4 dudes in a band who'll be in rehab in a few years.

But, don't get me wrong! I LOVE music!

And kids don't have to risk their allowance on some crapshoot and then force themselves to like a disappointing album they spent all their money on to make themselves feel better, as I'm sure we all did at one time.

I would never have gotten into Joy Division or Low by David Bowie if I had not been one of those kids...

That's true. There is definitely something about iPods vs. patience / absorbing subtlety , both of which are good qualities.

I haven't heard many records worth keeping for the past 20-something years. I have hundreds I have kept, but I"m pretty sure I've only kept them because I like the packaging...But, don't get me wrong! I LOVE music!

You sure about that?

Not really.

wait really? I think the point about the time it takes, about the necessarily higher level of involvement, is a decent one - sort of a manual-transmission-vs.-automatic-transmission divide

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, June 26, 2007 6:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

haha but digital music is much more "manual" - at least in the sense that's being talked about here, as single downloadable tracks - you "shift gears" more often that way, while albums shift their own gears - "haha" because you'd think ye olde rockists would be in favor - morally, somehow - of both stickshifts and and physical albums

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, 28 June 2007 00:20 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I think what Jenner is getting at is that the process of picking a CD or a vinyl album, taking it out of it's case/sleeve, putting it on the deck/player is a process which by it's nature is more time consuming. It makes the choice more important, rather than just scrolling through a playlist or even just putting it on random play.

we spend more time selecting music now. but once the selection is made, there's no further effort required (but this has been the case since CD's superceded tapes tho I guess). it's that amount of time spent searching for, obtaining, selecting and EDITING (tags etc. - I spend time making sure I have the correct year of first release for ALL my mp3s - it's sick and unnatural) that's really grown altho all that effort is not physical like it once was (travelling to stores, literally sifting through records etc.).

Prince to distribute new album via Sunday Newspaper

This reminds me of ten years ago, seeing the World Book Encyclopedia given away on CD-ROM, stuck to a block of American Cheese slices.

Someone from "Illumina Records" made me some sort of offer the other day on MySpace. It's funny, they might even be some semi-big label, I don't know, but I didn't bother to read the whole offer. It might've been a great opportunity for somebody or some band, but I have zero interest. Being a public buffoon for a dying industry is in no way appealing to me. I make music for fun, not to prance around on stage and con dollars out of people.

But this post kind of makes you sound like a buffoon. No legit label would make you an "offer" over myspace.

you'd be surprised

I spend time making sure I have the correct year of first release for ALL my mp3s

I keep my tags immaculate - but not the year or genre, the only other two which might be somewhat useful. I started to go back and do this but the thought of having to check 20,000+ tags quickly made me bail. Some programs like Musicbrainz or something needs to be able to automatically do this for you on a selective basis (i.e. only update the year, leave the rest alone).

musicmatch 7-8 made it so easy, you could pick only certain fields to update, forgot which server they used(i'm on vista with no musicmatch support, too lazy to figure out the dual boot but I want to load XP just to use musicmatch). You can do it in mediamonkey too but maybe just with the Amazon.com server which is rather poor. I hate having to use separate tagging progs just to do simple stuff and most of them are shit anyway.

But this post kind of makes you sound like a buffoon. No legit label would make you an "offer" over myspace.

Try not to read too much into such a vague sentence. I think if a legit label really liked your music and had no idea of how to contact you, they would definitely contact you through MySpace. That doesn't mean I thought it was a great offer from a great company. It just means I didn't care what the offer was or who they were enough to even finish reading the proposal. If it was from Warner Bros. it would've been the same reaction.

But, here's their site. Looks like I missed an awesome opportunity. Not.
http://www.illuminarecords.com/

No, unironically negating a statement using a single sentence "Not." in 2007 makes you look like a buffoon.

That sentence makes you look like a buffoon.

http://www.backstreetmerch.com/images/products/bands/clothing/anth/anth21906_thumb.gif

xpost

SYKE SYKE SUPER SYKE!! is the preferred 2007 nomenclature.

Scott Ian looks like a buffoon.

i'll let that pass, but i swear to god if you talk shit about charlie benate i will kill you.

Chuck does not have an egyptian beard dyed bright red and a pentagram tattoo.

Some interesting information here (with graphs!):

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005348&src=article2_newsltr

As a music fan, I think it is quite exciting that there are more music consumers than ever. The fact that the current state of music buying means that they are spending less per capita seems like a reasonable refinement that wasn't necessarily possible under the previously imposed model of The Industry.

I've bought more albums this year than any year I can remember, in addition to still sucking on that promo teat. In the last two months, I've filled out a lot of the things that I'd downloaded, but I've only been able to do this by a) buying things that I've already heard, and b) buying 'em used. I've found a spot where I can fill out my Kid Creole collection for a buck a piece, which makes me more willing to try new things. But these are albums, not downloads, and artists/labels/etc. aren't seening a dime off of these purchases.

http://www.futureofmusic.org/events/summit07/index.cfm

one of the panels

The New Deal: major label contracts revisited

Now that the majors are experiencing a dramatic shift in their business models, what do contracts look like? What clauses have been phased out and what is now standard? What are major labels asking from artists and what are they offering in return?

Bryan Calhoun Owner and Founder, Label Management Systems

Wayne Halper Attorney, Law Office of Wayne Halper

John P. Kellogg, Esq. Assistant Chair Music Business/Management, Berklee College of Music

Marcy Rauer Wagman CEO, MAD Dragon UNLTD, Drexel University

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7974727.stm

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/images/adaccess/R/R02/R0206/R0206-med.jpeg

Didn't Vvm Test Records finish off the music industry?

Aborigines, lowest in the scale of savagery on earth imo

Mike Batt, songwriter and owner of the Dramatico record label, which has signed Katie Melua and Marianne Faithfull, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he supported the industry stance.

"I run a small record label and I'm an artist, so I can speak for both," he said. "If a record company invests hundreds of thousands of pounds in selling my records, doesn't it earn a right to stand alongside me in the sharing of income?"

Bragg responded that Batt's argument "defending the right of record companies to enjoy a further 45 years of income made my blood boil".

Batt makes a helluva lot more money through his record label than his 70s hits.

I'm excited about this small label! Who's this Marianne Faithfull girl does she have a myspace?

If aborigines are lowest in the scale of savagery, doesn't that make them less savage than everyone else? No matter - just show me where I can get one of these sharkskin drums.

BOSTON (AP) -- A Boston University student has been ordered to pay $675,000 to four record labels for illegally downloading and sharing music.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.

Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum's case was $4.5 million.

The case is only the nation's second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.

Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled a Minnesota woman must pay nearly $2 million for copyright infringement.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/31/business/AP-US-TEC-MusicDownload.html

should we start guessing what those 30 songs were

$675,000 for 30 songs is $22,500 per song. I just figured out how to eliminate the deficit. If the record industry successfully sues everyone for the amount of illegal downloading over the past decade, that will add up to roughly....419 trillion dollars. If they can just donate 1% of that to the federal government we should be sitting pretty.

"But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful."

How could they not be willful?

"Oh I just accidently download these 30 tracks. Sorry guys. Shit I owe you what!??!"

"I thought it was free porn!"

when it comes to major label shit i really should just buy used from now on

If each of the roughly 1 billion songs that are illegally downloaded each month carried the same $22,500 penalty, $270 trillion would be collected each year. Global GDP is around $69 trillion.

Did anyone throw that back of the envelope stat at the jury before they decided on a penalty?

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86724/uk-music-economist-says-music-industry-revenue-up-4-7/

Has the list of songs been made public or is that wishful thinking? Cos if I was one of the artists that recorded one of these 30 songs I would be expecting a good chunk of that 22k....

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/08/01/opinion/01blow.ready.html

no wonder they're the way they are

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/01/opinion/musicforweb2.gif

Not sure where to post this, but the following article mentions some important things IMO: https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-devaluation-of-music-it-s-worse-than-you-think-f4cf5f26a888

- "Digital music ecosystems, starting with Apple’s iTunes, reduced recordings down to a stamp-sized cover image and three data points...Plus, they’re devoid of context"
- "In the age of measured clicks the always-on focus grouping has institutionalized the echo chamber of pop music, stultifying and discouraging meaningful engagement with art music."
- "Art music relates to mathematics, architecture, symbolism and philosophy...Why so many are satisfied to engage with music at only the level of 'feeling' is a vast, impoverishing mystery."
- "How does a young person steeped in the faux-Shostakovich rumbling of a war game soundtrack hear real Shostakovich and think it’s any big deal?"

On the other hand, is this article best read in an old-man-shaking-stick-at-youngsters-from-porch-voice?

I think there is something to the first two of those quotes, but the third makes me shrug and the last one makes me groan.

Actually the second one is kind of dumb too. I do think there's something about the music landscape today that is worse for "serious" music but that doesn't quite get at what it is.

I think they're all dumb quotes.

And article is classic "things were better in my day when people had respect for things".

Why so many are satisfied to engage with music at only the level of 'feeling' is a vast, impoverishing mystery."

For starters, hasn't the proportion of this "so many" - in the U.S., anyway - remained about the same since, oh, the Eisenhower administration?

tbf, author does allude to that in regards to the advent of popular music radio.

Of the quotes I pulled (but you should read the article!), I'm most interested in 2 and 3, because I think there is something to the notion of music losing its market share in the cultural sphere, to be something of an all-things-to-(at least some)-people. It really does just seem like a small part of the equation for almost everyone I know. It's hard to find someone who thinks about music providing many philosophical or intellectual answers in the same way as religion does (or did) -- and I wonder if that, as much as the difficulty in selling it, adds to the feeling of devaluation.

and I'm certainly open to the idea that this affects more than just music, and would be surprised if it didn't.

there isn't a single good point anywhere in that article, sorry :(

that is def old man shaking fist at clouds

even if he has some good points, he doesn't really get into anything in any depth

the thing is, I am now an old man

I am a cloud

"It really does just seem like a small part of the equation for almost everyone I know."

Yes well you are an old man.

people def "age out" of interest in music, which is a bummer in its own for people like me, but it's weird to see youth subcultures based around music also apparently evaporate. Like it would be easier for me to accept my peers not giving a fuck about music if there was a generation coming up that did, but afaict there isn't, really.

Based on what evidence do young people not care about music?

the young people I know

Maybe you should hang out with cooler young people? :P

I feel like I am pretty constantly having conversations with young"er" people about music (admittedly I am also always having conversations with old"er" people about music, as still I wear a lot of band shirts and go to shows).

yeah admittedly my world of young people = relatives/coworkers and whatever young people are on here (which appears to be not a lot)

I have no idea how old anyone on here is, but I think this kind of message-board is not what "the youth of today" are using.

Well I guess I know how old you are haha, but I mean outside of the people I've met and folks who've posted pics/ages I don't really know.

I went for an interview once at WMG's offices in Burbank (it was for an internship in their HR department), and the
recruiter bemoaned the fact that MP3's had insidiously cut into the revenue that labels made from t-shirt sales(!)

in my experience young people who love music are most into shaking their fists at clouds

I have no idea how old anyone on here is, but I think this kind of message-board is not what "the youth of today" are using.

Some may. But then we are speaking of the increasing percentage of youth of today who aren't into the music of today. Pop music listening has become so fragmented these days that even the kids are increasingly fragmented in their listening habits.

While I agree with the author that iTunes is shit at providing context for recordings, the world wide web is pretty good.

Yeah that's the weirdest complaint ever. This is a golden time to learn anything you want about anything. AND BUY A T-SHIRT FOR IT TOO AND GET IT SHIPPED PAINLESS TO YOU WITH LOW CHANCE OF RIPOFF TAKE THAT WMG!

Geir is back!?

They summoned him using the Ask Geir thread.

Geir is the real story here.

I feel like there's a vague kernel of something interesting here, but suspect it may amount to little more than "omg neoliberalism fuXxored everything up and all anyone cares about is bottom line!" which may be true but seems reductive and not helpful.

There is always a vague kernel of truth in every shitty Medium thinkpiece.

"feeling" is itself really complex and has a lot (everything) to do with "mathematics, architecture, symbolism and philosophy"

but thanks for pulling those quotes out so i don't have to waste 30 minutes on another useless thinkpiece

but maybe itunes can give away free buildings with taylor swift albums and then *boom* problem solved