The Record Industry's Decline

[mistersloane]

is to make it for one's own consumption.

Yeah, we've turned from hunter-gatherers to consumers to producers. I think that's why grime's interesting, it's the first commercial format ( I'm excluding noise and grindcore etc ) that has actively been made from kids in western countries with access to computers, it's the first music that has come after the downloading generation, and, from the outside, what should have been a viable commercial music hasn't worked. I'm quite looking forward to the General Idea being spread that to be famous is to be boring, which is the inevitable result of this process.

 

[Dusty]

i can see a day when recorded media is free, or nearly-free (subscription-based maybe).. there's still money to be made from licensing, tours, merchandising etc..

I really don't think this will ever be the case, at least not for 'underground' music that the people reading this forum consume. Can you imagine labels (and their artists) like Die Stadt, 12k or Rune Grammofon surviving in that kind of environment? Merchandising??

 

[gumdrops]

. I'm quite looking forward to the General Idea being spread that to be famous is to be boring, which is the inevitable result of this process.

but grime is pretty obsessed with being famous.... paris hilton has recieved a rapturous reception after being released from jail... i dont think fame and celeb culture is going to get a full scale backlash just yet.

 

[mistersloane]

but grime is pretty obsessed with being famous.... paris hilton has recieved a rapturous reception after being released from jail... i dont think fame and celeb culture is going to get a full scale backlash just yet.

I can totally see the fame-desire wearing off, they're only really doing that at the moment because of the aping-of-hip-hop. It has to wear off, there's only so many times you can kick a dog before it stops coming back. It'll take a while but after that I think the voice of the underclass is going to be much more about not being like 'them', as opposed to wanting to enter into 'their' world.

 

[Tactics]

I'm surprised

this is one of the most cogent things i've read on here today. totally right, and i'd be surprised if we don't see a lot more Blunt type of schlock clogging airwaves in the next year...

your dead smart - I thought you would have known that for some time

the whole issue is mind-bendingly awful

what is interesting is that it's cd/record sales that have been really affected. other areas of the music industry: gigs/licensing revenues are actually up.

the remark that really stuck with me was david bowies, and this pertains to the way people's emotional investment has changed, who said that from now on listening to music will be like turning on a tap to get water. i thought that neatly encapsulates the way in which, though to some degree essential, music is completely taken for granted, is utterly invisible.

it also makes me think that for the TRUE music head the only way to keep a sacred relationship with music any more is to make it for one's own consumption. sort of like growing one's own vegetables.

you can't replicate a live experience. there's some small company who just recently made thier first mil from recording live concerts and putting it on cd with artwork from soundboard...but obv you can bootleg that

it's the established industry's fault - seeds of selling overpriced product for no good reason, ripping off artists with bad contracts and too much other crap grown and flowering into d/l which failed to be recognised as serious

where were the r&d divisions of record companies and stores thinking 'hmmm maybe we should scout the internet industry and partner with a flourishing broadband company?' or 'maybe we should think of different and innovative ways to deliver content to customers at a lesser cost?' even 'digital music players...lets see what's going on over there'

NO - they just decided to do a Burns and unleash the hounds on ppl d/l off Napster - idiots

where are the high quality alternatives to d/l existing product in flac or something?

as we used to say when we we're youngers and somebody tripped and bust their face - GOOD (to the industry)!

It'll take a while but after that I think the voice of the underclass is going to be much more about not being like 'them', as opposed to wanting to enter into 'their' world.

which is how it all started. the cycle innit?

think about this though you lot...isn't this all more environmentally sound? less cd's...less petrochemicals...less artwork...less trees felled...

 

[gumdrops]

it is more environmentally sound. ive been thinking that for a while (although more time spent at our computers might be a higher drain on electricity). its weird thats not mentioned in the pro/anti downloading arguments.

 

[Dusty]

Probably because compared to coal-burning China and gas-guzzling America, the environmental impact of a jewelcase is not (yet) worth worrying about.

Plus how can you quantify the impact of increased computer usage, its not just electricity, its the increase in computer parts. I wonder what the carbon footprint of an LCD monitor is?

 

[gumdrops]

plus, computers seem to get disposed of and usurped/replaced quite quickly. probably no quicker than a lot of other appliances (the lifespan of a lot of household goods these days is shocking - and the number of cheapo goods that dont last at all doesnt help) but still, i bet a fairly large percentage of what gets chucked in landfills is computers from the last 25 years or so.

 

[leonard]

and so another record store closes (well, a chain actually). fopp has just announced that it's going into administration. a shame really, i thought they were alright.

 

[gumdrops]

werent they part of the problem? making everyone think that unless its 3 quid it wasnt worth buying? not that im complaining about everything being cheap - makes a change from overcharging, and charging something is still better than nothing at all but it seems like they put a lot of smaller shops out of business.

 

[leonard]

hmmm. you might have a point, gumdrops. from what i remember, their prices for new stuff weren't that cheap- it was the back-catalogue that was cheaper. but i did like that they showed up how overpriced the other big chains are/were.

 

[Dusty]

Yeah, they had racks of budget-priced CDs from days gone by, the price rocketed up sharply if you wanted anything new. Handy for the cheap books as well. I assume they are taking Music Zone with them then? Thats the last music shop in my area gone.

 

[leonard]

yep, all gone apparently, dusty. barring branson jumping in and turning them all into megastores that is. great.

 

[Chef Napalm]

This is true. No surprise that music is increcingly unappreciated, when sonically it has depreaciated so badly. The mp3 medium, the delivery of ipod speakers, and the loudness wars in mastering have resulted in a trashy listening experience. It sounds disposable.

snip

CDs are and always were a shitty product anyway, they were inherently flawed. It's something to do with the size and packaging, they offer zero pride of ownership. DVDs were far more successful in that respect.

OTM. Although I would suggest that it has more to do with transferability/portability equating disposability in the minds of west society than sound quality. The 8-track, for example was at the forefront of portability in the 1960s. That is, until audio cassettes came along. From there, it was CDs, then MiniDiscs and DATs, and now mp3s. Don't like the songs on your tape? Re-record or throw it away.

The reason CDs have lasted as long as they have is because it was initially thought that the format was as "closed", meaning not duplicatable outside of a large manufacturing facility, as vinyl. A burned CD is even worse in term of disposability than the previous example because there is no possibility of re-burning in the way that tapes were re-recordable.

The battle has always been between unrecordable and recordable media. It used to be that it was vinyl and CD versus tapes and MiniDisc. Now that gap is widening and it's vinyl against everything. Judging by the way my friends and I have been importing records, eschewing digital for all but mixes (which are in their way disposable performances, quick to become obselete), vinyl is here to stay and may be the only long-term hold-out.

Conclusion: Vinyl is final. Delete your mp3s, bitches.

 

[MATT MAson]

Academic research done by Harvard, MIT and other schools on downloading suggests that it has had little detrimental effect on record sales, and in some cases may actually help sales rather than hinder them - this paper for example sums this up nicely:

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Ele...4323-ACB0-D99937779637/0/online_fileshrng.pdf

The music industry got greedy. Radio got homogenized. Music production values went out the window and the industry failed to legitimize the new format their customers were using. Imagine if CDs had been outlawed in the 1990s so the majors could keep shotting tapes?

I think what happened to the music industry is going to happen to pretty much every other industry we have. Movies and video games are already suffering because of piracy, there are open source alternatives to lawyers (lawunderground.org) and education (MIT's OpenCourseWare) and lots of other things we used to pay for. Academics working with 3-D printers are saying that within the next decade or so kids are going to be able to download Jordans like they download music.

The real problem here is that information doesn't work like other goods and services. But it's not really a problem at all, it just requires a change of business model. There is no scarcity with information, "information wants to be free" right? But as Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Catalog once pointed out - customized information wants to be expensive.

Live music is customized information, and the market is in rude health. So is the bottled water market. Linux and Mozilla make millions by doing bespoke stuff for the companies that use their free stuff. I think society is going to be much, much better off because of this huge transition taking place. (Although I'm not a huge fan of bottled water.)

Information should be free, long term it's better for all of us. You can read all about this in my new book The Pirates Dilemma coming out in January.

Amazon product ASIN 1416532188
Make sure you buy the hardcover, no discount. AND DON"T YOU DARE FUCKING DOWNLOAD IT OR I"LL HIRE A LAWYER MEANER THAN A JUNKYARD DOG TO COME DOWN ON YOU LIKE A TON OF FUCKING BRICKS.

 

[gumdrops]

"Conclusion: Vinyl is final. Delete your mp3s, bitches."

OTM

 

[barry_abs]

"Conclusion: Vinyl is final. Delete your mp3s, bitches."

vinyl is shit.. i shudder to think where i'd store my 60Gb library's equivalent in vinyl.. fuck that purist baloney.. progress is good!

 

[Dusty]

For me mp3 isn't progress, it feels like the digital equivalent of a shoddy tape.

I gave in to digital a while ago, my collection is mostly CD anyway so the transition wasn't hard, I've got about a terrabyte of FLAC files now. But, I still can't bring myself to buy digital files unless a release is vinyl only... why pay £6.99 for an mp3 album (or £8.99 for FLAC) on bleep or boomkat, when I can get the same material on a CD from amazon for a little more? - Its great, its like buying FLAC only it comes on a highly portable storage device that will outlive my harddrive by 50-odd years, and theres some nice artwork as well.

When you look at the CD for what it is, a high bitrate digital storage device - compared to the real state of the online digital music business, its not such a bad alternative afterall.

Of course this logic ignores you P2P monkies.

 

[sodiumnightlife]

I like actually having a cd, as dusty pointed out. However, I do do alot of downloading from blogs. And i feel dead guilty about it. But my hunger, nay NEED for music outsrips my cash flow.

I think a problem will be that in the future whereas people like me who do want to support artists will get jobs and move on to buying lots of music, people who just download 128kbps mp3s of shitty pop songs won't. I suppose a question is, if the internet didn't exist would those people be buying music anyway?

 

[Dusty]

Good point, the answer is probably no... they would be using tapes.

"mp3 downloads are killing the home taping industry."

Its also easy to blow this out of proportion, I just read (on the BBC I think) that 87% of music sales are still CDs, 3% is online. How accurate that is I have no idea, who made those stats? Do they only count itunes? God knows, but the overwhelming numbers still speak clearly enough. The music industry think a shift of 5% is a rapid decline. To me 5% of lost sales sounds more than reasonable considering the massive shift to digital technology and file sharing, I would have expected it to be more.