Posted on 12/23/2013 2:45:02 AM PST by wastedyears
For more than a decade, musicians have battled rampant music piracy that has put labels and record stores out of business at a rapid pace. Unlike the shift to Amazon that did in the book store chains, record stores are suffering from outright theft, and the migration to iTunes or Spotify streaming isn't making up the difference.
(Excerpt) Read more at citeworld.com ...
Reminds me when Paramount started suing Star Trek fans over their fan websites...look where that franchise ended up.
They did find a unique money stream in a difficult world.
As for the current sorry state of music, I blame the raising of the drinking age to 21. Prior to this, there were road houses everywhere. And all those road houses had bands every night. You could make a decent living just playing these road houses, and pretty good cash if you just played on weekends. When the drinking age was raised, and the 18-20 year old kids no longer could go out, it scuttled 80% of the road house clientele, and all the road houses went out of business.
These road houses were the “minor leagues” of music. It’s where musicians got good at their craft. And we not only developed our skills, we could try new and different forms of music.
Clubs had a stage, and bands had their own PA and light systems. People who attended these shows came away with the feel that they had been to a big-time rock show.
We did all this while maintaining the dream of “Hitting it big”, as some bands did. There’s no place to do that now, no place for young people to become musicians.
Whenever I go out to see a band play now, I come away depressed. The bands are relegated to a corner of a cramped bar, with something that just barely makes them heard over the din. And the band members themselves are my age, playing vanilla music with no spirit.
Bookmark.
You make a good point. I never saw it that way. Compelling post.
That's the best explanation I've heard. I've had enough of auto-tuned dance divas.
Where did rock go?
Most underrated metal band in history.
Perpahs Obamamusic, which will force young people to go to juice bars, where government selectected musicians from the nations grant fed music departments will play.
Yea, that should fix it.
Very good post, but I think there’s more to it than that. I blame the sorry state of music on the mass commercialization of music in a digital age where products have very short shelf-lives. The industry always has to have a number of “big acts” at the top of the charts, and they simply churn the content just to keep their customers interested.
There may be an element of that in it. But remember that mass commercialization has always been done in music. The name that immediately comes to mind is The Monkees.
But new and good music always shoots up between the cracks if it exists. But as far as I can see, it just ain’t there any more.
Oh, there are tremendous musicians out there - they have just forsaken the corruption-riddled record company/radio distribution channels and are finding ways to sell their product directly through the Internet. I don't think the situation for young musicians is hopeless, it's just that the traditional path of playing in a bar and getting discovered by record company A&R men is no longer viable.
You make a good point. Hell, The Beatles got their start playing in the Cavern Club for the lunch crowd.
There's more good music out now than has ever existed. Most of it won't be played on the radio, though, so one has to search for it.
Eddie Trunk has a syndicated metal radio show which airs Sunday nights. Last night, he played an hour of Maiden.
This is actually far more dramatic than it appears, for several reasons.
To start with, the vast majority of music out there, and a lot still in copyright, is “old music”. Old music has a huge disconnect with music listeners who have never heard it, unless something, anything, bridges the gap. That is, unless they hear it, they don’t know anything about it.
And they won’t buy music “sound unheard”. There is just too much of it for any appreciable audience to discover on their own.
But music piracy changes that. Someone who doesn’t know anything about jazz or blues, for example, begins with very general search terms. They get results starting with the most popular jazz and blues artists. From there, they pick up names of artists; then perhaps other artists they played with. They might notice a record label, or a sub-genre of what they’re interested in.
All the while, they are downloading old music that is new to them, and listening to it. Their searches become more refined. Their knowledge on that subject grows.
And eventually it leads them to want to buy that music, if they can get it at a reasonable price.
Importantly, many of the music pirates become fans of the music and/or the artist. So they do word of mouth sales to their peers as well.
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.