They are a mile wide and an inch deep.
The top ten or so albums for the year are majors. The rest are indie labels.
The indies continue to grow, and the 'majors' continue to shrink. Eventually, you'll have to rename them.
"The indies continue to grow, and the 'majors' continue to shrink. Eventually, you'll have to rename them."
The indies are being bought by the majors every day, and if they're not owned, they're cherrypicked by the majors.
The road to success right now is sign with an indy, if you sell 300K and can fill houses nationwide, then you get bumped up to the majors - the smart ones don't.
As for the lawsuits...I have mixed feelings - yes, a download is technically stealing, but so was taping songs off the radio and taping freind's lps in high school. It was'nt a matter of proportions, as we all had stacks and stacks of cassettes. And even with all that, the industry sold millions and millions of albums. I might have taped Y&T's Black Tiger and worn the tape out - but i wanted my OWN copy, with the artwork and liner notes and everything. It was a fan thing - you bought a copy, and displayed them proudly.
But, now that I work in the industry, I know what a rip off it is for the artists, and how it's all blatant money-grabbing by the RIAA and it's members. The PMRC and blank tax wangling Al Gore did opened my eyes, as the artists did'nt get a dime from the blank tape tax, and the industry types bent over quickly for the PMRC once Sugar Daddy Gore got them their money. Feh.
The RIAA can sue all they want, but they need to be aware of what it's doing to it's reputation. If you want your product respected, respect your audience. Your lawsuits are fostering a "damn the man" attitude, and doing *nothing* to stop downloading, except maybe driving the sharing underground where you will have to work a lot harder to find them. You had it easy with Napster and Limewire, but I'm seeing new methods coming up that you have no hope to break into. (No, I won't say where)
Of all the people I know, who have iPods and such, maybe 10% of them even know were to do it, or even bother. Most songtrading is done by loaning cds or dumping libraries off hd's onto dvd or portable hd's and flash drives.