[proxy_user]

There are small companies run by people who actually like music. Some of them are not even members of the RIAA.

Every year their sales increase, and they sign up more artists.

So, therefore, eventually.....

[george76]

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Today's artists are making money from live shows. Plus you have a lot of up-and-coming bands doing their shows locally or regionally. I know in Madison, WI they have a battle of the rock bands tournament where a lot of garage bands compete.

Then you have the mix-tape thing going on in hip-hop, which is the equivalent of the old chitlin circuit from back in the day. The big record companies are simply being cut out because their middlemen.

[Dan Lacey]

Beatles forever!

Article doesn’t mention that teens hate the music industry for agressively prosecuting them for downloading. They want to see them die.

[Yardstick]

the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before

Strange to think that CDs might be the end of the line for physical formats. I wonder if there's a new format in the works to replace them, or if it's just accepted that downloads are the future and CDs are the last of the physical Mohicans.

[highimpact]

Maybe sales would increase if the production companies start putting out better music. Most of the new stuff is crap. It’s the same overproduced garbage over and over and over. I can’t stand most of it...gives me a headache.

[IronJack]

Imagine this scenario:

A small but talented garage band wants to record its work. It scrimps and saves enough to buy studio time. They cut a digital master which they then upload to a digital music warehouse. That warehouse holds millions of songs on thousands of high-powered servers. Users subscribe to the warehouse, which allows say 10 downloads a month for a base price. Customers can browse samples that they download to their computers and they can mix their own collections on their iPod. The downloads are not copyable (keyed to the individual machine).

Nobody needs to listen to the radio anymore to hear music. Nobody needs to drive to the store to buy a CD that's mostly junk and costs $20. Bands don't have to kiss record companies' butts to get a contract that makes the company rich at their expense, just to get an album cut. Nobody has to tie up millions of dollars in stamping plastic or vinyl, putting it into cases or sleeves, then hauling it all around the country. The Music Establishment dies a well-deserved death and everybody benefits except the leeches.

Then the same thing happens to the movie industry ...

[Ignatz]

In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected.
More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.

Good evidence that it's the quality of the product that's the root of the problem. They aren't producing product that people want to buy.

[glorgau]

Vinyl forever!

[3AngelaD]

But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

Kids aren't stupid. They didn't want to take the CDs and then be sued by RIAA for copying the music onto their hard drives. There is plenty of good music being made if you know where to look for it and access it, as the kids do. And it is now possible, and preferable, to get ahold of it in a way that bypasses the big record companies. EMI has made a reasonable decision to pull out of RIAA because the RIAA is now just a buggy-whip advocacy group that is getting in the way of the business.

[Common Tator]

Since the begining of the recording industry, artists have not made much from their recordings. The royalties are small and many artists have signed contracts that deduct such costs as the actual cost of the session and the promotion costs from the royalties.

Artists have always made their money from personal appearances. Historically they need the records to get air play to gain the popularity needed to draw large audiences for their performances.

Most of the money made from records are made by those that wrote the songs. There are large amounts of money to be made from air play on radio stations. ASCP, BMI, and SESAC take about 6 percent of radio station revenues for authors royalties.

But the singers and players don't get much pay from recordings at all.

It occurs to me that artists could record songs and put them on the internet for free. Or even at a cost of 4 or 5 cents a song. That would pay them far more per song download than they get from each record sold by a recording company. If the internet delivers songs to listeners, then that is the artists only real goal.

If enough people hear and like an artists recordings they will come to their concerts. That is where the money is. I think recording companies are doomed. There is no more need for CD's than there is for 8 tracks.

Record companies are a middle man that is no longer needed or desired. They are history.

[Shooter 2.5]

If you love music, there’s a movie that was made for only 130,000 dollars. It’s called “Once” and the DVD was released this week.

You won’t regret it.

[whereasandsoforth]

Maybe we have enough music and don’t have a need for more of the same.

We have been bombarded with and overexposed to music for the last fifty years. It use to be exciting. It’s not exciting anymore.

Technology has replaced the absolute need for human talent in the recording industry. The art has suffered as a result. “Popular” music has become tedious, overproduced, and it lacks its basic ingredient, which is emotion.

If the recording industry wants to save itself, it should throw away the computers and hire musicians and vocalist who love to make music more than they love to make money.

[KarlInOhio]

At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free.

Was that because the kids didn't like CDs or because the free ones were a bunch of dusty back of the warehouse crap that EMI wanted to be able to write off as a "marketing expense" at full price instead of dumping them in the trash and paying for disposal?

[SunkenCiv]

"That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there... digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before -- faster than anyone had expected.

Hmm. The audience for hip-hop (irrespective of the line on the color bar) pirates music and video, and yet the morons who run the companies still plough money into putting out titles by no talent trash. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time is evidence of mental illness.

Y'don't suppose that one reason CDs don't sell better is that, for the demographic which doesn't pirate everything on the market and has money to spend, most of the radio they listen to is talk? Duh.

My biggest gripe about CDs for years now is that, when I go to one of the big retailers of new (not used) copies, a CD costs nearly as much as any movie I'd want to buy. If new CDs cost, say, $5 -- which is obviously more realistic -- there would be no market for pirate CDs, assuming the touch-holes who run the industry sell acceptable titles.

Thanks george76.

[SamAdams76]

Indie music is great. I downloaded over 1,000 songs off eMusic last year and discovered some great bands like The Shins, Yo La Tengo, Of Montreal, My Morning Jacket, The Good Bad And The Queen, Deerhoof, Grizzly Bear, Matt Pond PA, Kaiser Chiefs, etc., etc.

If you still listen to FM radio, STOP! Get Sirius or XM and tune in to stations like Left of Center (not referring to politics but to the fact that most college stations are on the left hand side of the dial.)

[Sir Gawain]

All the good music has already been downloaded.

[RichInOC]

The record company exec’s lament...

Every Time We Say Goodbye
(Cole Porter)

Everytime we say goodbye
I die a little
Everytime we say goodbye
I wonder why a little
Why the gods above me
Who must be in the know
Think so little of me
They allow you to go

When you’re near
There’s such an air
Of spring about it
I can hear a lark somewhere
Begin to sing about it
There’s no love song finer
But how strange the change
From major to minor
Everytime we say goodbye

There’s no love song finer
But how strange the change
From major to minor
Everytime we say goodbye

[gunservative]

I see the music industry going in several directions away from the majors.

1. Pay downloads is the present wave. Either a la carte singles or complete albums. Prices will continue to go down while artist royalties go up.

2. Subscription services are a present wave and likely we’ll see more of it in the future. Pay a monthly fee and get everything you want. Rent your music. Artists who get “rented” get a small royalty. This is already happening.

3. Along the same lines as subscriptions, people could pay a monthly or yearly license fee to have immunity from RIAA lawsuits. With a paid license fee, people could download everything they want via Torrent and file-sharing services with impunity. This might be kind of difficult to administer.

4. Giveaways. Prince gave away millions of copies of his latest CD via a British newspaper and got paid a lot of money. Big Head Todd & The Monsters just gave away 500,000 copies of their latest album before a tour. Bruce Hornsby gave away a double album of music via a free download on the web. Unknown artists can give away their music all over the web, iTunes, archive.org, podcasts, etc in order to find an audience naturally.

The major labels are dying a natural death. Britney Spears sold nearly 8 million copies of her CD released in 2000. Her latest album barely sold 550,000 and is falling off the charts. American Idol winner Taylor Hicks sold less than 700,000 copies of his album and was just dropped by his label. Yet many longtime musicians I know have had really good changes in their financial outlooks in the past few years, mostly thanks to independent digital distribution and a renewed interest in their live shows.

[Lancey Howard]

Before the mid-’90s (ie., before widespread digital downloads) there was a monopoly on the selection and promotion of “hit songs” by radio stations, who were largely told what those “hits” were by soldiers for the labels.

There used to be what were called “singles”. “Singles” were originally 45rpm vinyl records, and they contained a ‘b side’ (the flip side of the record) which was usually (though famously, not always) a throwaway song. Incredibly, even in the late ‘90s these archaic terms were still being used by the labels. For an example, go read the Wiki bio about Radiohead and you will read that Radiohead put out “singles” all throughout the ‘90s and even released two EPs of ‘b sides’!

In an era where kids are downloading hundreds or even thousands of songs per week onto their ipods and rarely seem to listen to the same song twice (”The new ‘Smashing Pumpkins’ CD? No thanks... I already heard that.”) there is an entirely new paradigm, and I don’t think anybody has truly figured out what that is. Certainly not the record industry.

Singles? B sides??

No wonder the big labels are dying. They’re still stuck in the ‘60s.