Posted on 05/28/2007 5:23:23 AM PDT by WL-law
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album often cited as the greatest pop recording in music history, received a thoroughly modern 40th-anniversary salute last week...
But off stage, in a sign of the recording industry’s declining fortunes, shareholders of EMI, the music conglomerate that markets “Sgt. Pepper” and a vast trove of other recordings, were weighing a plan to sell the company as its financial performance was weakening.
... Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services. Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. “Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,” Mr. Sinnreich said, “and then everything goes kaput.”
... Even as the industry tries to branch out, though, there is no promise of an answer to a potentially more profound predicament: a creative drought and a corresponding lack of artists who ignite consumers’ interest in buying music.
.... that is compounded by the industry’s core structural problem: Its main product is widely available free. More than half of all music acquired by fans last year came from unpaid sources including Internet file sharing and CD burning, according to the market research company NPD Group. The “social” ripping and burning of CDs among friends — which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts — accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file-sharing, NPD said.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You put a date on yourself with that one....
That’s cuz they suck, and everyone knows it.
I got to see the White Stripes play a tiny, run-down dive bar in Denver right before they really exploded on the national scene. I don't think there was 50 people in attendance. I'd never heard of them and when I saw a young man and woman get up from their barstools where they had been drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and take to the stage, I thought, "did the bass player call in sick or something?"
I was then completely blown away! They were just thunderous!
Saw Queens of the Stone Age play the same bar before they got big. I sure do miss that little bar.
I got to see QOTSA play before they got popular, and it was an incredible experience. They played lots of material off their first album - their best, IMO. The big downside was that it was so loud my ears were ringing for 3 days afterwards.
Bookmark
There are PLENTY of good groups out there right now. You just won’t hear them on the radio, because it costs so much to get airplay.
I’ve always felt that the decline of popular music began with the rise of MTV and the music video. From that moment on, the video (and how the band/artist looked) became more important than the song.
Music was already going down the craptastic path long before American Idol.
I have Sirius Satellite radio and listen to it xclusively while driving OTR. Beats CDs. For 9/mo, it beats listening to CDs.
I think that is an excellent observation!
I also trace the decline in musical quality to the steady decline of the American public school systems.
Even in many ghetto schools of forty and fifty years ago,there were many traditional English and Music teachers who taught melody,poetry and the beauty of harmony.I don’t think we’ll ever see another writer of the quality of Smoky Robinson,Tony Hester,Lamont Dozier or Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson to name just a few.
The garbage that comes out of kid’s music now reflects the abysmal educations they are getting.
And don’t get me started on white”rockers”,none of whom could hold a candle to Jerry Lee Lewis,Elvis,Dion or Brian Wilson.
They do, it’s just everyone’s now buying them off of iTunes now.
>>... Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services.<<
I used to buy an album a week. I started boycotting music sales of all types over the RIAA’s behavior. I made one exception for Johnny Cash’s farewell album. RIP Johnny.
>>Let all beware any schadenfreude here, the protection of Intellectual Property rights closely parallels the protection of Real Property rights and is critically important.<<
There is a fundamental difference. One key source of American strength is our creation of intellectual property. Copyrights are a balance with the classic example being the availability of good books. Copyrights too weak or too strong prevent wide dissemination of information in all forms these days.
They use the same group that provides the numbers on illegal immigrants to the government ;-)
Check out the first link in post #153
Good riddance to the dinosaur music companies and their lip-syncing, sound studio invented superstars. The real talent will find a way to succeed without those bloodsuckers. Sorry, but I have a real hard time building up any sorrow for them.
Good. This industry is dying because 98% of their product is garbage. Other than a few dinosaur bands froms the 80’s still producing CDs, there hasn’t been anything worthwhile in popular music for 15 years, maybe longer. In the rare cases I want to own a physical CD, I buy them from the used section for $6 to $8 a pop. That way the scumbag recording labels will get none of my money directly.
I have a few dozen SACD’s. Love ‘em. Dylan released a bunch then stopped. Moody Blues just released some. But, I guess it’s dying. Too bad.
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