The Record Industry's Decline

One thing I think about sometimes is that the whole Napster thing happened in about 2000, right? The main demographic for a lot of music is 18-24. This means not only that everyone who was in that demo when Napster was really going is already OUT of that demo, but that anyone currently IN that demo really knows nothing BUT the age of Napster and if not FREE MUSIC, then certainly not necessarily the physical product itself either.

I think that interestingly, if you were to hang around Other Music for an hour or two, though, you would nonetheless see loads of people in that demo buying stuff, (although between 9/11 and Tower Records closing down not nearly as much stuff as they would like, I bet).

Inasmuch as the industry made its bed by building its entire stoopid businesses around the big hits, it is really more the Kelly Clarkson downloads (whoever that is) off of lowlife places like Kazaa or Limewire that is killing the business than anything Other Music might carry.

The one thing I don't get is: isn't in incumbent upon any self-respecting college student or young adult to have at least 30 or so CDs lying around their apartment, if for no other reason than to map their "identities" to guests? I mean, first thing I do once I have dispensed with the pleasantries of entering someone's home is go have a look through their books and CDs! I guess that's rude maybe but I can't help it, I am interested and it is a good way to start up a conversation too. (Although nowadays it's usually like "oh yeah, my son used to be really into dinosaurs too at that age"). ;-)

Does that type of thing just not go on anymore or do people just pick up the person's iPod nowadays and scroll through that? I am not just kidding, I would really like to know...

Also I want to talk more about that branding stuff but I don't have time right now. Anyone else care to revive that end while I vamp a bit over at this end? hope so, I think it's an interesting topic (and points made).

the last time I hung out with a 16 yo daughter of a friend of mine, the first thing she wanted to do was have me check out her iPod and guess what was on it. I haven't hung out with any college age kids in awhile tho (not since big pre-Iraq invasion anti-war protests anyway) so I'm no help there...

isn't in incumbent upon any self-respecting college student or young adult to have at least 30 or so CDs lying around their apartment, if for no other reason than to map their "identities" to guests?

Is it? Let's face it, 'identity' is constructed by the means of what's to hand -- and it wasn't like CDs (or recorded music period) was always around. If this is just part of the overall shift in what constitutes what you are, there ya go.

The advantage of working at a college -- I can ask a Real Life Young Adult right here, IE my student worker Ricky, who I know has a few favorite bands and all. His take:

* He likes having some CDs around because, as he puts it, it's like he has a 'piece of the band' that way (cf Ice Cube's comment re: P-funk)

* Most of his friends just have mp3 lists/iPod setups.

* He has a *real* disdain for people who live their lives all around music, ie people who create playlists and say 'this is the kind of music I listen to when I'm sad' -- he views music as a way to relax but not as something to live your life around.

* Verbatim: "gaining status for listening to a certain kind of music is completely fucking retarded to me! The whole underground scene of music I have no problem with, it's the fans I have a problem with -- it's all about status, 'Oh I listened to this band when they were in their garage and had only five fans.' You *want* your favorite bands to become known, and that's what any band wants, to be heard by as many people as possible." Plus further trashing of fans complaining about bands being 'sellouts' (using AFI as a specific example).

So there ya go.

hahahaha Ned I kiss you, very Marshall-McLuhan-in-Annie-Hall move there

Did you tell him AFI still suck?

do people just pick up the person's iPod nowadays and scroll through that?

resolutely yes. I'm a college stuent myself and the thing that always happens at parties now is someone has their mp3 player plugged into whatever system is available and insists on playing their music while others scroll through theirs looking for something they'd rather stick on, and sticking it on when the other person's back is turned. It's all very obnoxious. People pick up each others mp3 players and scroll through them, or even their phones or make you look though them.

I'm also of the "demographic" (it feels so dehumanizing) that had napster available when 16/17 but the difference between then and now is that I was on a slow costly dial up and had no way of listening to mp3s outside of using the computer until i bought a cd burner, meaning i was much bigger music purchaser than corresponding demographic is today probably in the age of broadband.

these days people my age are downloading whole series of tv shows like Veronic Mars (don't ask why 24 year olds are watching that) or weeds and burning them and swapping them. Music isn't the only business this is effecting, and I don't think tv and movie execs are really seeing it coming. They think if they amp up the definition and stick more copy protection on players that'll ward it off, but it won't.

haha thats true all the tech geek guys I know have given up paying for cable/movies and are just ripping shit for free off the web

which is great cuz if there's anything that needs killing its TV advertising

glad Ned is here to provide us with Real Life Young Adult example

You're 87, right?

the points he makes are pretty much OTM for me as well (though progressively less so as you go down the list)

though I know I am an exception because I buy most of my tangible music on used vinyl (because a) it's cheaper and b) the music I enjoy listening to is available on vinyl)

(I still buy CDs obv. but I'm less inclined to buy them on a whim because they are damn expensive)

and most of the music enthusiasts I know use soulseek/bittorrent

which is great cuz if there's anything that needs killing its TV advertising

Yeah, but I mean, like, just for argument's sake, ya know, it does take a budget to make a film or a tv show. Where do you expect that budget to come from if everything's free and there's no advertising?

slave labor. Harvey Weinstein could stand to lose a few pounds through hard work.

Its funny how file sharing has killed the industry but liberated musicians so much; we can hear more, the free software, knowledge, people from all over the world can hear our music and all that stuff.

Apart from people who know they'd be making more money if 100,000 people hadn't downloaded their latest album and maybe 20,000 had bought it, most artists I've spoken to don't really care about filesharing. I remember talking to a guy from round here (free improv drummer, been playing since the 60s) saying that most people he talks to get his music off soulseek., he didn't seem to fussed about it, this seems to be the case with a lot of people I speak to… just glad that people are listening and more people are coming to his shows.

Most of the really talented musicians I know, those that actually could call themselves full time musicians, in the sense that they actually put a 35 or more hour week into their music, get money through arts council funding and that sort of thing. Most of them belong to some sort of collective where they all share resources/talents, outside of that, they teach music to make money. I don't see where the record company is needed in this instance.

I can see new music being heard in the same way as those funny emails that go round, I guess we see it all the time with music writers bigging stuff up then suddenly its massive. Its fun to predict what might happen, record companies hosting nights, buying up clubs/venues, more integration with visual media, will be interesting to see where all this goes. I'd like to see music becoming more localized, more live music, better pay for performers, sound engineers, visual artists and integration of other arts into the whole thing. Now I've written this it seems a bit off topic, but oh well.

as a musician who grew up wanting to make albums - you know, pieces of music that came with artwork and an aesthetic and functioned as discrete objects - I don't really feel liberated so much as confused.

altho I'm glad to see major labels fail. Hooray!

I think most musicians who aren't shifting lots of records (i.e. over 99% of them) aren't bothered about filesharing because no-one ever gets paid anyway. It just means you have to admit it's a hobby rather than something you might make a living out of someday.

well, i think we're only only just getting into a time where musicians are starting to understand how they can make a living out of music. its only in the last few years where its been affordable to record you own music to a quality that rivals major releases. plus i think we're likely to see audiences grow.

i'd agree with shakey, its confusing. but most musicians either don't want to, or don't know how to run themselves as a business. i'm looking forward to having a decent van, studio, good enough tunes and a few hundred quid saved to see how well i can do. its like starting a business, a big risk, but i'm sure its possible... if you're any good that is

Like, what is should be next?
How to make money through the celestial jukebox (TM). All music streamed from anywhere, no storage needed. Please don't tell me phone companies will rake it all in due to sheer bloated- & cluelessness of all other major players.

The Celestial Jukebox (every piece of music ever recorded) has GOT to be the model of the future. All-you-can-stream over ubiquitous broadband wirless for a monthly fee. The big question is - how far are we from this? And is satellite radio a similar model that we can learn from?

Subsidiary question: will it give us cancer (the ubiquitous broadband).

http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg
http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg
http://kellycrull.com/bottledwater.jpg

did u guys know you can turn on the tap and 'download' a glass of water???

i have trouble getting all 'cry for me RIIAgentina' about this

uhh RIAAgentina

People (bands) are working (leasing rehearsal/studio space, buying equipment, spending time) to get you that tapwater (good music) deej, whether riaa-affiliated or not.

yes but the point is that you can market shit that people can get for free, and they will buy it

we do love buying stuff

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/fig1.gif

bottled water sales ^

point taken.

spoken like a true Volvic addict.

shit is addictive

To take the bottled water metaphor seriously, and examine it very closely, it is not so much that people are prepared to pay for something that's free - there would be uproar if people were expected to pay large sums of money for turning on their taps - but that, when a person is on the move, water is rather hard to obtain easily. One can of course duck into a public toilet and swig from a tap; or, take a flask of water from home; or, duck into a cafe and beg for a glass - but these are not really practical solutions for most people.

Now as we know, people can and do download large quantities of music at home, on their computers, for free. However, when on the move, they may well be prepared to pay a very small amount for music, as they may have the impulse to listen to an artist, and yet have no convenient access to their own computer. It may be cost-effective, therefore, to have music-dispensing online vending machines at train stations or in corner stores. One would duck into one, plug in one's portable listening device, download some tracks for a very small fee, and move on.

I'm an old codger, and well out of touch, and this is not what I would like to do. I would like to just turn on the radio and listen as I walk. However I would want to select the tracks myself, as per Last FM and Pandora. Neither of those models really suits me though, as about 80% of the music I want to hear won't be on those stations. They are hoist by the petard of their selection processes, which are getting more and more stringent - just like a record company lockdown on a station playlist - not nearly as bad, but heading in the wrong direction.

No, my radio station would have exactly what I wanted, and most of that would be unreleased music I've found on the web. It does not matter to me whether it's been released on CD or not. It must not be a service biased towards US and UK rock music. I want to select, say, 'Ugandan music', or 'power noise', or 'Partch', or 'unreleased Myspace' as a search phrase and then listen to that all day as I walk around. I think this would be a kind of Google radio station. How does anyone make money out of me? Well, I'd pay for the device, but it would need to be no more expensive than an iPod. I'd also pay for internet access, perhaps with a small subscriber fee for the right to do this. I wouldn't tolerate any ads, but perhaps there might be a cheaper subscriber rate for those who would.

<i>yes but the point is that you can market shit that people can get for free, and they will buy it</i>

this is key

I don't think the whole thing about bottled water is mobility - that's part of it, ok, but people also drink bottled water at home, and in restaurants instead of water they could have for free even though a restaurant's tap water is required by law to be drinkable - people in NY drink bottled water even though the tap water's famously good! So, there's more to it than that. It has to do with brand identity, or even product identification ("I am the kind of person who enjoys bottled water").

at any rate, I think that artists establishing a personal connection to listeners is the way forward - that making the product personally attractive to the consumer is where the labels have failed so spectacularly: such a connection can fairly be called a business relationship; filesharing dictates that recording artists consider listeners their employers. I think this is a healthy development, even though I dislike 1) the whole "I got the album the second it leaked and here's my opinion of it as I listen to the first track" blog/board-culture vibe that's come to be a big part of things and 2) the ethics of "look, no harm's done to anyone, so I'll do what I like" but that's a horse not worth riding

there are some depressing things about this of course - would one really have wanted to see a Joy Division myspace? Isn't some enigma a good thing? less so in the new market it seems.

About fifteen minutes ago I drove past the nearest McDonald's to my apt. Outside there's a brand new DVD kiosk where you can rent DVDs for $1. Yet again, there's nothing remotely like this offering music. Someone in Hollywood is trying to think ahead whereas the record industry...

A Joy Division myspace? I'm not sure I can get my head around that concept.

Branding is something the smaller labels do well. As a previous poster said, when you think of Universal or Sony, music isn't the first thing that pops into your mind. It's more like movies, consumer electronics, or "Ugh, corporate bloodsuckers." Music isn't part of the brand. Smaller labels, on the other hand, do this quite well. Think of the classic labels, Chess, Sun, 4AD, Rough Trade, Factory, Touch and Go, Mute, Motown, or Blue Note, all of them had distinctive looks, sounds, and at least in their early days, stringent quality control. They were able to make that connection with the consumer; something larger labels haven't been able to do.
Small labels are also better at niche marketing, since most of them are started by music fans. Music fans who are often closely connected with a particular scene, record store, studio, or band. This gives small labels an inherent advantage when building brand identities. Back in the day, every jazz fan knew that if you bought a Blue Note record it was likely to be good. Not to mention nice to look at. The same holds true for many other musical genres. There are dozens of small labels selling to noise, metal, psych, dubstep, reggae, or indie fans that make that link everyday by knowing their markets well.
The downside to all this, small labels are notoriously sketchy and unstable, since music fans are often lousy businessmen. Most of the successful ones are gone within ten years due to mismanagement (McGee snorts the profits and signs rubbish, Tony Wilson can’t pay the bills or his artists.) or swept away by changing markets. But, if you're a believer in the long tail theory, small labels might have a better chance of pulling through the digital collapse than the majors ever will.

Joy Division MySpace

JOY DIVISION has 119479 friends.

Awesome!!

One definite by-product of all this change is a change in the way fans will relate to artists. It's definitely much harder to be an enigma these days. It used to be that not only was it a lucky break to find the album you wanted by the artist you wanted (unless you ordered it, which was still a long anticipation process), but that you couldn't even find *information* about the artist until some magazine happened to have a story or interview, except whatever was in the Trouser Press book or whatever guide you had.

So artists, especially lesser known ones, lived on small, distant islands and once in a while you were lucky enough to find a bottled message from them.

Myspace and Google certainly take away that experience - give me a day and I could probably become proficient in knowledge of almost any artist. But artists can't afford not to be on Myspace, because the audience's attention span is too short and they have too many other choices, and if they don't find you there they'll just look for someone else. And you just can't escape Google.

That line is heard and accepted too often without challenge. I know artists not on MySpace who are still doing well in terms of sales and recognition.

Well, I hope that's true. Maybe it's much more important for certain demographics than others.

Lots of good posts, where to start?

John's observations re: the relationship with the audience and the question of mystery strike a chord precisely because they grapple with the indisputable grey zone that now exists in 'the music business,' however conceived, and the rhetoric around it. From my perspective, I am conflicted a bit about wanting to remain an enigma/function away from (for instance) Myspace, to bring in blunt's point too.

Generally speaking as a fan of a fair amount of acts and performers I do not obsess over the minutiae of their lives, nor do I demand constant tracking and updates. I don't think it's incumbent on anybody to provide it, no matter who you are -- this ties in with my general belief in not blogging about every facet of my day, for instance. At the same time, wanting to be able to easily direct people to something of interest in a quick and easy fashion is kinda key for me -- I see it as a logical extension of my time as a DJ, and my switchover from that to concentrating on writing first and foremost was precisely because the AMG and other locales allowed me the chance to do so in a very broad fashion. This is still the case -- I encourage bands I like [many of whom I found through MySpace] to submit stuff to the AMG precisely so it can be listed and their name spread out further to folks, and hopefully I am also able to review it for the Guide then as well.

Hurting's description of the island metaphor resonates as a result because of my own experience -- I *did* use Trouser Press extensively in the late eighties and early nineties to get a grounding in more obscure acts and a toehold on a variety of styles I would not have otherwise known. Information availability was restricted not by intent but by default, a situation now irrevocably changed. And as I mentioned I actively seek to encourage ways to get, if not every detail out, then at least *something* out -- to my mind, the question seems simple: don't you want people to hear your music? If so, why not use the means available? MySpace in and of itself is ripe for all sorts of questions about what it is and who it benefits, but its usefulness in sharing music readily to those who are curious about a newly discovered name or band seems beyond question, though of course the distinction between official and unofficial pages is important.

And that said, two portraits of widely differing approaches (and I could cite plenty of other examples): the Maine band Visitations -- not the Elephant 6 group -- has been a favorite of mine for some years, and they have studiously avoided creating any sort of internet presence, not just a MySpace one. Their releases have all been limited edition CDRs that quickly sold out, they've not shown any interest in interviews, etc. I respect that but at the same time I'm also frustrated a bit, because to my mind they make excellent music and I'd love to share that more with people; when talking with Nemo of Time-Lag, who distributes their stuff, he indicated that sharing a few songs via YSIs was no problem with the band, so I did so on a thread on here. But that's only a temporary measure at best. Can I force them to do more? Of course not. Should I? Don't be ridiculous. That's the artist's decision. But that always runs up against my desire not to have the music be 'lost' -- especially in this time of sheer information overload, something I welcome but something that means to my mind that places have staked out somewhere, an attitude clearly the band does not agree with.

The complete flipside is a band like VNV Nation, who I saw last night. Like about ten million other bands they rely tightly on that loop which John rightly notes re: the personal connection to the audience, and they've done so extremely well from what I can tell. They're hardly the first group to so prioritize this way but when they finished their set and flashed up a 'thank you' screen to the audience, this was followed by two separate screens listing their website and their MySpace site -- and the MySpace site was first. They encourage people to visit and participate in that particular model, to use it the best of everyone's abilities -- again, not new, not unique, merely the most immediate example to my memory because I just saw it. But it is a cogent reminder of that embrace of a context and Net-based 'place,' radically different from Visitations, and doubtless reflecting a similarly radical split in what the two groups intend in terms of their audience relationship.

Ultimately neither approach is right or wrong but my sympathies clearly skew towards the VNV approach. A couple of weeks back, meanwhile, I got into an intense, interesting argument with a fellow attendee at the Bottling Smoke Festival about how I want to spread the word about shows, bands, etc. and how he felt that was an invitation to cheapen what was being done, that people would show up with the 'wrong' attitude or mindset, that they wouldn't appreciate what was being done. I appreciate where he was coming from but instinctively I kick against this vision, I think that runs the danger of a certain kind of elitism -- which is interesting too given my example just cited that a band like VNV clearly aims for their own particular 'right' crowd and does so very well. But ultimately I just feel you've got to allow for the possibility of welcoming all, of the *potential* if you like.

This said, by one's own thoughts, actions, deeds, one might find oneself creating a limitation on that potential without consciously trying to do so -- and for all I know I've done that myself my entire life, I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. So I don't think there's a final word on this, there can't be, and definitely not now. But the issues therefore remain all the more potent as a result.

you've got to allow for the possibility of welcoming all, of the *potential* if you like.

yeah! this would seem so obvious, a given in any creative endeavor, yet what turned me off about "indie rock" as the 80s wore on was its ridicule and/or outright abandonment of this principle. not so much for elitism implied as the built-in crippling limitation. but as ned also says, there's a sort of natural human inclination toward self-defeat. subconsciously we all shoot ourselves in the foot w/o knowing it.

do the visitiations object to the internet itself, or do they want to stay local, remain at a certain level because of other committments?

"it's hard to be enigma these days" -- hurting write this as a song!

speaking of self-defeating behavior: the initial article posted validates much of what I wrote in Playback four or five years ago but I take no satisfaction in the collapse of the big music companies, no matter how richly deserved or self-inflicted.

as scary and challenging as this all must be for musicians it's also got to be inspiring. like the post-punk era writ large, or the days just after the berlin wall fell the chaos presentes a chance to...

RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN. tho as that hoard old rock song went "it ain't easy when you're on your own."

do the visitiations object to the internet itself, or do they want to stay local, remain at a certain level because of other committments?

I'm guessing more the latter -- there is a small record store one of them runs which is on the Net, for instance, but it doesn't seem like said Net presence is the core of their business approach. And they do do a lot of local work and collaborations, so that might well fit into it too.

I take no satisfaction in the collapse of the big music companies, no matter how richly deserved or self-inflicted

I admit to schadenfreude, but it's kinda hard to resist after all this time. As it stands the bit in the article that strikes me the most is Rosen's 'having no economic value, just emotional value' bit -- it's pithy, sums up a fairly accurate state of affairs, and in light of all of Rosen's statements at the time she headed the RIAA incredibly telling.

everything that comes out of hilary rosen's mouth strikes me as disengenious and self-serving. I think it's less a question of "value" than ownership -- intially at least didn't p2p filesharing feel like souped-up tape trading rather than a grassroots assertion that information should be free? as spokesperson for the RIAA she never seemed to comprehend the basic nature of napster and file sharing, as evidenced in her quote from 2001 "What we want is someone to think twice before they start a business." wasn't the whole point of napster that it wasn't started as a business but as free software?