The Record Industry's Decline

Very good read. The past seven years or so have been pretty fascinating regarding all this stuff.

The Internet appears to be the most consequential technological shift for the business of selling music since the 1920s, when phonograph records replaced sheet music as the industry's profit center.

Well, that took a long time. Record sales didn't surpass sheet music sales until the 1950s. And in the early 1930s, the record industry was in just as much a jam as it is in now, maybe even worse.

The RIAA maintains that the lawsuits are meant to spread the word that unauthorized downloading can have consequences. "It isn't being done on a punitive basis," says RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol.

Yeah, and the consequence is...punishment!

Thanx for posting! Fascinating stuff.

great article

Very interesting but as always the labels are masters of misdirection. If nothing else many of the people downloading, file-sharing, etc. are MUSIC LOVERS. Not all download exclusively and to spread one's love of music used to be something record companies valued and promoted. We DO now have about 10 years worth of music listeners who didn't change from CD to digital--they were digital to begin with and that's got to be dealt with. I own a small used/new shop and if digital download of new hit releases happened tomorrow I'd welcome it. I can't make money selling new CDs, especially hits. They're usually available at "America's One-Stop", also known as Target, for two bucks less than I buy them from my wholesaler. I'd really just as soon not carry them. Downloading is a problem but I've always believed the majors's four biggest problems are price, price, price and bootlegging. Go to any flea market in a neighborhood where the locals don't have honkin' computers and DSL connections, see if you can't find any big hit CD, with no generation loss and color-copied artwork for 5 bucks. You can in Atlanta.

I own a small used/new shop and if digital download of new hit releases happened tomorrow I'd welcome it. I can't make money selling new CDs, especially hits.

My favorite local store eventually went this route, concentrating solely on used CDs and new and used vinyl. It wasn't enough for them to keep their head above water in the end but it kept them going for longer than other spots would have done.

Go to any flea market in a neighborhood where the locals don't have honkin' computers and DSL connections, see if you can't find any big hit CD, with no generation loss and color-copied artwork for 5 bucks. You can in Atlanta.

or ride marta & buy from dude carrying a garbage bag full of cd-rs

what you need, man? what you like?? you like that t.i.??

i got t.i., pimp c, tupac, maroon five...

I'm tryin' to do all used but there just aren't that many recent "indie" and hit major label CDs out there yet. Have to have the friggin' White Stripes even though you gotta pay 12 bucks to make 4 on those. Selling good used CDs that 12 bucks should make me at least another 12. I do get people selling me a big box of good ones from time to time but that's a one-time boon--the guy's decided to trust his music to hard drives and so he'll not be shopping here any more. Until maybe the drive crashes, heh.

what record store do you have??

Same as my ILX name. In Toco Hills, if you live in ATL.

sometimes i wonder though...say they had totally done everything different....embraced downloaded, basically done every laundry list of things that everyone on the internet says they should have done different...reduced prices, etc etc etc....sometimes i wonder if things would even be that different....i mean, people like shit for free at the end of the day.

"We expect to be a brand licensing organization," says Cohen of Warner, which in May started a new division, Den of Thieves

arf

xp
ppl currently pay subs to filesharing sites and rapidshare.

you do? no one i know pays for rapidshare and stuff...it seems like it's free.

or ride marta & buy from dude carrying a garbage bag full of cd-rs

-- and what, Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:51 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ otm

I would like 1 YYT CD and 1 bag of Skittles

sometimes i wonder though...say they had totally done everything different....embraced downloaded, basically done every laundry list of things that everyone on the internet says they should have done different...reduced prices, etc etc etc....sometimes i wonder if things would even be that different....i mean, people like shit for free at the end of the day.

Word. But what I'll always wonder is if just one person at Elektra Records had thought about what it really meant to have 300,000 (or whatever it was) working e-mail addresses of Metallica fans (and the hardest of the hard-core ones at that) during the whole Lars/Napster thing. I mean, direct mail is supposed to be successful with a 2% response, something like that. What if they'd have made some choice Metallica goodies available to those people in exchange for considerations regarding future "pirating", something like that. You'd have had a hell of a bigger success rate than 2%, for sure. You know, build a little customer loyalty, a little give and take.

But they sued 'em.

yeah i mean i don't doubt this could have been handled better. and that, if they would have done a lot of things differently they would probably be better off for it. but, somehow, i'm not sure if i buy the whole "people LOVE music and would pay for it if you would have done X, X, and X"....i don't even think it's the music nerds that download tons of shit that really hurts anyway...it's more casual fans that used to buy like 4-5 CDs a year that now have really zero invested in caring about music that are more than fine with just getting burns or DLs of stuff....

I think Matt's right on the money. It's the millions of 5-10 CD a year people buying nothing that are crippling the industry more than the hardcore music nerds who buy half/download half the music they hear.

Agree that the casual downloader isn't often more than a Top 40 fan, listens to tracks, not albums, yada yada. But the majors have bet a lot of their chips on the idea that the superstar releases have to float the whole operation and incredibly when the new Kelly Clarkson sells 4 million instead of 10 the shit starts flowing downhill. And if the label frontloads the marketing of these records, all the budget blown to get that couple of weeks at the top of the Billboard chart (just like the movie business), then stops working the record after one or maybe two singles then Kelly C.'s artistic output has been devalued in the eyes of the music listener to, well, the price of one CD-R. It's not a new problem: I mean, not many of us bought the whole 1910 Fruitgum Company LP, we bought the single we couldn't get out of our heads, or radios.

Oh, wait. The labels say releasing CD singles cannibalizes CD sales. No singles. Idiots. There's a transactional cost to downloading (time, 'puter, DSL, CD-Rs): how many copies of, say, "Hey Ya" b/w "The Way You Move" as a $.99 single could they have sold to people who never intended to buy the CD but ripped and burned those tunes? I guarantee they'd have sold millions and not have lost 10% of that in CD sales. There it is! On the counter at Target or friggin' QuikTrip, for God's sake! 99 cents, the cost of a candy bar. Idiots.

music fans have preferred singles to albums from the dawn of time. a fact that record industry has hated from the dawn of time. one day, perhaps, the industry will discover that delivering the exact products its customers want will be a pretty nice way to make a profit.

I dunno, you think people buying 4 or 5 CDs a year are downloading them illegally? Why go to all that trouble just for a few songs? Downloading from iTunes, perhaps. But I always pictured that crowd as being a bit older, and now they're buying those 4 or 5 from Starbucks or Target.

I'm just bummed that its been pretty firmly established now that the majority of music listeners prefer music in short, convenient bursts without any context or artwork or packaging or anything. Watching Ice Cube rhapsodize about how the comic books that came w/Funkadelic albums drew him in ("cuz now you had something else to do besides listen to the record"), I was struck by how a medium I really love and get a lot of enjoyment out of is basically being forced into extinction.

<i>I dunno, you think people buying 4 or 5 CDs a year are downloading them illegally? Why go to all that trouble just for a few songs?</i>

i work with a lot of people as i described, all about mid to late 20s. they are very casual music fans, listen to their ipod but music isn't a huge deal to them - never go to concerts, etc etc....as far as i can tell they get 100 percent of their music through discs burned to them from friends - not downloading actually but same diff....one even said once "i mean, there's just no reason to buy anything now" - they all have ipods and know about itunes, but why buy stuff when it's free?

I know several people like that too.

the thing is - they don't go to the trouble of downloading for a few songs...they just hear something at a friends house and say 'hey burn that for me' and then that's it....they're not into searching out stuff...whatever comes to them that they like they listen to, but it's not a big deal either way. and they used to buy stuff too...they all have those black cd booklets and all the purchased CDs are from the mid/late 90s/early part of the 00s - then all burns.

M@tt OTM - that is pretty much everyone I know right now, barring my fellow musicians/record collector friends

its kinda the equivalent of trading taped copies like my friends and I used to in high school - except WAY faster and ridiculously more convenient.

also, i guarantee that none of these people have ever bought a single - CD, vinyl, itunes, or otherwise - in their entire lives. i really doubt they ever would.

I know I've written about it loads but I really think the WAY people listen has affected how much music people buy; music for most people is just something to have on while you do something else, be it travel, cook, talk, take drugs, etcetera. Now I'm sure this has always been the case for an awful lot of people, but I think for people under, say, 30 now, it's even more of a peripheral to even more people than ever before. We're too busy, too fast, doing too much, to view music as an important thing worth spending money on in its own right. It's kinda the same with alcohol, perhaps; for everyone I know who really enjoys a good glass of wine or pint of ale, there are ten times that number of people chucking pink sweet booze bombs down their gullets as fast as they can, the point of the exercise being not enjoying drinking but the extreme release of being very, very drunk.

Now I'm sure this has always been the case for an awful lot of people, but I think for people under, say, 30 now, it's even more of a peripheral to even more people than ever before.

I am curious about this and wonder if its true - its ubiquity does seem to have decreased the value invested in it. I work with younger folks and have friends with teenaged children and none of 'em seem to invest the emotional intensity I used to associate with young music listeners... or maybe they do and I'm oblivious to it (entirely possible).

The kids (18-22) I work with at uni all dress like they're in emo bands but never show any interest in the 6,000 LPs and 2,000 CDs in my office. Except the one intense dude who doens't dress like he's in an emo band.

xpost OK, that makes sense, the 5-6 CD consumer.

Except the one intense dude who doens't dress like he's in an emo band.

SOULMATES

it's not just the casual fans anymore -- this is the first year my record spending took a small hit. it's two things -- the stock at certain local stores are going stale in my favorite sections, experimental / classical / electronic / world. perhaps the result of the flood of people selling off their entire CD collections is that stores can only afford to take the sure-fire CDs, and are passing on the overstock obscurities that lure in fanatics -- in any case, I'm just not finding cool stuff by browsing. and the second thing -- I never got into ptp or torrents, but now that album blogs have hit google, my iPod is filling up with albums I've been searching out for years that I've never even had the option to buy -- there's no competing with that.

but it's upsetting, because without major labels we're really going into the hall of mirrors -- the most pernicious words on ILM are 'overrated' and 'underrated' and they're increasingly applied to records that either almost no one has heard of or that are revered & treasured by tens of thousands respectively, but we're all just in our caves watching the shadows and griping about what we think the rest of the world is listening to

I will say that as a musician this situation makes me not want to bother investing a lot of time and energy in making a physical product available to the public - making limited amounts of things I enjoy seems vastly preferable, and if people find it somehow or wanna hear it hey great, but why should I bother trying to reach them.

seriously

never been more schitzoid as a musician / music listener. serious fucking trauma is involved with realizing a physical edition, so many compromises, and no one even cares anymore, yet it's still a required step, you feel devalued by your audience. on the other hand as a listener I'm overflowing with more affection & gratitude for the music I'm getting into than ever before. at times, it even feels like more of a direct connection, especially when you're suddenly in a position to encounter things like this

The small outfits like Time-Lag and Foxy Digitalis emphasize the physical release, but then again, they are small outfits and geared towards this approach.

The kids (18-22) I work with at uni all dress like they're in emo bands but never show any interest in the 6,000 LPs and 2,000 CDs in my office.

Why do you keep them in your office?

On the main point - I'm 46 and have thousands of Lps and a few hundred CDs and I still spend a fortune on records; though I haven't bought a new CD in a year - I also DL stuff, more than I get a chance to listen to. My daughter - just 18 - never buys any music but she's not 5-6 CD a year girl either; she 'has' lots of tunes and knows a fair bit, but neither she or any of her friends - even the nerdiest of boys -have the collector gene; music and its material instance have become entirely separated

I run a library film & music department at a university.

it's not just the casual fans anymore -- this is the first year my record spending took a small hit. it's two things -- the stock at certain local stores are going stale in my favorite sections, experimental / classical / electronic / world.

Me too, that and because the local shops are all closing and I don't feel like CD-shopping online because I know I'll end up buying a big parcel full of stuff and I already have too many CDs and can't shift the ones I never listen to any more. (OK, I had a kickstart in this respect because I was unemployed starting last autumn and cut back on the spending and haven't really felt the need to get back into it yet.)

Though looking at my cd racks you could be forgiven for thinking I was one of those stopped-buying-in-2001 types, because for all that I kept buying a lot of stuff, most of it was used and old.

It's worth remembering that the type of music which is downloaded illegally pretty much echoes what is on the charts, so you can still ascertain with some accuracy what the masses are into by browsing them. I think Scik Mouthy's drinking analogy is good: this is part of a general societal trend, and not something which is unique to the music industry.

If I remember correctly, about 5 million people bought the Justin Timberlake album. Well, I would guess that about 50 million people have it -- or parts of it (like I do) -- on their computer.

I run a library film & music department at a university.

Thanks - I was thinking jealously that you must have such a huge collection that you had to keep some of it in work.

Was thinking this last weekend, as the Arctic Monkeys sold out two open air shows here in Dublin, that they are probably 'bigger' in terms of being heard and seen than - say - Bowie ever was, but with a tenth of the cultural weight, something which seems linked, in a way i can't quite figure out, with the fact that 'everybody' is into music now - when i was at school, being into music was a distinction; now its like television - another thing people resent paying for

or as Bowie said with some foresight "music will be like water, it will come out of a tap" (or something)

no way bowie coined that one.

and no way arctic monkeys are any kind of equivalent of bowie as a musical or cultural or generational force. there are other musicians working today you could make the case for. arctic monkeys are not among them.

David Bowie, June 2002 New York Times article:

"The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within ten years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in ten years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. [...] So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen..."

Matt H. completely OTM.

We can all rattle off our favorite anecdotes and statistics and factoids about what the record industry did wrong and how they "brought this on themselves," and yeah, they fucked up in a lot of ways. And that makes us all feel a lot better.

But ultimately there was no way the labels could stop this, and they'd be hemorrhaging profits by now no matter what.

I mean $10 a month at 35 million subscribers sounds great - until you realize that a lot of them are going to wind up flocking to the other free platforms once you start charging, not to mention burning, downloading from blogs, etc.

I do, however, see a potential bright side, especially for smaller labels. The upside of downloading is that it's going to put the same music in a lot more peoples' hands - the way to take advantage of that is for the label to have more of a stake in the artists' touring (which makes sense on other levels anyway), since the promotional efficacy of downloading can help ticket sales. So I think hybrid labels that are also somehow involved with booking are the way forward.

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/images/adaccess/R/R02/R0206/R0206-med.jpeg

Didn't Vvm Test Records finish off the music industry?

Aborigines, lowest in the scale of savagery on earth imo

Mike Batt, songwriter and owner of the Dramatico record label, which has signed Katie Melua and Marianne Faithfull, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he supported the industry stance.

"I run a small record label and I'm an artist, so I can speak for both," he said. "If a record company invests hundreds of thousands of pounds in selling my records, doesn't it earn a right to stand alongside me in the sharing of income?"

Bragg responded that Batt's argument "defending the right of record companies to enjoy a further 45 years of income made my blood boil".

Batt makes a helluva lot more money through his record label than his 70s hits.

I'm excited about this small label! Who's this Marianne Faithfull girl does she have a myspace?

If aborigines are lowest in the scale of savagery, doesn't that make them less savage than everyone else? No matter - just show me where I can get one of these sharkskin drums.

BOSTON (AP) -- A Boston University student has been ordered to pay $675,000 to four record labels for illegally downloading and sharing music.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.

Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum's case was $4.5 million.

The case is only the nation's second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.

Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled a Minnesota woman must pay nearly $2 million for copyright infringement.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/31/business/AP-US-TEC-MusicDownload.html

should we start guessing what those 30 songs were

$675,000 for 30 songs is $22,500 per song. I just figured out how to eliminate the deficit. If the record industry successfully sues everyone for the amount of illegal downloading over the past decade, that will add up to roughly....419 trillion dollars. If they can just donate 1% of that to the federal government we should be sitting pretty.

"But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful."

How could they not be willful?

"Oh I just accidently download these 30 tracks. Sorry guys. Shit I owe you what!??!"

"I thought it was free porn!"

when it comes to major label shit i really should just buy used from now on

If each of the roughly 1 billion songs that are illegally downloaded each month carried the same $22,500 penalty, $270 trillion would be collected each year. Global GDP is around $69 trillion.

Did anyone throw that back of the envelope stat at the jury before they decided on a penalty?

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86724/uk-music-economist-says-music-industry-revenue-up-4-7/

Has the list of songs been made public or is that wishful thinking? Cos if I was one of the artists that recorded one of these 30 songs I would be expecting a good chunk of that 22k....

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/08/01/opinion/01blow.ready.html

no wonder they're the way they are

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/01/opinion/musicforweb2.gif

Not sure where to post this, but the following article mentions some important things IMO: https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-devaluation-of-music-it-s-worse-than-you-think-f4cf5f26a888

- "Digital music ecosystems, starting with Apple’s iTunes, reduced recordings down to a stamp-sized cover image and three data points...Plus, they’re devoid of context"
- "In the age of measured clicks the always-on focus grouping has institutionalized the echo chamber of pop music, stultifying and discouraging meaningful engagement with art music."
- "Art music relates to mathematics, architecture, symbolism and philosophy...Why so many are satisfied to engage with music at only the level of 'feeling' is a vast, impoverishing mystery."
- "How does a young person steeped in the faux-Shostakovich rumbling of a war game soundtrack hear real Shostakovich and think it’s any big deal?"

On the other hand, is this article best read in an old-man-shaking-stick-at-youngsters-from-porch-voice?

I think there is something to the first two of those quotes, but the third makes me shrug and the last one makes me groan.

Actually the second one is kind of dumb too. I do think there's something about the music landscape today that is worse for "serious" music but that doesn't quite get at what it is.

I think they're all dumb quotes.

And article is classic "things were better in my day when people had respect for things".

Why so many are satisfied to engage with music at only the level of 'feeling' is a vast, impoverishing mystery."

For starters, hasn't the proportion of this "so many" - in the U.S., anyway - remained about the same since, oh, the Eisenhower administration?

tbf, author does allude to that in regards to the advent of popular music radio.

Of the quotes I pulled (but you should read the article!), I'm most interested in 2 and 3, because I think there is something to the notion of music losing its market share in the cultural sphere, to be something of an all-things-to-(at least some)-people. It really does just seem like a small part of the equation for almost everyone I know. It's hard to find someone who thinks about music providing many philosophical or intellectual answers in the same way as religion does (or did) -- and I wonder if that, as much as the difficulty in selling it, adds to the feeling of devaluation.

and I'm certainly open to the idea that this affects more than just music, and would be surprised if it didn't.

there isn't a single good point anywhere in that article, sorry :(

that is def old man shaking fist at clouds

even if he has some good points, he doesn't really get into anything in any depth

the thing is, I am now an old man

I am a cloud

"It really does just seem like a small part of the equation for almost everyone I know."

Yes well you are an old man.

people def "age out" of interest in music, which is a bummer in its own for people like me, but it's weird to see youth subcultures based around music also apparently evaporate. Like it would be easier for me to accept my peers not giving a fuck about music if there was a generation coming up that did, but afaict there isn't, really.

Based on what evidence do young people not care about music?

the young people I know

Maybe you should hang out with cooler young people? :P

I feel like I am pretty constantly having conversations with young"er" people about music (admittedly I am also always having conversations with old"er" people about music, as still I wear a lot of band shirts and go to shows).

yeah admittedly my world of young people = relatives/coworkers and whatever young people are on here (which appears to be not a lot)

I have no idea how old anyone on here is, but I think this kind of message-board is not what "the youth of today" are using.

Well I guess I know how old you are haha, but I mean outside of the people I've met and folks who've posted pics/ages I don't really know.

I went for an interview once at WMG's offices in Burbank (it was for an internship in their HR department), and the
recruiter bemoaned the fact that MP3's had insidiously cut into the revenue that labels made from t-shirt sales(!)

in my experience young people who love music are most into shaking their fists at clouds

I have no idea how old anyone on here is, but I think this kind of message-board is not what "the youth of today" are using.

Some may. But then we are speaking of the increasing percentage of youth of today who aren't into the music of today. Pop music listening has become so fragmented these days that even the kids are increasingly fragmented in their listening habits.

While I agree with the author that iTunes is shit at providing context for recordings, the world wide web is pretty good.

Yeah that's the weirdest complaint ever. This is a golden time to learn anything you want about anything. AND BUY A T-SHIRT FOR IT TOO AND GET IT SHIPPED PAINLESS TO YOU WITH LOW CHANCE OF RIPOFF TAKE THAT WMG!

Geir is back!?

They summoned him using the Ask Geir thread.

Geir is the real story here.

I feel like there's a vague kernel of something interesting here, but suspect it may amount to little more than "omg neoliberalism fuXxored everything up and all anyone cares about is bottom line!" which may be true but seems reductive and not helpful.

There is always a vague kernel of truth in every shitty Medium thinkpiece.

"feeling" is itself really complex and has a lot (everything) to do with "mathematics, architecture, symbolism and philosophy"

but thanks for pulling those quotes out so i don't have to waste 30 minutes on another useless thinkpiece

but maybe itunes can give away free buildings with taylor swift albums and then *boom* problem solved