"Warner Ready to Leave Albums on the Shelf"

I'm with Spencer on this, but I fear most of the initial music released under such a scheme will not be of overwhelming interest...

..and I don't know the greater strategy involved here, so don't take the following as gospel, but forcing new artists into this "digital EP" medium sounds REALLY unappealing to me, if I were a new signee to Warner. Basing a new artists's popularity on just initial downloads from a choice of three songs just seems wrong to me. There's still a disproportionate amount of people who don't download music... perhaps it's much higher in the UK than in the U.S., though. *shrug*

I can't really argue for a "better way", I'll admit. But still, this completely shifts the entire "OMG, I can't believe I'm seeing my OWN record in my hands for the very first time" dynamic/excitement that motivates new musicians, IMHO. I feel there's just something lost there that's rather subtle but important.

It's a far more complex issue the more I think about it. Hmmmm x 100.

xpost - also, if they reintroduce the EP as a commercial/hardcopy unit at a reasonable price I still believe people would buy 'em! CD's in slipsleeves cost nearly nothing to make so the EP could possibly get ppl back into record stores! if there were any record stores I mean.

So that you might actually make money.

kill me, please.

if this deal had been around when the Sisters of Mercy were still viable they'd be MILLIONAIRES I tell you

So that you might actually make money.

..and the money would be made.. how? Per download?

As people pointed out above, there are already avenues for things like this. (iTunes, etc.) Why would you want to have a tentacle of a big corporation litigate in the middle for you for something so simple -- or for something that you could get your geek friend to set up for free hot dogs?

if this deal had been around when the Sisters of Mercy were still viable they'd be MILLIONAIRES I tell you

..except they were the most EP-in' band around when they were viable anyway!

This is OTM. Warners in outmoding itself SHOCKAH.

..It would probably be both in a theoretical EULA with this Warner digital EP label thingie.

..or you can just make your own domain, and upload the mp3s yourselves, and have no one own them.

Granted, MySpace (and perhaps this Warner label) serve as a more effective means of promotion (outside cynical fucks like me, of course.)

This is OTM. Warners in outmoding itself SHOCKAH.

-- mcd (srmcd...), August 25th, 2005.

No it isn't. The point of a record label is marketing muscle, not a silly page.

Also, whither the hip hop skit if THE ALBUM (as format) dies?

Dude, Turkmenistan awaits you.

The very same lipservice the labels keep telling themselves. Though at the high costs of well, everything, that task alone won't justify having a 'music industry'. For instance, why don't you just pay a marketing person a consultant fee to do that for you? It'll save you money and the record company won't own the rights to your music, etc. So yeah, Warners outmoding itself.

The PR above may be speaking small, but major labels are always privvy to pulling the puppet strings to the top if they see promise. This can't happen outside that hierarchy -- usually.

Initially, it will target artists that are either emerging or those that are past their prime but with a small number of dedicated fans.

And can any of us imagine a world where superstardom will emerge from three tracks you can only puchase on iTunes? I mean, how do you have a recording career without the actual recording? What will these potential stars be famous for? I just think, and maybe the future is now, that those few superSTARS for which this model works won't be able to sustain a whole industry.

Haha, all I mean is that there are other sources for upfront recording budgets. Esp as home recording technology becomes better and better and therefore cheaper to make something "professional" sounding.

Sure. If those songs were also heard all over the radio & TV and if they were 3 hitworthy tracks then I don't see why it couldn't happen.

Maybe not superstardom, but if you have an artist who's only good for a few singles, why try to choke an LP out of them and have it languish while everyone buys the hits from iTunes? It would make sense for the industry to go back to separating "singles artists" from artists who can really sell an LP.

But, I mean, imagine if Beck's "Loser" broke through today in that proposed model. While I'm not personally a fan of his album output, many are.. and if labels just treated Beck as "a guy who had a killer download" and not someone who could foster an array of albums, all of varying styles... then eventually, you get a highly reduce and highly homogenized music industry. Maybe this is the only respite for the industry in the eventual future. And the more "album" oriented folks will have a better chance at roughing it on independents, most likely.

There's good and bad with every paradigm change. Thing is.. the record industry has become a jenga puzzle of its initial 50s-or-so rock-based paradigm. It would take brain surgeons to analyze the effects of a swift and unexpected threat to its current fragile model. So, while it's easy to lambast R&D proclamations like the above, they're probably a good thing in the long run, once they're better thought out and redesigned.

In the music business. Labels often pay out an advance. Sometimes this advance is simply a bonus. Other times the label expects to be paid back for that advance from sales. If the record doesn't sell and there is no profit, they don't get paid back. That's the label's loss. That is not how banks work, though.

Technologically the gap may have narrowed but skill will always be the real gap between amateur and pro. Not every great songwriter needs to, wants to or is able to also take on the skills of engineering, arranging and mixing.

Things haven't changed as much as some would like you to believe. Even with the most widely used tech (Protools, Garageband, etc.), to get a "pro" sound as commonly understood, you're going to be looking at a lot of outboard gear. That is, if you're recording real instruments actually being played "live."

It's narrow enough such that you can now make something in your bedroom sound good enough for the mainstream to accept (see The O.C. effect), but not narrow enough such that anyone with a bedroom can do anything they want, by any means.

For laptop sounding stuff, then yeah, forget the pro recording studio.. but for anything else, most still use/need pro studios. And I'm not talking about indie rock bands with Albini-level standards here, either.

As for "skill".. eh, could you elaborate, Walter? The term still sounds rather subjective to me.

if labels just treated Beck as "a guy who had a killer download" and not someone who could foster an array of albums, all of varying styles... then eventually, you get a highly reduce and highly homogenized music industry

So my indirect question was -- does the production of 'varying styles' require a major, after all?

Heh, this depends on the label, Dan. *gets a drive-by from the Giorgio Marauders wing of the Acute mafia* Don't major labels often add a band's expenses to some account that puts the band into debt, unless they strike gold? (which is common with poorly drafted contracts.)

It depends on how the varying styles are applied. OK, same scenario... Beck is shot into the future a decade.

"Loser" strikes it big today on pop radio.

What now?

Well, I think to do what he did on, say, Mutations and Sea Change, he would definitely need something outside his bedroom, even in the year 2012. Other material, maybe not so much, but some sourcing out of pro recording work would still be necessary for the Odelay! and Midnight Vultures stuff. Does that make sense?

This is just the context of a solo artist/auteur. "Bands" might require a dynamic which is dependent on a pro recording setting from the get go.

Studios are not going to disappear any time soon. Not even in two decades. Hell no.

But I'm talking about the future and being realistic, not just in regards to warner but smaller labels. Artists want to get paid for their music and often they don't want to pay to record it, pay to promote it etc. That's often what labels do. If/when digital downloads become the main money maker, I don't see that relationship changing. If I can depend on making profit through digital only download, then I can expect to pay for an artist to record in exchange for the rights to sell it online. IN that situation, the artist isn't just another lone soul on myspace, but can depend on the mighty record label's push. Which will often accomplish nothing.

But people say "why do this? when an artist can put their own stuff online". Hey, it's REALLY CHEAP to press CDs. Any artist can press a few CDs, advertise them on a geocities site. And yet they're still knocking on the doors of labels for money and support.

This is absolutely true. I'm all for some new ideas, and I think this idea is pretty cool.

That is not how banks work, though.

I guess I used the wrong word. Maybe I should have said "venture capital firms". Either way, there is no reason this needs to be a "record label" in the tradiional sense. It can be some dude. My point is it's not a reason for artists to sign to a Warners. Whereas traditionally artists rely on labels for actual product (ie recording, mastering, production, distribution), then marketing, tour support, whatever. It comes a time when there aren't many steps in that process that are necessary for a label to perform. This slow leak of digital singles kinda underscores that for me. And, I might add, the labels (and I mean majors generally) don't exactly have a reputation for functioning in the best interests of their clients.

Do you guys like how I keep calling it "Warners"? That's what they say on Entourage.

Yeah, but if you're selling 100k of them, it's certainly a pain in the ass, a more difficult supply chain process than most artists can figure on their own, and worth paying someone (signing to a label) for. The digital realm sorta removes the supply chain.

um, that's exactly the point I was making.

- loans (in the form of recording advances, tour support, etc.)
- distribution (getting the physical product into the stores, and let's remember that the market is still 90% CDs)
- marketing muscle (recoupable i.e. it's a service that the band pays for)
- legal services (depends on deal)

If you are going to ask a bank for money you will need to show that you either have a lot of assets or an obvious ability to pay the loan off. Musicians almost never have either, but sure, a VC might. But in terms of a VC you would want to think of the VC being "your mamma" or "daddy's bankroll" or "your status as a trustafarian" because the only way a VC is going to bankroll you is if a) you give them ownership and b) can show them obvious huge returns. With this in mind, it's a lot easier to con the jackass paying the bar tab who refers to himself as an "A&R guy." ADVANTAGE: Label

Distro is basically free via the web these days, assuming you can con some geek fan to set all that up for you and maintain it. ADVANTAGE: draw, but beginning the advance towards the artist

You could hire out the marketing aspect via an independent P.R. firm. Hopefully you have at least $1,000 per month of cashflow to accomodate that. You can handle your own merch, assuming you are not too hungover every day and don't steal the cash to pay for lines. ADVANTAGE: Label

There are many other problems with this scheme of Warners: it's not their area of expertise, they have no experience doing this, their motivations are either unclear or flat-out suspicious. The biggest problem is that because they are a large corporation, they're not going to dump a bunch of money at it, and if it looks like it will fail, they will be risk averse and cut before the losses pile up. The major labels are designed to service mega sellers, and if the past 5-10 years have told us anything, it's that they are totally unequipped to nurture small acts like the ones that will benefit from the downloaded-EP format.

It's a nice idea that the Bunny will never be able to execute.

What I meant is that the big label system relies on a whole slew of artists beyond the face we see on the album cover. There are artists (craftsmen, skilled workers, whatever you want to call them) who do nothing but write arrangements, or program synth sounds, or make beats, or tune drums, etc. There are people who's entire life's work and art is devoted to knowing which mic to choose and where to place it. So while the technological gap has narrowed somewhat, there will always be a big gap between professional and amateur productions simply based on the number of skilled professionals who are dedicated to individual tasks. It's a lot like the hundreds of skilled jobs involved in making a Hollywood movie.

Of course, this has changed a lot as musical styles themselves have changed and adapted to new technology. I think the change in the music is a much bigger factor than the change in the technology if that makes any sense.

In a similar way, major labels have the resources to finance productions that go far beyond what is possible in a home studio.

Postage, plastic, paper, and aluminum cost more.

yes and no. the easiest trick these days is to take your live band to a proper studio and spend a day or so laying all the stuff that requires volume (drums, guitars)through a bunch of tube compressors, discrete channel strips, valve board, 2 inch tape - all the expensive gubbins in other words - then dump it over into logic/pro tools and take it home to tweak/arrange/overdub etc without the clock ticking and running up a massive bill.

this is a pretty serviceable method of tracking, achieved at a fraction of the cost of kicking your heels in a posh studio for the duration of production.

HUMANOID #1637 HOPES YOU WILL ENJOY HIS NEW DIGITAL SONG CLUSTER, ENTITLED BLUES FOR HUMANOID #1429 v. 1.6

So as to ensure that no money goes to anyone who had even a tangential hand in making the music happen?