What's the future of the music industry?

i just hope that if cd's go out vinyl remains. that's all i really care for. cd's can fucking burn for all i care. most unattractive display pieces in history.

not to sound like a raging grandaddy or someone with a newfound hipster complex. i just like to display my album art around the house.

yeah fuck a cd

amie st was on a downhill slide for a while sadly

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4d5c3e1e4bd7c86216030000/chart-of-the-day-music-industry-1973-2009-feb-2011.jpg

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-music-industry-sales-2011-2

It that adjusted for inflation? It's strange to think that in the gutting of the music industry, it may still be at mid-seventies size or larger.

^^^
The market is global now - the vast bulk of the 70s figure would be N. America and Europe.

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-charts-explain-the-real-death-of-the-music-industry-2011-2

more sensible numbers and shits

inflation and population-adjusted money shot:

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg

legalize spotify ffs usa

i'm more adamant about this than this stupid marijuana shit we're in riots about

We're in riots over that?

Spotify will never ever ever be legalized here.

Please do not take me literally.

It's like 99% legalized here in Denver, but we have the occasional protest outside cap. hill wanting it outside the medical realm.

"medical"

http://thequietus.com/articles/06318-how-the-music-industry-is-killing-music-and-blaming-the-fans

Yeah, that was an interesting article. Not sure but it seems that many of the main points are refutable and worst-case-scenarios, though.

richard butler reads tQ.

Illegal downloading is a total bore unless it is rare or out of print stuff. IMO. I like mp3 sites but let's face it they are full of re-recordings and poorly packaged material, dampening the enthusiasm of shopping online. These sites need to be more sensitive the cultural and social appeal of music consumption.

As massive as Amazon is, they have good stuff, but I hate going there and reading the same old crabby reviews. When you're selling music you ought to be more sensitive to fan culture. Also there is something weird about getting music at the same place you order dog food.

Some useful points in that article, esp. poking holes in the idea that touring is the cure for all musicians' woes. But a lot of caca too: "How tragic is it that the man behind ‘Anarchy In The UK' will now be forever tied in the collective imagination with Country Life Butter, even though he used the cash to help fund the reformation of PiL?" Seriously? And which collective is this? I've never heard of Country Life Butter until today. Is it even for sale in the USA? And why didn't they get Bryan Ferry to sell it?

Still this is a fine sentence: "Telling people that profit margins are at stake doesn't speak to the average music fan, but explaining how the quality of the music they enjoy is going to deteriorate, just as water would become muddy and undrinkable if no one invested in it, might encourage them to participate in the funding of its future." It'd help his argument, though, if he told us which music isn't muddy and undrinkable. If it isn't, and I quote, Lady Fucking Gaga, then who? Sigur Ros? Hmmmm...

In re: first paragraph -- Kevin, the Quietus is a UK-based publication and while the audience may be worldwide one can assume that a fair amount of its references will be UK-specific, like that is.

that article is really long. all i can remember from it is lady fucking gaga.

xpost. Right. I got that. But that weakens any sense of a collective imagination.

This article is beautifully written.

Something that isn't talked/written about, to the best of my knowledge, and I'm interested in reading about, is an investigation into 'community music'. An increase in the popularity of local scenes, what somebody derisively once called "friend-rock"-- which is absolutely my favourite kind of music.

Many of my favourite bands in the world are ones that my friends are in, play every week somewhere in this city, make records at home that sell 200-500 copies to their fans, and barely ever tour, if ever. This was not the case before 2003 or so.

I theorize that this is the product of two things: first, more realistic expectations on the part of the musicians, re: career. Second, the fact that the 'availability of all music to everyone' has informed people about What Music Exists Out There, and those people are creating better music as a result.

For example, in 2000, I had a handful of friends who had heard of the band Neu! and maybe two who actually owned something of theirs. In 2011, if your band has a motorik beat, even a casual listener can recognize that it is pastiche. To me, this isn't a signifier of any sort of upswing in Neu!'s popularity, but rather an indication that the availability of downloadable media has only served to keep artists more informed.

I'm not really in a position to gauge whether these observations are strictly site-specific or otherwise... but I have noticed that "Talk About Your Hometown Music Scene" threads are pretty popular on other message boards, and the enthusiasm seems genuine, rather than nepotistic.

Is this a dumb theory?

not dumb at all. it will all be in my new book entitled The New Yokelism:Free-Range & Organic Music Scenes In America & The People That Build Them

but for real i have been thinking about this a lot lately and the whole back to the land hand-made candle chapbook lathe-cut farm share revivalism thing and where i am and live is a long-running example of this where people do what they do for their friends and onlookers and their is creativity to spare but no desire to make it bigger than it is.

THERE is creativity, etc...

I think a strong home town scene just needs some focal point be it a fanzine or, these days, websites. My home town (oxford) has had a very lively local scene for the last 20+ years with most bands (until recently) performing just for the enjoyment rather than to make a living out of it.

Even before everyone was online there were odd little bubbles of bands influencing each other developing completely outside of what was happening elsewhere.

Great all I can think about now is "is it local" xp

RIAA President Cary Sherman Made $3.2 Million In 2009

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/052211riaa

http://www.csindy.com/IndyBlog/archives/2011/05/23/music-monday-riaa-ceo-earns-3-million-salary-for-suing-evil-downloaders
In case you're wondering why the RIAA has to go around suing grandmothers for downloading music, it may have something to do with the annual $3 million-plus the record industry trade group pays its CEO.

In addition to big chief Cary Sherman's multimillionaire lifestyle, the RIAA supported its staff of executives, lobbyists and minions in 2009 with a reported $16.2 million in "salaries, other compensation, and employee benefits."

Thank goodness the RIAA is tax-exempt!

And Sherman's pay was DOUBLE that of the next-highest-paid lobbyist.

Scott OTM.

I really don't see how this is the music industry's fault. If they're obviously making far less money than they used to, then of course they're going to do everything they can to cut costs. And if touring was as expensive as the article claims it is, why haven't we heard any complaints or interviews or twitter or facebook posts from the musicians about it? It can't be as bad as when Steve Albini wrote that "Some of Your Favorite Bands May Already Be Fucked" article.

uh plenty of musicians complain about how difficult it is to tour - the price of gas alone...

If the artists and record companies are happy to pay this kind of money for this guy, by all means let them. After all he & his crew are the ones actually collecting the money. The repo man always gets a cut.

Anyway, labels big and small have proven to be spectacularly bad at making money off digital music and unable to prevent piracy. They used to make somewhere around $1-2 per CD on average, but from Spotify they're receiving somewhere around $0.00005 for every song played - so even if all the pirates go legit this will never pay back a recording either. There is no money in selling records. The deals that they're making with Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are the future where labels license their catalogue completely to the IT wizards who've found the way to manage to pry money out of listeners wallets by bundling it with all kinds of mobile phone plans, electronics and cloud services. So they'll be out of the distribution business, drop all pretense of 'selling records', and turn into wholesale financing, publishing & marketing companies.

All this obv for professional musicians, for amateurs who essentially pay to play the current situation is fantastic. It's never been so cheap to record and distribute yr own stuff.

And if touring was as expensive as the article claims it is, why haven't we heard any complaints or interviews or twitter or facebook posts from the musicians about it?

well for one thing because when you get to make a living as a musician it's gauche, and also kinda embarrassing and humiliating, to complain about costs - I know that coming off as gauche isn't really a concern for a lot of people but I think that musicians who're making a living at it generally know that it's a shitty look to complain that (for example) if you take out a bus for a month-plus you're going to be working every night for two weeks before you see a nickel in profit - everybody not in the biz immediately goes "but you didn't have to go to a shitty day job," and comes up with lots of ad-hoc solutions that aren't really practical, it's an unwinnable argument and most people sort of instinctively figure that out & say you know what, fuck it, I get to make a living playing music so I will not complain about how much it costs

wait what? plenty of musicians complain about how expensive it is to tour! Or they complain about the conditions of touring that are largely related to the expense of touring (e.g. sleeping on floors, eating like crap, infrequency of bathing/showering, etc.).

that said I have some major issues with other bits of that article:

Of course touring has always been a next to obligatory part of the job for most musicians. Some are even inspired by the experience, while many improve their craft by playing in front of audiences. But the daily rigmarole of playing the same songs over and over again can also render the process joyless for both musician and fan, and increased touring again means reduced time spent working on new material, conjuring up bewitching sounds, expressing the inarticulate speech of the heart. The romantic vision of the musician in their bus writing new songs is rose-tinted, to say the least. Most are simply too worn out from the tedium to do anything other than talk shit, watch films, listen to music and sleep. Insisting that artists earn their keep by performing the role of wandering minstrel keeps them from exercising the talent that brought them attention in the first place, rendering music valuable only when it's performed live.

if you're going to be an artist, it is your responsibility to yourself & to your craft & to the people who respond to what you do to rise above the "daily rigamarole" etc. You got really tired & cranky and spent your downtime talking shit, watching films, etc? Well, shame on you, then. That was a choice you made. Everybody's job gets tiring - yours wasn't supposed to? If you're going to trade on your inspiration, it's your responsibility to guard it zealously, and that means nurture it at all times.

"friend rock"....yikes anarcho-utopia is just around the corner!

It's also career suicide for a musician to say on Twitter "if you motherfuckers just bought my cd instead of lining it up in Spotify, I wouldn't have to sleep in a van for three months".

i dunno if it's career suicide, it depends on the musician, really.

I can only imagine that most bands lose money touring, short strong t-shirt sales. From gas to lodging to food to other incidentals, it just doesn't add up unless you're earning big guarantees. Or touring solo, I imagine. Maybe Aero or Owen can illuminate/refute.

That Quietus article is just an elaborate way of saying that everything was better in our time and they're scared of the future.

this could also be an argument in favor of thinning the herd.

Well, it's also never been easier/cheaper to record and release a record for free, with no expectation of recompense, so I don't know if the herd will ever be thinned. One ramification of that is that the glut may devalue music, in the sense that so much free music may condition people to expect free music.

may condition? it already has!

xxp I'm actually planning to run for POTUS in 2016 as the "there is just too damn much music" party candidate

i feel like for the most part, music has entered the realm of folk art. It's something everyone can do, and more people are doing it than would make for a healthy economy with music as a commodity.

wrt thinning the herd

i don't think so. the desire to live like that doesn't correlate to the most talent

m@tt, agreed, as in "the herd should be thinned" because that's what the situation is right now

i feel like for the most part, music has entered the realm of folk art. It's something everyone can do, and more people are doing it than would make for a healthy economy with music as a commodity.

^^^ding ding. I've been saying this for years. oddly we're going to reverting back to the system that was in place PRIOR to recorded music - massive amounts of people making it at their own cost for their own amusement, with an upper strata of paid musicians financed by rich patrons (ie corporations)

going to

If every cd was $5 I would start buying music, I guess. Sorry musicians but I'm a poor skeezbag too

Interesting article - thanks for sharing

UMG "calls time out" on TikTok: https://www.universalmusic.com/an-open-letter-to-the-artist-and-songwriter-community-why-we-must-call-time-out-on-tiktok/