Interesting Blog Post on Music Industry

[tunghaichuan]

http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

He is not the first, nor likely will be the last, who has articulated these ideas.

tung

[pes_laul]

that was pretty interesting

[Spudman]

This is what it boils down to.

For the major labels, it's over. It's F***ing over (http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/10/24/the-revolution/). You're going to burn to the f***ing ground, and we're all going to dance around the fire. And it's your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn't create in exchange for the services you provide. It's rigged so that you win every time - even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that's back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.


What has always dismayed me is all the stories of bands having great albums recorded but the record company didn't want to release it. That was really sad to know that those companies could have that kind of control over your creations. Very unfair and now they are paying for their crime.

[sunvalleylaw]

Interesting stuff for sure. That paragraph Spud quotes makes me think of a vid Spud linked me to where Dick Dale advised any new artists to stay independent and control their own creations by selling only independently. I intend on supporting those folks whenever I find them. I think it would be great if artists figured out a way to market their own work over the internet, and there was a place like that Oink place was to organize it so you could find it easily and efficiently, then buy it directly. How the music sold online directly could be tabulated at that site if folks were looking for the new up and comers. What am I missing? Why couldn't that work?

[R_of_G]

Thanks for the link to a very interesting article. As the end approaches for the large-corporation-dominator model of the recording industry, I can do nothing but laugh. It's not as if the technology advanced overnight and the record labels awoke to a brave new world of distribution which had not previously occurred to them. The changes have been coming for a long time and the record companies decided to invest much of their capital into preventing people from using these technologies to share and listen to music. They deserve to lose every penny they will lose. For over a decade I watched a band like Phish build an enormous following without a major dependence on studio releases. From day one they allowed taping of their live shows, and as the technology increased, so did the means of distributing these legally traded shows. The band was then able to do tour after tour and sell out show after show regardless of whether or not they were promoting an album, and without ever getting any significant radio play. Now I watch as Radiohead, a band which easily sells enough records for anything they put out to go gold, embraces a new model for distribution of their latest album. It makes me glad that a lot of the artists that I crave new music from release their work on true independent labels [a lot of them on John Zorn's Tzadik label].

[Spudman]

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is releasing a new album with a friend. They are trying a new model for distribution too. $5 to download the whole thing and no middleman to take a cut. This should work well for the artist.

Here is what he had to say in a recent interview.

"I just wanted to get the record out. I figure there are other revenue streams, and while I like being compensated for my work, I think it's more important to get it out to the public. It was not my intent to try to start some campaign to destroy record labels -- they're doing a good enough job of it themselves. We're not tainting the experience with ads or corporate tie-ins, and we're letting the songs speak for themselves."

[tunghaichuan]

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is releasing a new album with a friend. They are trying a new model for distribution too. $5 to download the whole thing and no middleman to take a cut. This should work well for the artist.

David Lindley has been doing this for at least a decade. He primarily sells his albums at his shows and through his website. His CDs sell for $15 at the shows or $20 shipped from the web site and he keeps most of the profit.

tung