Every couple of weeks we see articles about the end of the record industry and it is coming because of zero for thought. Instead of adapting they spent time suing their biggest supports, the fans. And why? Because, like most businesses they did not care for them, they only worried about the almighty dollar and had no long term vision. In the end all they did was create animosity towards them and their artists.
You see.... The record industries success is predicated on selling product, physical product. Take a band like the Beatles... First you bought the LP in the 60s thinking it was awesome, then in the 70s you bought the same album on 8-track so you could listen in the car, Then on cassette so you didn't have big clunky tapes and fade outs in songs, then on CD so it would sound better and your player wouldn't eat the tape anymore, so now you have bought the same album 4 times. Then when a band who is not putting out new material starts to have stale sales what do you get? REMASTERS!!! GREATEST HITS!!! Anything to squeeze one last dime. But now...Now there is no physical media to sell. the cost of one CD is less then a dollar yet at one time they charged $15 for the newest releases, there is no profit margin for MP3s since there is no physical media.
The best thing in all of this? Bands can control their music. I hear bands still talk of record contracts....Why? I know it sounds good, but why would you want one? Bands now have opportunities they never had in the past as do fans. Think how awesome this would be as a band and as a fan.. You put out several songs on a website for a small fee per song, no executive saying "I don't hear a single" or any other misguided help to make a quick buck and you know what the fans want to hear by the number of downloads and listens. How awesome would it be to see a band in concert that knows what their fans want to hear?
My advice to fans right now is to cruise the websites of you favorite bands because with Best Buy and Wal-Mart eliminating shelf space there will be no CD sales soon. Subscribe to feeds so you can know when your favs put out new material, bands like radiohead, The Smashing Pumkins and Nine Inch Nails already do this and have had major success. Soon a CD will be like an 8-track, Piles and piles in garage sales...Heck..Your garage sale may have more media shelf space then a current Best Buy soon.
-G
Excellent thoughts. So many points we'll have to expand on later too; the record execs, what bands should be doing now, the "big box" stores, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn short though, I can say that I recently explained the whole "there's only so many times you can be expected to buy the same product" theory to a guy at work. I used Sgt Pepper as an example and counting a release day LP purchase up to the "USB Apple Catalog" release recently, I came up with upwards of 20 releases of the SAME album off the top of my head. And I'm not even the "Beatles expert" here!
-R
I could have gone on about releases, my point was that most people probably bought it 2-3 times if not all 4 and now that is gone. If any acts can survive this it is older bands though since a lot of older fans don't have knowledge of how to download music so they still buy.
ReplyDeleteThis gives me an idea to write about the modern day recording studio..
ReplyDelete~Kris