http://web.me.com/edm613/edm613/Tech_%26_Media_History/Entries/2009/6/18_Important_Media_History__the_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Music_Industry_(NPR__Fresh_Air).html#
This is my first reaction:
Steve Knopper’s book, Appetite for Self-Destruction is now on my must read list after listening to the interview on NPR. There is quite a bit of information on the price increase the record labels put on CDs in order to get more money. Some of this information fell through the cracks with me as a smaller, non-label musician in the early to mid 90s. I may also have to blog about the various topics discussed in other posts as there is quite a bit of information in this discussion.
I do find it interesting that the title and the focus seem to be aimed toward the Music Industry as a whole, when in reality this is the destruction of the major record labels. Within the history of the recording industry there have been bad negotiations and decisions that have led to mergers and closings of record stores.
The end of the interview covers the positive side of this new technology. Ultimately, it is about the music and musicians who create. There are now more opportunities for non-major label musicians to be heard. The technology allows for minimal costs of distribution and immediate world-wide releases. This used to be a large undertaking with vinyl, cassettes, and cds. The multi-million dollar records may have dwindled, but the wealth is now spread around where a struggling musician can still get music out there and for sale and manage to make ends meet. This can be done through bypassing the major’s cut and pay minimal costs of distribution.
I would describe this shift as the small mom and pop businesses taking back the market in recording. I do worry about the hype of focusing the industry in just recordings. The industry covers quite a bit more such as scoring for film, TV, and games. There is also this world of live performance where ticket sales are the money maker for the musicians. Within the touring there is work for a number of skilled people outside the direct lines of the music such as promoters, venues, merchandise, etc. The large live shows also bring people into the towns of venues which continues to drive local economies. This change and direction of the recording industry I see as a positive one. Stay tuned for more.
I was just reading two fascinating articles/books on this very topic.
ReplyDeleteThe first was an article on the Gizmodo blog (http://gizmodo.com/5481545/record-labels-change-or-die) a few days ago that more specifically addressed the need for record labels to, as the article put it, "change or die."
There was a time in which the labels held all the power because they had the means of production: the recording equipment, the ability to produce records, and the means of distributing those records to stores. The advent of the internet and computer recording solutions is, in a sense, to music as the printing press was to the printed word: it put the means of production in the hands of the many rather than the privileged few. If you wanted to record and sell your music now you could record and master your CD on your Mac, upload the tracks to CD Baby, and through there end up with your tracks on the iTunes store extremely easily with absolutely no intervention at any point with a traditional label. Sure, you'd also have to promote the CD on your own, but that's increasingly easier for bands to do thanks to the internet.
The second thing I read that may be of interest to you is the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. In this book Anderson examines how easier access to niche products has made it so that there are fewer "hits" and much more moderate successes. From the data Anderson examined it seems that the main reason there used to be massive hits within the music industry was due to a lack of other options easily available. Now that services like Amazon and iTunes can offer a much broader selection of music to purchase, people appear to be gravitating towards more specific music genres rather than settling for what they could easily pick up at a brick and mortar music store.
Record labels built their business practices around the idea that there would always be mega hit recordings and to succeed it was just a matter of discovering those artists before the other labels did. Now the reality of the music industry has shifted with consumers more interested in access to a broader selection of artists and the artists themselves less in need of the services offered by labels.
As Gizmodo noted, the labels are either going to have to adapt to this new model or they're just going to go out of business.