Why the Recording Industry is going down the tubes

[draxyl]

First, here's the link to the interivew in question, with Universal Music's CEO Doug Morris:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-12/mf_morris?currentPage=all

And here's my favorite quote, and reply, from off TechdirtTo

Comments

[khoisan]

This guy is fighting to stay relevant. But at the same time he's trying to hold onto days that are long gone. If technology is undermining your business and you have no interest in learning about it, you're going down. You can throw your money and power around to delay it but it's inevitable.

For some reason we've come accustomed to the idea that music is the domain of very few people. As though only professionals can create it. Us ordinary people can only consume it, and the record companies are the ones who give us access to those few people. But the internet has moved everything closer to the people.

There was a book called the Long Tail which talks about the change the internet is making. Large stores like Walmart have limited shelf space, so they want to put out products that apply to the largest audience. But places like Amazon allow people to get access to products that would never be on those shelves because they appeal to those people at the ends of the distribution curve. Now you can sell many products to small groups of people instead of a few products to large groups of people.

At one time having a big company behind you was the only way for a poor artist to overcome the high initial cost of putting out an album to a large group. But since the cost of production and distribution has gone down, they are no longer needed. Producing and distributing vinyl records was expensive just because of the material and weight of it. CDs and downloads are no where near that, and still they want us to pay the same price.