Ah, the music industry

[mariness]

From multiple sources, a couple of recent articles explain again why most musicians make no money from record sales - and why most of that money ends up heading to the record label.

This is why some artists - the one that comes to mind is Jane Siberry - have given up on the concept of record sales altogether, while many others survive on touring

Comments

[silviamg]

It's deja vu.

[cardinalximinez]

I suspect it's less about how hard you type, and more about how much you type...

[mariness]

Or, about this BEING A CHEAP AND CRAPPY KEYBOARD!

I don't actually use that particular cursor key that often, either. :( Backspace, yes. Left cursor, not so much.

[cardinalximinez]

Now you're just talking like a crazy person.

[cardinalximinez]

PS and, yeah, I'm still boycotting the RIAA.

[benpayne]

>Off topic, while typing this up I lost a key from my three month old computer - maybe four month. Ok, yes, I realize I bought a cheap computer, but still!

That's the kind of impassioned blogging we come here for!!

Yeah the music industry is in an interesting place and it's not easy to see which direction will work out best for artists. But there's at least potential there for a better system to emerge I guess.

[mariness]

I do think that the ability of artists to do independent recordings and sell flash drives or downloads of performances without going through a record company is improving. But, that still leaves artists shouldering the huge burdens of self promotion, marketing, booking and so on - and the problem that if you are really trying to go independent, it can be a problem (well, at least here in the States - things may be different in Australia) to book some small and medium sized venues. For instance, locally, both Disney and Universal have some really good small/medium performance spaces (from a concert going point of view) at the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Cafe, but you have to go through the "proper channels" to get bookings at either space, which means agents and distributors and backing and the like, and I have no idea what the artist gets out of those performances even after that. Probably not much since I have to assume that most of the ticket prices to those two events go directly to Disney and Universal, not the artist.