The Recoding Industry is Dead. Long Live Music!

[tarmle]

There is very little short of murder that we would not blithely accept the recording industry as being capable of, but this sort of stupidity really just beggars belief. ASCAP and the BMI want to collect royalties on the 30 second track previews in the iTunes store. It seems as though they are determined to cripple what little business they have

Comments

[shockwave77598]

There will be a big change, oh yes. And I cannot wait to see it

[tarmle]

I think you hit the mark on the inversion of the relationship between labels and artists. I firmly believe that the labels' only chance for long-term survival is to transform themselves into marketing service providers for artists. Exploitation will still be on the cards and artists will still find themselves in punishing contracts, but in a marketplace where the artists are the customers such practices are unlikely to survive the selection process for long.

But the idea that physical media sales and distribution will remain as a real draw for these artist-customers might be a little optimistic. I don't doubt for a moment that there will still be CD manufactures twenty years from now but at best they are going to occupy the same position that vinyl manufacturers do now, and probably not even that. It's possible CDs will only continue to exist for their values as a novelty item. Personally I haven't touched a CD since I bought one last Christmas (The London the Bulgarian Quire, highly recommended!). Let's face it, regardless of how

[shockwave77598]

You conclude that everyone out there has a computer. They don't, and those that do don't all have net access. Those that do, not all have bandwidth necessary for music downloads.

There are many folks around me who don't grok computers. They still buy CDs. My parents have and understand computers, have bandwidth, and they still buy CDs too. The young who grew up with Napster and the techies like us see the CD as dead, but everyone else from gramma Liverspot to our "computers are tools of the Debil" folk, they still buy CDs. And until someone sells granny a Radio Reciever that also plugs into the TV and lets her download any music she wants over a free Wireless carrier (ala Kindle), hang onto those nails for the CD's coffin. The patient isn't quite dead yet. Until someone makes a music player for the non-audiophile that lets them buy music over airwaves, physical media won't go away. Gotta have that wireless iPod before physical stuff is finally dead instead of hacking up red blobs.

[tarmle]

For the moment this is true. But I recall similar arguments were made over CD vs. vinyl back in the eighties, and even as late as the ninties: not everyone has a CD player, not everyone can afford to upgrade their sound systems, the older generation just can't understand this new technology. Yet, look where we are now. Doubtless there are still people out there for whom technology reached the limit of their ability to adapt with the 8-track, but they are hardly a market-moving demographic