Where is The Music Business Going?

[audiowkstation]

Still listening.

The old mold is to start off with an EP and give the damn thing away. Get heard. Better back that up with a mini tour..first shot out of the box in a new area, not home. MAke aggreement with a sound company, some large clubs and go forward. Get the feet wet. Before you know it with the right folks, it is possible to make some cash, get a debut on a major network and get someone to underwrite the initial distribution of say 80K pieces.

Pipe dream?

Well..

Keep talking, I am still in listening mode. You got to have damn sharp management to pull off the above and an established track record of slaving.

[HiString]

Pan,

That too is correct, but it is a negative attitude. If a band wants to make it to the top, they have to be prepared to take risks on the way.......they HAVE to have a positive attitude at all times. That is on top of having ability, talent, drive, thick skin, etc,. etc.


Bill,

The "model"/pipe dream you have quoted is still being touted as the way it should be done, BUT there are fewer and fewer venues prepared to take in relatively unknown "originals" bands, and fewer and fewer kids patronising gigs of this nature.

You and I recently communicated over an mp3 I posted. Your comments in general were quite positive. That band has approx 40 songs of similar (some better) quality, but guess what? That band finds it virtually impossible to get gigs in this city......because they sound too commercial.

Go Figure.

[Tommy P.]

What if bands/record companies sold additional retail items in stores that just happened to have music cd's attached?
Beautiful framing quality album art anyone?
Discount coupons for shows?
Autographed shirts, jewelry ect.
Cd's featuring expertly mastered Mp3's and videos.
In other words, sell them something they can't download from the internet.
Christina Aguilera nipple rings anyone? :c:

Edit: Personally, I'd love to see the whole stinkin establishment come crumbling down.

[bigtree]

cool :c:

[HiString]

QUOTE:....."Cd's featuring expertly mastered Mp3's"

Maybe I'm missing something here but if you have a CD, why wouldn't you have the original, (hopefully) well mastered tracks rather than a version of the tracks which has undergone some form of distortion due to file compression, etc.


BILL...........is it even possible to "expertly master" an mp3?

[J6P]

This is all IMHO, but the thread started with a reference to the difference between downloading and taping. The difference to me is that I'm not allowing millions of people into my record collection at any time of the day or night to copy whatever they want. My recordings, or Cisco Houston's, or The Beatles, or anyone's.

Somewhere between downloading and taping lies a large gap in which the music becomes disposable, and free of value.

Self distribution has also been touched on here. This is nice in that once the initial expense in re-couped, seemingly all else is profit. That being said, distribution is not what it would be with a label. But, the artist neither deals with the pros nor cons of label affiliation.

Regarding merch tie ins. If that was sarcasm...
That is why people are turning away. Rediscovering bluegrass, folk, etc. It's supposed to be about music. Not Lunchboxes, and off topic a little, not volume. Why is everything so over compressed?

I know that people are in this gig for money. That's fine and good. But the snowballing that's taken place is a little crazy. The music's in the middle, but most of what's showing is the stuff picked up along the way.

Sonny Boy Williamson sold King Biscuit flour, now we're talking nipple rings and framable cover art?
I thought that went out with Molly Hatchet.

I don't believe in Downloading, But making the music peripheral can't be the answer. :(

[Tommy P.]

HiString, I of course, did mean to have the Mp3's and videos as an addition. Remember this is all just brainstorming here(and so everyone knows, my brain has seen way too many storms). :D

[Willi E.]

I think the hole internet download topic should be viewed from a more pragmatic point of view.

I can't value the mentioned statistics about the download amount, but if you compare the actual situation that the internet is still a very elitist thing in regard to the percentage of the worldwide users it is not that Dangerous to the music industry.
And did you know that there are countrys where the labels make more money by selling tapes than cd's.

As the above mentioned comparison to mp3 and tape, I think there is a difference in the proposal.

From my experience I must say it was a lot harder back in the times of tape to get what I wanted. Either I had to know somebody to get it or record from radio with a lack of quality and the jabber of that radioguy.

Nowadays you go "online" and you have a mind-blowing access to whatever you like in an acceptable quality.

But there are two main factors why it's still not that threat to the big labels, as they're trying to convince us how poor they are.

It's time and money. Not everyone is in the luck to have a very quick internet access and flatrate.
Actually there are still many users outthere with a modem and a clock ticking next to them.

So assembling an whole CD from the internet is still just a hobby-thing for the internet freaks and kiddies. It is not cost effective. I have an flatrate and dsl of my own, and guess what if I like an artist or album i'll go out and buy it, just because it's quicker and cheaper and you get the better quality. Time is money.

But the problem which should be considered by the big labels are that in order of the technical progress it is and in future will be far more an easy way of sneak peeking new albums.
And a lot of mainstream albums aren't albums indeed they are two singles attached with a bit more crap (a la britney).

And the fans are recognizing it. Because of that the sales are decreasing. Why to buy the whole album when I can get the "cool single" from internet or radio.

Despite from all that I think that there won't be big changes in the near future within the industry and I personally don't believe the hype about the internet-mp3-marketing, it's around now for a couple of years and I'm still waiting for that "revolution". In know that a band can actually sell much more tapes/cd's at a live gig than over the internet.
There are too much label-interests involved in this game (talking 'bout big money) to let somebody oust them.

So in the end it all stays the same, except of being the slaves of the stock market.
That's why nowadays the only thing the executives interested in, is the financial profit in order of the stock quotation.
Because it's minimum growth every of let's say about 10%. If you had followed that Logic from your first album you've bought until now, how many albums are you buying every year, 10, 100, 1000 ???

May opinion is that there are good times and there are bad times, and that you can't increase record sales every year by ten percent.
How tall would you be if you followed that "rule" every year.
We're having the same problem here in germany with the mobile phone sales. After years of big sellings now they're suffering from an overstocked market. I'm sorry but I don't need 4 mobile phones, I'm comfortable with one.

The same problem applies to the music biz. They're so into the selling statistics that they're overstocking the market with alot of day flies. But in the end the market will regulate himself as always. It's just a matter of supply and demand. If nobody's buyin' it, they won't sell it. I work for a very large european company as an sales represantive, so I know what I'm talking about.

At least it's all about our own decision wether there is some music outthere which we like or not.
For our sake nowadays we have the technical possibilities to do our own thing without depending on the big label if we don't want to.

Just my opinion, i'm curious what you guys think about this.

greetz

Willi ;)

[audiowkstation]

To HiString.

You asked..

BILL...........is it even possible to "expertly master" an mp3?


That really depends. If the bitrate is minimal 192K and it was ripped correctly, you can take the MP3 to .wav and work it like you would a mastering project and get the quality up considerably. At 224 to 320KBS it gets even better.

Yes, I have mastered many things from MP3's and all the FM radio (practically) are MP3's now and really, look in Internet audio, I have done it for folks and they have reported stellar results.

Yes, they can be expertly mastered, no doubt...but they have to be free of phasing problems to begin with.

[cjenrick]

It used to be taping a friends album or recording stuff off the radio. Now, kids have access to whatever they want, whenever they want it.
Any band can burn a CD nowdays, thats another problem.
I sense a decline in people going to live performances also. Of course who wants to go to a rap show. In the 70's, there would be a band at every truck stop, on their way to somewhere. You had to work for the exposure. Then MTV came along.
So the internet, digital format and MTV have really messed it up.