by Mikey Da Photographer

How To Kill The Music Industry

During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn’t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?

According to Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music, the decline in music revenues in the past 8 years can be fully attributed to illegal file sharing. If this were actually true, many of us might even respect his decision to go after pirates as fiercely as the music industry is doing right now. However, the past 8 years have seen a lot more changes in the landscape of home entertainment than Per Sundin would like to admit, and some of those changes have had a massive impact on music profitability – much more so than any amount of piracy.

Let us refresh our memories and take a look at what actually happened during and just before the past 8 years:

1. First, the explosive rise of computer and console gaming. This competitive ‘third element’ has appeared in the entertainment landscape, beaten both music and movies to the curb and taken a huge cut out of the music industry’s revenues. Consumers don’t have infinitely-deep pockets, and billions of ‘recreation dollars’ that used to go almost exclusively to music, are now going into gaming.

2. International trade agreements have allowed consumers to buy their music across borders, rather than accepting local prices on music based on the ‘relative wealth’ of nations, rather than the actual value of the product.

3. New forms of distributable media, most notably MP3s but also CDs, have become mainstream. These new media don’t degrade over time and rarely break at all, making music rebuys a thing of the past, and allowing the second-hand market for music to thrive and expand – both of which take a cut out of the music industry’s former revenues.

4. Radical technological innovation has taken place in the field of music creation, processing, mixing, and mastering. Recording hardware, CD burners, music software, and media encoders have evolved to the point where most artists can actually afford decent-quality equipment to do their own recording and producing. Furthermore, this has fostered literally thousands of smaller, specialized studios that are challenging the ‘Big 4? with lower prices, better terms for artists, genre-specific expertise, etc. Successful artists can now leave the big labels and start their own recording outfits on relatively modest budgets. Naturally, super stars like The Beatles or Frank Sinatra have always had this option, but the recent technological advances have lowered the bar drastically. This development is depriving the ‘Big 4? of many of their former cash cows, who now use the major labels for their advertising and distribution infrastructure alone.

5. The World Wide Web has become an omnipresent force in the world, allowing cheap, end-to-end distribution of digital music, increasingly cutting out the corporate music distributors, who deal in trucks and CD covers, rather than bytes and bandwidth. With iTunes leading the way (very successfully ‘competing with free’, I might add), billions of songs are now purchased digitally rather than physically, no longer necessitating the big labels’ distribution networks.

6. The total number of radio stations, music television networks and other ’streaming’ sources of music has grown exponentially, giving music fans a huge selection of free (and legal) music options. Satellite radio, DAB, and internet radio broadcasts have made it trivial for consumers to simply tune into a channel broadcasting the exact sub-genre of music that they feel like listening to (they can even have a stream created for them dynamically, e.g. on Pandora), making the *purchase* of music entirely optional for the casual listener.

7. A massive selection of entertainment alternatives (home computing, console gaming, mobile devices, etc.) have appeared in the home, effectively marginalizing music as an activity. 15-20 years ago, youths would regularly visit each other just to listen to music together; today, that is virtually unthinkable without some form of activity involved, such as playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, or dancing at a concert.

8. And finally, the music industry itself has embraced the opportunities of digital media, at last letting consumers buy *single* tracks at a time rather than forcing entire albums full of ‘fillers’ on them. Looking at the RIAA’s own sales figures for the past 10 years, there is a *direct* correlation between the break-off in album sales and the introduction and increase in single track digital sales. Looking at the actual numbers, it is abundantly clear that the vast majority of consumers never wanted to buy full albums in the first place, but were merely forced to by the lack of affordable single-track media. Now that the digital revolution has arrived, countless millions of 16-track album sales are being turned into 1- or 2-track sales, *decimating* the former revenues on music. THIS is the real reason why the music industry is hurting.

In other words: The “it’s common sense” argument that the music industry is peddling in their attempt to tie the declining revenues to piracy, simply doesn’t hold. It is not as clear-cut as the industry believes; the true reason for the decline is something they are still unwilling to face, but will have to face sooner or later:

The fact is that the music industry’s revenues have been artificially inflated for decades because of limited consumer options. The last 15 years of innovation have lifted those limitations, effectively leaving the music industry with an obsolete, defective business model of monopolized production technology, forced album bundling, and almost nonexistent competition in the realm of home entertainment. What is happening now – the decline of music profits and the piracy witch hunt by the music industry – is merely the panicked struggle of a dying business model, a complacent industry’s refusal to accept its diminishing role in a digital world. The pirates are not the reason, and the decline is the not the disease. It is the cure.

This is a guest post by Jens Roland. Jens is a computer scientist by training, but a technology forecaster by trade. He has worked at international think tanks as a consultant and researcher in emerging technologies and has written more than 300 articles and a book on the subject.

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DATA: Net value of shipped music, in billion dollars

1991 7.83
1992 9.02
1993 10.0
1994 12.1
1995 12.3
1996 12.5
1997 12.2
1998 13.7
1999 14.6
2000 14.3
2001 13.7
2002 12.6
2003 11.9
2004 12.3
2005 12.3
2006 11.8
2007 10.4

(source: www.ayubs.weebly.com annual reports)

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INDUSTRY · Kill · Music

by [Filhi][bahthi] photography ( with great hopes )

The Cycle of Pop Music

Rock music has always had its critics and those that wish that rock and pop music would just go away. But over the years rock has proven to be pretty resilient and has withstood the test of time. Pop music is a bit of a different animal than rock music although the two genres do tend to cross over a great deal. Rock music is usually classified as music driven by electric guitar and all the various sub-genres of rock are usually identified with electric guitar driven music. Rock usually has a certain angst or message to it and many in the rock music industry take their music and their message very seriously. Pop music is usually a little more encompassing than rock music. Pop music is used to identify music that seems to be universally popular with a large audience and can cross over from genre to genre. Pop is usually accepted as being short for popular so what we are really dealing with here is what the music industry considers to be popular music which translates into music that has greater potential to sell a lot of records. Pop music is music that is designed to be catchy to the ear and grab a large audience right away. Many newer country artists are starting to write songs that are country but are also being classified as pop because of their universally catchy hooks. Sometimes pop can create other genres of music due to the growing popularity of the music within the pop genre. Disco was pop music until it evolved into its own music genre and became very popular in the 1970′s. Hip Hop is a mixing of rap and pop music that has become an extremely popular sub-genre of pop and stands today as one of the most popular genres of music in the industry. But rock music always seems to be there whether it is in the background as it was in the 1980′s or in the foreground as it was in the 1960′s and seems to be again today. Rock music seems to work in cycles and those cycles are definitely influenced by the popularity of pop music at the time. It seems that there is a large audience within the music industry that likes to jump from one genre to the next and that audience is the one that creates the pop music crazes that rule from year to year and that audience also dictates when rock music is at its peak and when rock music seems to be in decline. In the days when Britney Spears and Christine Aguilera were at the peak of their popularity pop music was at its peak which cause people to lose interest in rock music. Artists such as Pearl Jam and Metallica seemed to lose their luster and their record sales shifted to those acts offering a more pop music sound. Today acts like The White Stripes and The Killers are starting to bring rock music back to the forefront and it won’t be long before rock music is giving hip hop and other forms of pop music a run for their money. For more information on music, visit http://concertsmicroblog.com and http://djmicroblog.com

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Cycle · Music

by New York Public Library

Need to Record a Music Demo? – Learn Ten Pitfalls You Must Avoid When Recording Your Music Demo!

Recording a music demo is the most vital step in pursuing a record deal. If you want a record deal, you need to really impress the record label and give them something professional, polished, unique and exciting. Finding the right record producer can be a painstaking process, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to have a shot at a successful music career. The following are ten pitfalls you must avoid when recording your music demo.

1. Be careful of music producers with no real music industry experience or credits.

Anyone can call themselves a music producer. Calling yourself a music producer requires no experience, no degree, no credits and no skill. Do you want to trust your career with this person? Look for a music producer that has actually worked on records with signed artists and record labels. Valuable and necessary music production skills are acquired only through years of hard work on professional recording sessions.

2. Beware of producers who want to record your music demo in their “home studio”.

Although home recording equipment has gotten better through the years, there is still a vast difference between a home studio and a professional recording studio. Due to space constraints and budget concerns, a home studio will often make many compromises in sound quality and flexibility that will undoubtedly affect the final product. It’s difficult to get a clean sound from someone’s basement. A real full service recording studio has certain professional standards that they must adhere to and cannot make such compromises if they expect to stay in business.

3. Watch out for producers who want you to sing in their closet or bathroom.

When you’re paying hard earned money for your music demo you shouldn’t be shoved into some guys cramped, unventilated closet. How safe would you feel? You need a studio with space to move around and you need to be comfortable when you sing if you really expect to perform your best. In addition, the poor acoustics of a closet will give you a very undesirable vocal sound.

4. Be skeptical of music producers who claim to specialize in 7 or 8 styles of music.

Specialize means to ‘devote oneself to a specific area of study.’ An experienced music producer may do a few related styles well, but beware when they claim to ‘specialize’ in Rap, Country, R&B, Folk, Rock, Club music, Blues, Polka, etc. This is like casting a net out to see who bites. Chances are they have no real specialty and will miss the subtle elements of each style. The result is a music demo that sounds stale, stereotypical and boring at best. If you want a producer that will make fantastic music for your specific style, find one who actually specializes in that certain sound.

5. Use a professional engineer to record and mix your music demo, not an amateur.

Engineering is a skill and a talent that takes many years of hard work, study and long grueling hours to acquire. Professional engineers have worked with hundreds of artists and music producers and have learned individual techniques from each of them. They are paid hundreds and thousands of dollars for their technical and creative skill. Engineers are the ones responsible for the sonic quality of a recording. You can have the best producer in the best studio in the world, but with a bad engineer the music will end up sounding like garbage.

6. Be careful with producers who want to charge you by the hour.

While occasionally an hourly rate can be appropriate, it is NEVER done in the real music industry (where we make records, not demos). The music producer is paid a flat fee by the record label to give them a fully produced song for their artist. When a producer charges by the hour, you become the one producing your own track and the producer is reduced to the role of a keyboard player. They count on you making common mistakes and running up the clock because of your lack of experience producing.

7. Watch out for producers who claim they will shop your demo.

Find out exactly what this means. Will they send it to their cousin in Georgia who has a wedding band? Did they meet a guy in the music store who has a cousin at some label in France? If they have any genuine music industry contacts that are really worthwhile, they could not possibly have them very long if they promise to shop every artist they produce before even hearing them. This will ruin their credibility. Do not fall for this one.

8. Be cautious of producers who emphasize equipment over credentials.

All too often people think that by just acquiring some gear they’ll get a great production. Don’t believe it. Buying a paintbrush doesn’t make you an artist. Buying a violin doesn’t make you a musician. Why do people think that buying a mixing board makes them an engineer or a music producer? It doesn’t. That only comes with hard work and experience. As an artist your only concern should be how your music sounds, not whether producers are using class A mic pre-amps, a tube compressor or Apogee A/D converters.

9. Listen to the music.

Listen to examples of their work and see what moves you and which music producer you connect with. Does the music producer listen to you and share your vision? Do you feel comfortable with them? Do you enjoy being in their studio? Do you trust them? If you do, that’s the right music producer for you.

10. You get what you pay for.

Music Demos are NOT like McDonalds hamburgers. They are not massed produced and they are certainly not all alike. While cost is a concern when doing a music demo, you must realize that a bad demo is worse than no demo at all. A bad demo will close doors for you that you may never be able to open again. Like anything in life, garbage is cheap and you pay extra for superior quality. For an experienced music professional, you may end up paying more than that with a bargain basement dirt cheap producer. But if you’re really serious about pursuing a record deal you must present yourself in a professional light if you have any hopes of being signed.

Avoid · Demo · learn · Music · Must · need · Pitfalls · record · recording