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the downfall of the newspaper, the radio, the cd, retail stores, next television and then you!
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Seems like there is more music than ever in every genre.
I know less CDs are being sold. But music seems very much alive and lotos of people seem to be making a good living.
I know record company profits are down. I don't exactly think that is the same as the end of music. If musicians couldn't make it playing music, there would be less music. But there is not less music.
Compared to the 70's and 80's, live music and the number of record labels and bands on tour being promoted is very much reduced. Same for music education in schools and so are sales of musical instruments.
EDM which is mostly pre-recorded music is huge though, the top 5 EDM acts grossed more than all of live / touring sound / all genres combined last year.
Please share!
I suppose Tangerine Dream ain't one of the top 5.
;-)
Thanks!
You made some sweeping statements. I live in southern California and it does not seem to me that "live music" is very much reduced compared to the 1970s.Anyway, I can't check everything, but I thought I would check whether "sales of musical instruments" are "very much reduced."
So I checked the NAMM global report.
And there is a lot of nuanced data. Sales of some instruments are up, sales of others are down. The overall summary begins "The retail value of music products shipped in 2013
advanced 2.1% to $6.81 billion, basically keeping pace
with the tepid growth of the economy. Although 2013
represents the fourth straight year of sales gains, shipments
are still below the pre-financial crisis peak."Of course, DJ equipment is counted as part of musical products. Bottom line, sales seem to be pretty good.
Edits: 05/27/15
Talking about GOOD new music from new or old artists, not rehashed/repackaged old classical/jazz/whatever, or even worse auto-tuned, computer-generated collection of sampling/beats/non-acoustic stuff...
There is a lot of good new music.... But the only place you'll find it is YouTube...........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU9tqY6mdrQ&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPYmrapNgxo&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdRUQWVGENo&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIi0xm_tlCU&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtZIUgY0IM&hd=1
In some ways it's not so different than when I was young and discovering new music on FM radio.
Some (if not several) of the streaming sites, such as Spotify, the Last thing, and probably more, allow you to rate songs, Andrew then you can request similar artists, and choose from them, and spiral outward. There's also communities of folk who may well be into the same kinds of music as yourself, and they'll have suggestions as well.
I'm a new music fiend, and this is the very best time to find it, that I've seen.
A lot of the trick is picking your search terms carefully, and varying said terms.
Why not go to your local record shop and....oh year I forgot. Gone gone.
.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
"The music industry was incredibly slow to respond to the digital transition...
The music industry, rather than focusing on a legal digital download service, initially focused all its effort on shutting down Napster by way of a copyright infringement lawsuit.
In addition to the failure to launch a legal alternative to the pirate sites, the music industry was, understandably, paralysed by its fear of album unbundling.
Physical sales were in free fall and its own efforts to launch a digital download service were failing."
I'm an old boomer, but physical media has no more attraction to me than the millenials. I'd much rather be able to instantly download an album, albeit not crippled in a lossy format. People talk about the "resale value" of physical media. I guess I'm not a music flipper.
Actually, the article states that free downloads were the problem. Apple has always charged for music.
But people never tire of blaming Apple for the decline of (fill in the blank here)
Man, isn't that the truth! From day one, much of corporate America had it in for those hippies (Jobs and Woz) and their fruity company.
(Of course, for the last decade or so, Apple seems to have been having the last laugh!)
Would be a more accurate title.
His own chart proves him wrong. The fall of music sales started in '99 and if anything itunes gave music sales a slight but clearly visible boost upon its release in '04.
Strike 1) The industry was spending a lot of money suing $4 an hour Walmart employees for downloading some movies that they could never afford to buy anyway. So they were wasting a lot of money on lawyers to get blood from a stone.
Strike 2) Is that home theater and video games are a huge market and the latter are very sophisticated and a big draw on young people's time and money. As are phones. You can watch or listen to pretty much anything on youtube for free and people who can get something for free aren't likely going to pay for it. And most people aren't audiophiles and could care less about sound quality - so long as it's "good enough"
Strike 3) The buying power of the bottom 99% has been crippled over the last two decades. An entry level office worker makes, in buying power, less than what they made in 1995. Teachers are down 50% from 1985. People simply have a lot less money to spend and if you have less money and you can download a youtube of an album off the net for free via realplayer downloader OR you can pay $20 for the CD - and you're not an audiophile - chances are you're going to download the song (and hey you get the video too which you don't get if you buy the CD. When people aren't paid enough to eat they're not going to be buying CDs. And while dimwits will say get more education or a better job - well a company that has one manager and 40 employees - can't go and hire 41 managers. Someone has to manage and someone has to do the work - whether they all have masters degrees or not.
Indeed, let's assume we live in a hypothetical world that every single person on the planet has an IQ of 180 and all have PHDs in physics, Mathematics, English Lit, Philosophy, Chemistry, Medicine, Engineering etc. Someone still has to take the job flipping the burger, someone still has to clean the office toilet, someone still has to drive the bus/taxi. It's a numbers game - not everyone can be CEO no matter how damn smart they are. Indeed, the CEO is the best job because you can be a complete abject failure as a businessman AND as a human being and be in the top .000001% financially after having utterly ruined the business.
I'm actually amazed anyone pays Apple's $0.99 a song VS Youtube's free. But Apple fans are used to paying 4 times the money for absolute crap
Like so many other business ventures over the years, GREED, destroyed the music biz.
" and then you! "
I see Ads recently, not exactly blocked from ads at the moment ... and btw one should realize that being "blocked" from ads is not privacy --- better to see what they see because "blocking" only removes your own visibility!!
Anyway, I see these Ads for the next "evolution" of mankind/machine that are all of naked women ... what's with that?
If you find the subject on the state of the music industry interesting ... would recommend the Documentary "Artifact" by the band 30 Seconds to Mars.
It doesn't matter which side of the issue you take ... there's information in this doc that both sides would find interesting.
Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Ragnar Lothbrok
doing this stunt for (at least) the past 40 years:
They can't even eat their own tails in a simple manner; they need to make it complicated.
When the really big money started flowing and the MBA suits took over the POPULAR music
industry became just that. Previously there was a little more interest and business acumen
regarding actual music and musicians because people that actually cared about that were involved.
They still are on a level that most music executives have no interest in.They major music industry deserves what it gets.
There have always been musicians and musicians will find a way to create their music and survive.
Some will even prosper and thrive.
The old industry paradigm has been doomed for a long time.
The businessmen behind it won't be as successful as they were previously until
they smarten up.If history is any indication that won't be happening any time soon.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination"-Michael McClure
Edits: 05/25/15
!
One major reason why they still exist at all is that they regularly and successfully lobby to change the law regarding the duration of copyright protection.
Originally in the US the author had to apply for an extension 28 years after first publication but then corporations took over and ended up owning the copyright rather than the authors/artists.
By now copyright protection extends to 'authors life plus 70 years' thanks to relentless lobbying and Sonny Bono.
never ran into a tree he didn't like...
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
nowadays those MBA types are a dime a dozen, MBA types are graduating with 100's of thousands of dollars in debt, they serve me my coffee in the morning.
I've seen those snakes and what they do to businesses, essentially running it into the ground, get off with great payouts and green parachutes and the remains are left for private equity firms or BDCs to sell off whatever meat was left on the bone and write off the rest.
Around here we have law school grads/second round BAR exam failures doing that.
The MBA's clean up after the baristas finish for the day.
Most EVERYONE is graduating with serious debt handicaps: it's a tough world out there for
those that bought into the BS thinking it would be a smooooth ride.
The Bureaucratic System continues to fail (too) many from the get go.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
part of it was the helicopter parents telling their children how special and smart they are. part of it was the out of touch professors preaching how they'll be the leaders of the free world. no reality at all is taught today in College and Universities.
I am just shy of 40 years old, my parents let me know I was a maggot. Unlike these millenials who think they'll get VP positions as soon as they graduate.
this data would appear to mirror what happened to MOVIES in THEATERS. While the biggest blockbuster today makes LOTS of money, the totals are based on inflated ticket prices.
If Ticket Prices in 1939 were as today, the $$$ total would Still be far ahead of todays totals.
The reason I chose 1939 was because that was the SINGLE greatest year in movie history. period.
And not to forget that the VCR was OPPOSED by the same people that eventually made a huge fortune in Movie Rental fees!
And as for downloads or 'on demand'? I tried Netflix for the free trial and dumped it. When I started seeing what you could actually view, I was disappointed.
For example, I looked up Gene Hackman. He's made a bunch of good movies from 'The French Connection' to 'The Conversation' and on to some newer stuff. Found 3 movies on Netflix, none of which were first tier stuff.
Too much is never enough
Not to completely change the subject but regarding your comment, " I tried Netflix for the free trial and dumped it."
We had Netflix for a full year before finally dumping it. Rarely did we find anything worthwhile viewing through their service. Mostly had to sift through a lot of junk only to find choices that we didn't really care for. I found that we were paying $8/mo for several months on end w/o actually using the Netflix service at all so we finally dumped it.
We find better value from other services in paying full price à la carte renting or buying movies that we actually enjoy.
The selection available for disc rental is better, but you have to plan ahead. We still use Netflix for renting Blu-Rays through the mail a couple times a month, but for streaming Vudu and Blockbuster are better.
The way I understood the offer, getting discs sent to you was an UPGRADE to the regular streaming service.
For my nickel? I'll use REDBOX for new releases and start investigating OTHER streamers.
My FINAL P.O. with Netflix? My relatives in Mexico could get Downton Abbey. Not HERE in the states! What a rip.
Too much is never enough
We've been using Netflix for disc rentals since the early 2000s, well before they started the streaming service. About 4 years ago, they split the streaming and rental services and briefly tried to spin off the rental business. There was a big backlash and they decided to keep the rental business, but the plans and web sites are still separate. A streaming-only plan is $8, a rental-only plan is $8, and there's no discount if you subscribe to both. www.netflix.com is the streaming site, dvd.netflix.com is the rental site, and they don't even link to each other.
Redbox is OK if all you want are new-ish releases, but so is Netflix streaming, or just about any service for that matter. The reason we keep a Netflix rental plan is the selection. Over the last few months, we've rented Fail-Safe, some 80s cult classics from John Carpenter, The Quiet Earth, Hot Fuzz, and Stalag 17. You just can't get this kind of stuff on streaming sites unfortunately.
I must have Mis-Read. I thought you had to have ONE, the streaming, to get the OTHER, the Mailorder. I want just by mail. Being able to get movies by mail and watch at my convenience is fine.
And while I do have a fairly quick connection, the selection isn't the best.
Too much is never enough
The subject title of your post is a popular myth that continues to pop up in various places online. This author is late to the blame game as we've seen several similar articles in the past. Same ole blame iTunes.The music industry basically killed itself through it's own incompetence, and as others have suggested consumer spending simply went elsewhere.
Edits: 05/25/15
It's not itunes which destroyed the music industry but video games.
Disposable income has remained fairly steady since the '80s so there is a limited pot of cash to spend and the kids, who are by far the biggest market in electronic entertainment, decided to spend theirs on games rather than music.
The sales numbers bear this out too: Every drop in music sales is mirrored in an equal increase in sales of games.
(see linky for UK sales)
When I was young kids cued up to get their hands on the latest release of the artist du jour but these days I only see that enthusiasm for the release of a new game.
How about an alternative explanation.
Chart #1 Spending started decreasing when the economy began to crater. People didn't have money to pay their mortgages or buy groceries so they stopped buying "content".
Chart #2 The decline actually began in 1999. One explanation would be that other sources of entertainment became as easily available at music and people began spreading their time among them.
They were part of it but it began well before Itunes.
In the 70's there were hundreds of record labels and each had bands that it promoted and sponsored tours for. AS the big record companies found the competition unpleasant, they began buying up the small labels and with that consolidation also meant the beginning of the end for what was a large touring sound / live music industry as the number of bands being promoted declined and the bands that were promoted were more and more a sure thing and less and less risky music wise. At the same time, it was realized that art and music education cost money that could be spent elsewhere like military hardware and so the emphasis on the arts and music had been greatly scaled back in our schools and that investment has paid off.
Now we are down to several large labels and comparatively very few smaller ones and way fewer places to hear live music and a smaller and smaller live sound business.
Now, electronic dance music has replaced live sound and in the last few years the top few EDM act's have out grossed all of live sound.
While you can't say it's not music or live, it usually doesn't take a band or ability to play an instrument.
It's all part of the Wallmartization of the industry and part of that is far fewer choices in exchange for maximizing profits.
I think Antares Audio, with its Auto-Tune product, is what destroyed the music industry, not Apple iTunes.
I wouldn't know
these guys don't use autotune :)
Why are there two charts?
but it's not THAT simple!
=:-0
I looked at that.
Seems the Entertainment industry is doing fine as a whole, with digital making up for a lot of sales in $$$'s. It is # of tracks sold that is on the decline if I am reading it correctly. I guess the premise of the article is less tracks are sold, however it doesn't seem to hurt the bottom line.
?? Am I right?
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