hank alrich wrote:Brian wrote:<snipitty> Losing $80 billion industrywide per year is not market growth. <snipitty>
(snippity back atcha)Pinning the reduction of sales $ of prerecorded music product on the advent of tools that can do pro work in pro hands, yet are cheap enough to allow punters to buy into the kit too, overlooks many other factors that influence where the money goes now, versus where it went once upon a time.
That's stipulated. There are more things happening at once that are contributors. Recession for one.
It's all of them at once, it's:
Recession = destroys the little guys,
Cheap Gear Glut = destroys domestic manufacturers and enables hundreds of thousands of "punters" to make mediocre stuff and distribute, lowers prices via unfair competition and market destruction,
Cheap Music Glut = gluts the market without quality control creating a quality search chaos, price lowering, market destruction, etc.
Market Destruction = no market for product.
Lack of Artist Development = lower quality product.
If you want an analogy, let's say you make hammers, people get to know you for making good hammers and word gets around with help, but, you sell a lot and get known for that too. Then for any reason, you stop making such good hammers because you no longer employ the best designers and workers in an effort to make more money. You let people off the street design your hammers with no hammer design experience hoping to get even better hammers designed cheaper. You get some interesting anomalies, but, on the whole, not better hammers, just cheaper hammers of lower quality. People get to know your hammers are sucking. You have to lower your price. Stupidly, you keep on with he cost cutting method of street designers and fire some of them too, hammers get worse as a result, eventually you quit making hammers because you've designed and manufactured the cheapest hammer ever, sold billions for peanuts, made little real profit, engaged in recapitalization schemes, and nobody needs any more hammers, all competitors businesses destroyed, you've sold to many and glutted the market with your cheap hammers. Pricing unsustainable, Industry OVER, workers unemployed, new hammer makers can't even begin to make a living, economy crashes as glut of unemployed lose their houses and tank banking industry.
This is also what the independent artists of today are doing, not just the labels.
Quality development is very important and requires experts and seasoned pros. It's the giving back to new artists.
On top of that, a lot of product/revenue is not being tracked by the likes of RIAA, Soundscan, etc. A lot of money is being earned well below the big-industry radar, and this is one aspect of the enabling of musical artists by the falling cost of decent equipment.
Nope, below the industry radar because the amounts aren't worth tracking. They don't enable artists, mostly they slowly bleed them dry by not being sustainable or creating a sustainable market condition.
Then, as a recreational activity, the earnings of which might well be included in a column that once included only the prerecorded product, the sales of prosumer audio recording kit is pulling another few tons of money into a category that also is relatively new.
Not in a recession, the market is now FLATLINING.
Nobody ever had a right to earn a living as an artist, and they never will.
Wrong, we established that right in america with IP law, it has proven itself to be the very life's blood of the economy just by the fact that it's lax enforcement of the last 30 years has destroyed all economies.
(snipity again) Amateurs (some of whom are far better musicians/artists than are many professionals) and mediocrity have always been with us,
So few that in 35 years I haven't met ONE that beats any of my professional clients. Not ONE.
and I don't seen that changing, ever. That we now have seven billion of us on the planet, and picked up that seventh billion in the last twelve years, suggests we have more opportunity than ever before for plenty of amateurs and a nearly unfathomable sea of mediocrity.
Evolution works at many levels, and successful artists will adapt. Those who don't will do something else for their living.
The very same number of albums that made money, actually turned a profit, in 1975 is exactly the same as the number that made any money in 2011. Around 7000 across all genre's.
The difference is: that's how many commercial releases there were back then, with artist development included, which there is NONE of today (and cheap gear doesn't equal artist development at all), VERSUS the 198,000 releases you had to wade through to find those 7000 (though no one buys across all genre's)= 3.5% up 1.5% from 1976.
The point of that is that there has been zero gain from this.
Now if you argue that labels were evil and he artists didn't get payed compared to what the label made, Labels invested $250k + in JUST recoupable recording funds, That doesn't include promotion, publicity, videos, marketing, artist development, and tour support, all of which is around $7k/week/service (you do the math for 1 year of that!) all of which is non recoupable unless there is an actual profit.
People made nebulous charges against labels, but when asked if they'd put an audit clause in their contracts MANY stammered instead of answering.
It's no secret that I am PRO LABELS.
WHY?
Personal experience.
What they did far exceeded what they took, the proof is in the pudding.
You may argue that now, without labels, artists get to keep 100% of income, minus costs, but, usually, they have no budget for promo, publicity, marketing, distribution, and tour support, they just "hope" they "go viral" and book a van tour for low dough.
So, 100% of "not shit" is still not shit. ZERO GAIN.
Then people usually argue "well, we get to keep our schwag money too" well, labels didn't take a piece of that anyway. ZERO GAIN.
Now you have labels taking a piece of your ticket sales, NET LOSS.
I don't know who designed his "new model" or "record industry fix all" but I don't think they ever took a math class or had kids or brains.
What's happened has hurt the majority of artists and just because there are more releases doesn't counter that, they are making so much less now that their careers are effectively suicide missions into unsustainability.
NOT THE WORK OF A GENIUS.