The Toronto Star has an excellent overview of the 'music industry' - an industry that is exploding and dying off at the same time. "The undeniable reality is that CD sales continue to fall so dramatically – down 20 per cent from 2006, and down 35 per cent in Canada – that the industry as we know it may soon collapse completely."It should be pointed out here that when they say CD they are talking about the physical product - not MP3 sales. Also, personally, I buy most of my CD's at shows, from the artists themselves (many of whom do not have a label) and I'm sure that these CDs aren't counted in the 'industry' sales figures.
It seems certain at this point that the traditional big record labels will go under. A few years ago they were cutting back on the number of new artists they signed and throwing less profitable artists overboard. Now they are being dumped themselves, by the more profitable artists they chose to retain.
"Insiders and trade magazines are already predicting a bad New Year for the once mighty EMI Music, one of the world's five remaining major labels, after the recent loss of Radiohead, Paul McCartney and rumblings that Robbie Williams is quitting the roster as well. Warner Music, already stripped to the bone, is also struggling to survive."Which is fine. Given their behavior over the last decade or two the big labels have done nothing to earn their survival or to warrant any loyalty among fans or artists who might save them.
Music, after all, has demonstrated that the big labels aren't necessary.
"In 2007 more than 750,000 albums were released worldwide (by mostly independent artists via the Internet), compared to 38,000 in 2002."
But there is another reality we have to consider as well. It is simply not true that all downloaders also buy music. Perhaps they wouldn't buy music even if they didn't download, in which case it's good that they're at least listening. Regardless, many independent artists are having trouble making ends meet and/or figuring out how they are going to do so in the future.
There has to be a new deal - a deal not between record labels, lawyers, lobbyists and politicians but a deal between artists and fans. We do not, after all, want to see them give up music or stop producing new music. Producing a CD, or even recording new material for digital distribution costs money and that's a reality that isn't going to change.
One final thing to keep in mind is that while music is reaching the apex of a two decade transformation, all media (TV and Film are next) is going to go down this road sooner or later.
This is an issue that I talk quite a bit about on the blog and that I intend to talk about quite a bit on the new podcast but if you think you have a piece of the puzzle I'd love to hear it.
2 comments:
In the Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan points out that our concepts of intellectual property and authorship depend on the technical properties of the media. Although he was writing primarily about books, what he said applies equally well to recorded music, and to video.
In the middle ages books had to be copied by hand. Nearly all the scribes doing this were monks. If they were copying a book, the would think nothing of inserting a few paragraphs by a different author, or a comment or two of their own. Authors of books often didn't bother to identify when they were quoting somebody else. Nobody cared because it was all seen as part of the great body of aquired knowledge. Content mattered; authors didn't.
The technology of the printing press changed that. For one thing books could reach a wider audience, since hundreds of copies could be made in a short amount of time. Also - and I think this is a really important factor - making a book changed from a do-it-yourself project to something that was the domain of a particular craft, printers. Now if you wrote something you had to convince someone else to publish it. Who wrote what became important and authors were seen as a cut above the average person.
Digital technology is moving us in the opposite direction, in a way. The ability to copy recorded music is no longer a technical specialty. Any computer literate person can do it. It is now a do-it-yourself project, and an easy one at that.
The same holds for making a recording. While it requires a bit more expertise, and some extra equipment, the equipment is readily available. It my require living at home and working a day job for a couple more years than you really want to, but that is what some people do. So now you can record music and distribute it over the web without using record companies as an intermediary. But once it is out there you really don't have any control over it.
So it seems to me that once again technology is changing the concept of intelectual property and the relationship between creative peopl and their audience. And it will take awhile - at least a generation - for this to sort itself out.
It is true that we need a new deal between musicians and fans. Music is so much a part of what makes us human that people will continue to create it. I hope that talented people will stil be able to make a living at it. However when the major labels die the era of the rock star will be at an end. Stardom as we have known it requires that the supply of music (and film, and books) be controlled by a relatively small group of people.
I have no doubt that you're right about the age of stars being over. As noted above there were almost 20x as many 'albums' produced last year as there were 5 years ago. The audience is being spread more and more thinly. Whatever the 'new deal' is between fans and musicians the real trouble is going to come from film and television. Although I've seen indications that this too will change over the next few decades, it currently takes hundreds of people and millions of dollars to make a big hollywood type movie. I simply don't see those funds being there over the long term.
I do think though that a model like this could be part of the solution. People will generally pay - for film, music etc., The temptation comes when they are on their computer and have a choice between two identical versions of an album (or film) and one of them is free and one of them is not.
If fans were to 'buy' something before it is produced it would remove that temptation.
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