The Decline and Fall of the Music Industry

[Lemur]

Rolling Stone has briefly flared into relevance, with a good article about the bed the music labels made for themselves. Sample quote:

So who killed the record industry as we knew it? "The record companies have created this situation themselves," says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. While there are factors outside of the labels' control -- from the rise of the Internet to the popularity of video games and DVDs -- many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels' failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. "They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster -- that was the moment that the labels killed themselves," says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm. "The record business had an unbelievable opportunity there. They were all using the same service. It was as if everybody was listening to the same radio station. Then Napster shut down, and all those 30 or 40 million people went to other [file-sharing services]."

I think it will be very interesting to see what emerges from the ashes of the old studio system. Thousands of little self-made artist labels, perhaps? Almost anything would be an improvement over the Ancien Régime.

[Xiahou]

So true about Napster. They could've easily bought it out and made it for profit. Instead, like the luddites they are, they sued it and shut it down. Pretty sure that suing and intimidation tactics are their knee-jerk responses to just about everything.

Rolling Stone has briefly flared into relevance

Let's not go overboard- it's just 1 article.

[InsaneApache]

This is something that Bowie commented on about a decade ago. IIRC it's called the Bowie Factor. He was one of the first, if not the first, to see where t'interweb was heading. He said that music was going to be like water or electricity and the recording companies had better get ready for that eventuality.

Remember this, when all this 'broke' so to speak, the execs at RCA, VIRGIN etc. had to get their secretaries to open their E-mails for them.

Luddites indeed.

[Lemur]

Insane Apache, I managed to find the Bowie article. It's from '02. Here it is.

''I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way,'' he said. ''The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.''

''Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,'' he added. ''So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen.''

[InsaneApache]

I was out by a few years, senility I reckon.

Nice find Lemur, thanks.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It is a tough thing to perceive changeon the horizon. Compound this with a knowledge of how tough it is to accept that this change cannot be exploited in the manner you are accustomed to, and to accept that your power and importance must diminish. Add in that the napster-ites were quite purposefully breaking copyright and thieving and it is not too hard to see how the record industry missed this.

BTW, as a side note, Bowie has always seemed to be a pretty bright chap. Scary to think how smart he would be if he hadn't chemically decerebrated himself for years (I recall an interview wherein he claimed to be unable to remember...entirely...one of the years in the first half of the 1970s).