Nice article, strong words. I agree absolutely that illegal downloading is stealing. I always purchase the music I need and try to convince everybody else to do the same. However there is no way that the music business will be profitable and booming like in the old days. Loyal music buyers, like most of us here on the forum, are not the norm and since it is possible to download for free it will always happen. But if you reach enough of the rather thoughtless downloaders and convince them, you might regain enough revenue streams to create a liveable environment for musicians. Still there are many changes in the business and problems that will remain. A change that hurts me a little is that physical copies of albums will become more and more obsolete. Digital copies are the future. This means digital distribution is the most important part of selling an album. Platforms like i-tunes, amazon, musicload and all the other download vendors are where the sales will be created. Problem is that this kills record stores and therefore a big part of the whole world of music that appealed to an elderly guy like me. I loved hanging out in the store, listening to music and carrying a physical copy with the great cover artwork and the booklet home. For me a CD also had some advertisement function. Like a flyer or something similar. A physical representation of the music itself. But the younger generations don't know that anyway and since they are the future buyers they dictate how the business develops. Another problem are flat rates. Most of the younger people I know that are big music geeks and don't want to download illegally still don't buy records. They use some legal flat rate like napster. You can listen to and get most mainstream music there, for 9 Euros a month. Perhaps that’s the real future of the business, but it means that there is no real margin that allows paying decent money to the musicians after everybody else took its share out.
On the other hand there are many positive sides to the development. Independent musicians can distribute their music more easily and reach an audience that was limited to musicians with major label contracts. Everybody on every corner of the world can get the music they want and therefore everybody can participate in the wonderful world of music.
In conclusion I think that the music business we knew is dead but not the music. In the future the musician will not be able to rely on a label to help them with the administrative part of the music making process. From organising a studio, finding distributers to concert booking. This means there will be fewer publications by single artists because they have to carry all the risk and invest allot of time. Time they don't have then for composing, recording and all the rest but on the other hand there will be many new artists popping up all over the place. Creativity of the single artist may suffer because of the pressure on the single artist but other ways of creative expression will develop because of the greater and more global impact. Think of some great youtube acts. In addition I believe that purely internet based labels will be the future. They will help you getting your music on the download platforms and help you with the licensing and perhaps send your music to radio stations. The rest will be up to you. I had a couple of business ideas based on this, but failed to get them done because of financial issues. Now this all exists and I am a little sad sometimes. Anyway all my musicians’ friends live from selling tickets, merchandise and 99% of their album revenues come from i-tunes/amazon/napster or whatever downloads. They can make a living but on the other hand they make rather commercial (they would kill me since they make indie pop, (which by the way is the new mainstream pop
) music that has a rather large market even though it tries to appear to be non commercial. So I guess it depends also allot on your style of music. But nevertheless the great penetration of the internet based music business should help everybody. Lets hope that if you raise enough awareness many people will pay for their downloads. But again I think the times when you could get really, really rich with making music are over. If you want to make money you have to be some kind of franchise phenomenon with allot of commercial appeal for other business sectors.
You are at GuitarMasterClass.net
Don't miss today's
free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with
free content!
This post has been edited by ItsMe: Dec 9 2009, 01:29 PM