Top Ten Reasons Why The Music Industry Is Failing.

[rasputin1963]

Word.

 

 

Top Ten Reasons Why The Music Industry Is Failing

[sailorman]

Pretty spot on IMHO.

I could add #11 - it's all about the spectacle/visual production.   The big dance show, the flashing lights, etc., etc., not to mention the PA with more subwoofers than tops to pound the beat into your body, even if you're deaf.   How many people would go to a concert to see many of the most popular artists, if all they did was stand there and sing (if they can)?   Granted, this isn't something new, Hendrix complained that most of his audience was there to see him smash a guitar or burn it instead of listening.   But there were also bands that used the spectacle in concert to enhance the experience of hearing them play;  Pink Floyd for example, (although the Wall may have gone too far).   This is perhaps the result of the 10 problems described in the article, there's not enough worthwhile in the material, so the spectacle is necessary.

[Vito Corleone]

Meh.  

Most of the "reasons" he lists here are the same complaints (usually older) people have been making about pop music for decades.  Including during the periods when the business was at its zenith.

In general, to complain that the BUSINESS of music is failing because there is too much concentration on the BUSINESS of music and not the art falls flat right on the face it.

But let's break it down:

1. Record Labels Stopped Doing Their Job

When was their job ever to "find the next new and amazing thing" and NOT focus on "formula"?  Back in the 30s when they signed every Bing Crosby clone they could find?  Or Sinatra?  Or Elvis? Or The Beatles?  Or Garth Brooks?  Sure, they got lucky and stumbled across the next new amazing thing every so often and in hindsight it seems like a golden age.    But then, just as now, 99% of the artists they sign are attempts to cash in on whatever the lastest craze is.

2. The Record Labels Became Too Big

They've been too big for a long, long time.  As early as the mid-80s there were six huge "major" worldwide conglomorate labels who had the vast majority of the record sales.   And the industry was at its peak during this period.

3. Lack of Talent and Personality

Yeah, that's what my dad said about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

4. Traditional Roles Have Disappeared

All of this is probably true, I'm just not really sure how it relates to industry failure.  Again, the same argument was made back in the 60s when artists who wrote AND sang their own material started doing so usually with less technical skill at either than their "separate" predecessors in the 40s and 50s.   And many, many people preferred that because they saw it as more "authentic".   Yes, roles have changed.  For the worse in some respects (and in some views.)  Not sure that actually is what is hurting the business though.

5. Fan Abuse

6. We Lost Some of the Old Experience

These are both related to the same REAL cause of the failure of the music industry:  so many other entertainment and social options for people.   When the music business was at its peak, it wasn't because the labels were so much better at anything, but because music WAS our 'social media'.   It spoke for the younger generation because it was pretty much all we had to connect with each other.   We'd all get together and talk about new Pink Floyd album, or get in our cars on a Saturday night and cruise around blasting Boston as loud as we could.  We gathered in bars and roller skating rinks and danced to the latest beats and rhythms.   Now there are a million other things to do and relate to each other.  The music business had nothing to do with that.

7. MP3s Sound Horrible

They sound better than AM radio or 45s played on portable turntables.  And those things certainly never hurt business.

8. Too Many Choices and Not Enough Filters

This might be true, but the author then boils it down to "the good stuff is being missed while all the garbage is being shoved down our throats".   Again, an old complaint that existed at the height of the music business as well.

9. Lack of Musicianship

10. Focus is on Beats over Melody

See #3 above.

 

[veracohr]

To me it mostly boils down to a single reason: people are selfish. Because of this the labels, the artists and the fans all do things that are a detriment to the industry.

 

Most of the 'reasons' listed there seem like normal cultural evolution to me.

[blue2blue]

Not so word, from my point of view.

Much of this is the same old rehash. Yes, LP jackets were big and had big, sometimes pretty pictures on them. Yes, some people think it's 'fun' fooling around with turntables and cleaning vinyl and carefully adjusting the stylus pressure, cleaning, checking for wear, setting up the anti-skate, and, of course, hoping that the pre-emphasis curve your record was cut with bears some vague relationship to the de-ephasis curve(s) offered by your phono preamp. If that's your idea of fun, welcome to my life from about 1962 to 1985 or so (and then on, of course, since I had over a thousand LPs and a couple hundred singles -- not to mention 25 or 30 78s --and only a couple of those shiny new CD things at that point).

And then there's the whole 'I hate modern music' subtext to this numbered bullet point rant... I am SO over people blaming modern technology for human failures.  Modern music doesn't sound like it does because we have an amazing array of highly flexible tools -- it sounds like it does because a bunch of greedy music biz slags are rushing out product without caring what it sounds like or simply adopting the same cookie-cutter mentality and approach as all the other slags.

And then there's stuff that's just ignorant. Like this:

---

7. MP3s Sound Horrible

 

The 

MP3 format

 which made music truly 

portable

 also 

cheapened it

 by lessening the 

fidelity

 and hence the overall experience. Granted, we have reached a wonderful age where music can now fly thru the air and into our cellphones and music players. Further, we can literally

carry a library

 of our favorite music in our back pocket to be made available anytime, anywhere "on tap". However, in its current format, MP3s 

sound tinny

when listened to over an extended period of time. The format sounds 

even worse coming from most computers

 (MySpace's music player serves as a prime example of how absurdly degraded the sound can get). And so it's time to

improve our delivery and storage systems

 in order to create the infrastructure to 

improve the digital audio format

 (either back to WAV or something better).

---

 

Has this know-it-all-bozo ever heard a high quality mp3? Apparently not.

Yes, the Murdoch-owned, benighted, loserville operation, MySpace had for years super-low quality streams. That was their choice. They degraded the stream quality in part to save storage space (presumably) as well as, apparently, to keep some artists 'happy' because they didn't want decent sounding streams of their music available, since anything you can hear you can capture.  And, yes, many sites do use low quality 16 bit 128 kbps Mp3s for their streams (by contrast, I believe MySpace was 8 bit 96 kbps -- that is lo fi, no lie). And 128 IS low enough quality that most folks listening on a decent PB system can be trained to spot the (many) tells. But get up to 256 kbps and most folks can no longer distinguish between that and a full CD audio files/stream. Take the mp3 up to 320 using slower, high quality rendering settings and you have files/streams that even golden ears can almost never differentiate from 'the real thing.'

Ramin Streets, the author, may allow various commercial entities to 'shove things down' his throat and prevent him from hearing 'the good stuff' -- and I definitely agree, there is good stuff out there -- and a lot of it -- but that's a choice, innit?

No one shoves any music down my throat -- at least not when I'm at home or listening to MOG over my phone. I stopped listening to commercial radio in 1985 after a seriously disheartening tour of the local radio biz from the point of view of someone working a record -- if you wanted people to hear you on the radio back then, it was easy, just give them a bunch of drugs, hookers, or, in a pinch, outright cash (frowned on because of the whole money trail angle. Of course, I'm sure it's all clean now. (I believe the expression is bwahahaha!)

But, I will agree, it's nice to have filters -- but ONLY if you can trust them!

And, by and large,  I don't see that to be the case in 9 times out of 10 when some curator or 'bot is telling me if I like Y, I'm gonna like X. (OK, I liked X in the 80s but... I digress.)

That said, my current service, MOG, is actually doing a pretty good job of suggestions... I follow up on maybe 1/3 and probably 2/3 of those are interesting, at least. But it's not being shoved down my throat, the 'bots are 'triangulating' from what I've been listening to. 

[Kotch]

To be honest, most of the new music I listen to these days come directly from the artist. In a lot cases, I only know about the music because I know the artist personally.

The mainstream music industry has always failed to interest me.