2010-was-a-very-bad-year-for-trying-to-sell-music

[flatfinger]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/01/06/132694660/2010-was-a-very-bad-year-for-trying-to-sell-music

 

 

 

Just thought I'd Cheer you up a little guys !

[sventvkg]

yup and as the selling units of music model continues to die, it's gonna get worse and worse.

[BlueStrat]

I posted this in another thread, but it applies. Imagine the people in this video are all musicians of one level or another and it provides a graphic illustration of what is happening in the biz.

 

[video=youtube;31ZevWuxrNE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ZevWuxrNE

[richardmac]

Unknown artists putting their music online for free is inevitable. The only thing stopping me is that Bandcamp now charges you if you want people to download your music for free. Actually, I have my own domain and could put my songs online on my own site for free, but I suck at web design and I'm lazy. Not like I couldn't figure it out in, say, an evening.

[flatfinger]

Don't just assume it's all because of the economy!!! Folks don't stop eating ice cream and partaking of other simple treats during economic downturns .

 

The fact is that despite what some like to promulgate , the quality has suffered whilst the quantity has skyrocketed.

 

 

Blue ; The title on that vid is perfect; ....Meritocracy has to have some teeth!

It's almost as if this were a school then next logical step would be to hold an entire class back to do another year of fifth grade cause johnny couldn't keep up!!!!!

 

 

The web turned out to be boon for those selling PC's with the unspoken understanding that it came with all sorts of "free" stuff . Whilst wiping an entire segment of business of the planet . Now all the kiddies dance on the Music industries grave whilst many of them gravitate toward bands that are 45 years old.

 

Hope they all remember and fess up as to how short sighted they were when, in a few decades, the cupboard is bare and none of the current crop attains legacy status ;.. Then someone will have to be unemployed or rich so as to spend untold hours sifting through the noise " floor " hoping to find a needle in a stack of needles !!!

[richardmac]

You know, it IS kind of interesting, though. When new music started sucking, we all wondered what was going to fill the void, ie who was going to be the next "Nirvana," so to speak. And it turns out the answer is, everything ever recorded! Music's back catalog is the new thing. It's big enough. When I was a teenager, I was listening to Rush 2112 and my mom was listening to freaking Andy Williams. I didn't want to have anything to DO with any of that old people music. But rock is pretty old now, so the back catalog is huge, and it's no big deal for a kid to dig the same music his parents liked. I mean, I guess rock had a history when I was a teen, but Bill Haley and the Comets was not something I would be caught dead listening to. It was just silly to me, at the time.

 

I'm not buying this doom and gloom forecast 100%, though. As if ten years from now it's going to be impossible to find a new great act. I believe that new filters will eventually come into being, because people WANT them. Where there's want, there's a potential for money. Maybe it's Internet radio. Maybe a handful of really popular music sites spring up, the way we have slashdot and similar sites for nerds. Maybe these sites already exist and us old farts are too unhip to know about them.

 

If you're doing stuff that other people really like, and you put it on YouTube, you can get a lot of attention (Pomplamoose.) But in order to have any kind of success that's not "flash in the pan," you're going to have to put out stuff people really like on a regular basis. And that's where I think a lot of acts fall down. Because they haven't paid their dues - they slapped together a band in 4 months, recorded some tracks, slapped them up on iTunes, etc. Put another way, it seems to me like whenever I discover some artist I like (Imogen Heap,) I find out that they've actually been around a while before they got noticed. They were paying their dues.

 

But with a lot of the money gone from the music biz, I think it's going to be harder to "pay your dues." Or you'll be paying your dues at night while working a day job.

[flatfinger]

 

Or you'll be paying your dues at night while working a day job.

 

 

 

Which brings us full circle as to why folks need to take a second look and really give it some thought. Patronage;.....

 

All the Blogg jerks in the bloggo-vomit-sphere or all the new viral marketing and promotion on a web which is becoming overloaded with hyped crap ( SEE THIS AND READ IT!!!) http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1.. Advertisers aren't willing to pay {censored} to advertise on the web cause it doesn't work !!

 

 

Don't believe for a millisecond that you can promote soley on the web to any effect ! Don't think that any semblence of a vibrant music industry is going to be supported by advertising and selling schwagg ; that's a B.S. thought from the idiots who run these " musicians coaching "scams .

 

 

Even the best minds from the old guard would tell you that there was no cookie cutter recipie to promote a band that had the goods and critical acclaim !!!!! And that was the situation BEFORE the "If everyone can play that no one wins" free music paradigm.

 

If you remove all incentives by pulling the legs out from under the whole show , that is, by denying and patronage mechanism to exist and support the fittest , that you will have what we have .

 

 

Reap what you sow .

 

 

 

I'm getting sick of defeatest who wave the white flag and say it's over and the pirates win .

 

They will burn it down with no remorse out of spite and stupidity.

 

We basically can't afford to let them win .

 

If we do than it will be said, that in the end , we didn't really care enough about music .

[sventvkg]

 

Unknown artists putting their music online for free is inevitable. The only thing stopping me is that Bandcamp now charges you if you want people to download your music for free. Actually, I have my own domain and could put my songs online on my own site for free, but I suck at web design and I'm lazy. Not like I couldn't figure it out in, say, an evening.

 

 

Dudel, I was loving bandcamp..Why the hell did they start charging when they know full well everything is going free? I have my own website too and i'm just going to have put my stuff up there for sale. I'm having a guy make me a new front end for it anyway with features like Email collection for free download and i can easily link my palpal etc...BAndcamp in my opinion {censored}ed up.

[richardmac]

 

We basically can't afford to let them win . If we do than it will be said, that in the end , we didn't really care enough about music .

 

 

I really think the genie is out of the bottle. I don't see a reasonable strategy to stop people....

[richardmac]

 

Dudel, I was loving bandcamp..Why the hell did they start charging when they know full well everything is going free? I have my own website too and i'm just going to have put my stuff up there for sale. I'm having a guy make me a new front end for it anyway with features like Email collection for free download and i can easily link my palpal etc...BAndcamp in my opinion {censored}ed up.

 

 

They did. They got greedy. There are plenty of other places that let you put your files up for free. And some folks are going to leave Bandcamp and go elsewhere now.

[flatfinger]

 

I really think the genie is out of the bottle. I don't see a reasonable strategy to stop people....

 

 

 

 

It wouldn't hurt to stop giving others who read these post we make affirmation and the green light ............... At least start saying that it shouldn't be this way , and that no matter how bleak things may seem at this moment in time it's wrong .

 

It's always darkest before the dawn and one thing that will make it a certianty is to throw in the towel and give up .

 

If the creative community would stop allowing itself to be divided and conquered by the tech sector things could be improved .

 

Do a small thing and don't give it away !!!!

[Poker99]

 

They did. They got greedy. There are plenty of other places that let you put your files up for free. And some folks are going to leave Bandcamp and go elsewhere now.

 

 

Greedy? Are you serious? They charge you when you get over 200 FREE downloads a month. If someone buys your stuff they give you credits.

 

Come on guys, do you think running a site like bandcamp is free? Everything is going free MY *SS.

[flatfinger]

 

Greedy? Are you serious? They charge you when you get over 200 FREE downloads a month. If someone buys your stuff they give you credits. Come on guys, do you think running a site like bandcamp is free? Everything is going free MY *SS .

 

 

 

 

Here's a little tidbit on that subject courtesy of our vaunted information super highway !!!!

 

 

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/steely-dan/only-a-fool-would-say-that.html

 

 

 

 

CHORUS: I heard it was you Talkin' 'bout a world Where all is free It just couldn't be And only a fool would say that

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steely Dan weren't road warriors; they were a studio band ( and some would argue a pretty GD good one too !) Under todays proposed system , the only REAL revenue stream is touring ( which is just rolling break even half of the time !!) ( NO SCHWAGG Arguements please ; thats so f'ing weak !!!.) ..........( NO RECORD SALES!!) They'd be F'D So a band like that could'nt even exist in the present eco system..... That's progress then ???????????

[Poker99]

Yeah... And what about songwriters who do not perform live? Many greats songs have been written by songwriters who never played a show. They are F'D too.

[Matximus]

Yawn... CDs are dying. Music will last. This is nothing new and there is nothing bad about any of this, well, nothing bad from a consumer perspective. And nobody's going to cry for artists - being an artist has always been a sucky brutal way to make a living. ALWAYS. When's the last time you felt bad for a vaudeville actor? Or Silent film star? That's how bad people are going to feel about recording artists in a few years... which is not very bad at all.

 

Recorded music began a long, slow march toward what we're seeing right now - FREE & UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE music - 100 years ago.

 

That's when the first "records" - little cylinders that went into the first phonographs, were replaced by gramophone records, or vinyl discs. All you bitching about depreciated value of recorded music today - 99 cent songs and $5 for digital albums... You know why those discs trumped cylinders? You could put two songs on a disc - one on each side. Cylinders held one song. They were sold at the same price: So the value of the first recorded songs ever were SLASHED IN HALF by the first competing product to come along... Did the buyer's of those first discs - GASP - steal that second song? Or was the message from day one to music consumers from record peddlers: It's the piece of plastic that is worth the money - the value of what goes on it is, uhm, less valuable and subject to change.

 

Also - discs were cheaper to make and easier to store too than cylinders; Win win for everybody.

 

See a trend here? Vinyl Albums to Tapes; Tapes to CDs. CD's to... MP3's are the sound: Music Consumers have consistently demanded a cheaper and more convenient medium .So Thank you record industry for finally delivering what we've been asking for for for 100 years: A free, intangible media. From cumbersome, one-track plastic cylinders to the MP3 - which are as light and easy to carry around and store as the air in your lungs.

 

And nobody gives a damn about record companies - we all know how they raped and bullied countless songwriters and performers - many of them poor, uneducated saps. They stuck it to consumers too: Jacking up the prices on those little bits of plastic at the apex of the record boom beyond reason - $22 for a {censored}ty Britney Spears album, really?

 

Here's how a generation of music consumers feel: Free is the new Two-For-one beeyatches. Deal with it.

[richardmac]

 

Greedy? Are you serious? They charge you when you get over 200 FREE downloads a month. If someone buys your stuff they give you credits. Come on guys, do you think running a site like bandcamp is free? Everything is going free MY *SS.

 

 

200 downloads is nothing. If you are successful to a small degree you can get thousands of downloads, and you'll owe them money, and other places will host your crap for free, yes. Heck, you could set up a free WordPress blog and give away a song a day. For free. As a "businessman," I'm going to try to keep my costs as low as possible. I understand what they are doing from a business standpoint, and I understand that since I can host my own files on my own site and sell via CDBaby, it probably makes more sense for me to reduce costs. That is, if I want to give music away. And yes, they are going to lose people. They probably know that. They started out free, then decided to start charging for what they'd previously given away for free. I've seen that trick a number of times before. And the businesses that pull that stunt usually fail.

[Matximus]

And anybody bitching about how songwriters and musicans can't survive making music any more... That's candyass baby talk ...

 

There's a bigger reality going on you're all missing: People can't make money being LAWYERs anymore...there's too god damn many of them... People can't make money MAKING FREAKING AUTOMOBILEs IN THIS COUNTRY anymore... or MAKING CLOTHING anymore... or PRETTY MUCH MAKING ANYTHING ... anymore. Talk to a restaurant owner lately? Someone trying to MAKE A BUSINESS giving people something BASIC THAT THEY NEED like Food. So Yeah - nobody gives a {censored} about how tough it is to make a buck... making up and singing songs??? Seriously? Like, seriously?

 

Musicians are way, way, down on the sympathy list, sorry. Like - way down. Like - below all those dogs and cats and goldfish left behind in all those vacant, foreclosed homes in Arizona and Florida.

 

Cause here's what's happening in the broader scheme of things - something a lot of folk are just coming to realize. Everything that happened that paved the way for a few generations of deluded dreamers to strap on guitars and make a go of their rock-n-roll fantasies- an unprecedented Post-War economic boom - has officially come to a close.

 

Rock-N-Roll (and the subsequent boom it created in the record industry)- which happened because children of the WWII generation were the first in American History to have actual money in their pockets and a {censored}load of free time on their hands at around age 15 and 16: They spent it on tawdry records made by black people that pissed off their parents. It took sociologists a few years to recognize this new species of human: Teenagers. Like - they literally didn't exist. There was no concept of a these people before that.

 

And Here's what's happening with our new generation of adolescent: They look to be the laziest, most self-absorbed, distracted and entitled generation our country has ever produced. I think it's evident they won't have the balls or ability to move our country forward - hence, they ain't gonna have the time or the means to shell out money for high-minded luxuries like danceable art.

 

So here's my suggestion for all struggling musicians: Swap your Fender for a Pipa - that's a four-stringed lute long popular in China. Learn to lay down some blues tracks on it; Brush up on some Mandarin and move to China - cause that's where the next Elvis is gonna coming from the way things are headed here.

[richardmac]

 

Here's how a generation of music consumers feel: Free is the new Two-For-one beeyatches. Deal with it.

 

 

LOL. Nah, the folks here aren't going to accept that. We'd rather stand around all day and complain.

 

Like I said in my other post - it is feasible that Spotify will come in and wipe out all hope for any of us selling music except in very small quantities. But since I already sell music in very small quantities, I won't be as upset as someone who is seeing their livelihood slip away. I'm not being glib - I feel very bad for those people. Yet another vocation destroyed by technology - such is the way of things. The same technology allows people from all over the world to come here and complain about it to each other. Oh, the irony.

 

I will note, however, that it hasn't stopped a million high school kids from learning Metallica riffs, based on what I hear at Guitar Center every time I go there.

[richardmac]

 

And Here's what's happening with our new generation of adolescent: They look to be the laziest, most self-absorbed, distracted and entitled generation our country has ever produced.

 

 

Just to let you know - that's been said about every generation for the past 200 years, with the same conviction. They'll do just fine, as long as the government does a better job of regulating big business.

[[Animals2]]

when i signed up for BC i felt like they were pretty clear that it was free FOR NOW and that they were going to see how it went and maybe charge down the road. how are you supposed to start a site like BC and charge people right out of the gate with no proven track record?

[michael_B]

Hmmm, I still think Bandcamp is one of the better options out there for musicians. My account says I get 500 free downloads. Not great, but not too bad either.

[richardmac]

 

when i signed up for BC i felt like they were pretty clear that it was free FOR NOW and that they were going to see how it went and maybe charge down the road. how are you supposed to start a site like BC and charge people right out of the gate with no proven track record?

 

 

Yeah, you're right - they were pretty clear about that. We all knew it when we signed up. Telling us in advance doesn't mean it's a great idea though. I still have my Bandcamp site - haven't moved to something better or different yet. Them taking a cut from sales is fine. But them taking a cut from free means it costs me money- so I could lose money by having them host my music. And I don't really care about their business model - I'm going to make decisions that are best for me. Just like they do.

 

And I already own my own site and I'm already paying for that. And I already have my music on CDBaby and iTunes so if people want to buy it they can go there. So financially it makes sense for me to move my stuff to my own site. I'm just too lazy, really.

[flatfinger]

The article I linked had this sentence:

 

 

and a consumer base indifferent to the struggles of the industry (to put it generously)

 

 

 

Everything old is new again . There is nothing new here to be added in history of mankind....;

 

People love to use rationalizations , gross oversimplification , wide and sweeping generalizations and every iteration of cluttered rhetoric imaginable as to why it's not there responsibility , and in the end, it's only a dishonest attempt to justify behaving as a parasite instead of sybiotically .

 

It has nothing to do with the form of the media . Just because the form changed and made it easier to steal isn't a justification and morally wrong is still wrong . Robbing banks got easier with the advent of firearms ; nobody said that the change in technology suddenly justified robbing banks then , did they ?

 

 

Music is more about ideas anyways . Intellectual property laws were conceived to protect ideas! It's about respecting the mental effort and more importantly , the time that the author or inventor invested in study and perfecting there craft or skills and won't be able to recover . It makes sure that there is renumeration and rewards available so that there is a reason to be dedicated and devoted in order to be the best of the best .

 

 

 

Here's how a generation of music consumers feel: Free is the new Two-For-one beeyatches. Deal with it.

 

 

 

That's fine ; If that's as high as they are able to raise there aspirations , then they and there children will reap what they sow .

 

I believe ( and indeed , hope ) that there are probably more than a few from that group who would reject that sloganeering and would actually like to leave a legacy that they can be proud of as opposed to that typical hormone driven , teenage rebellion , revolutionary fervor- throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water rhetoric you are espousing . It's always easier to destroy than build .

[zuzz]

People don't even want to pay $.01 for music.

[uitar9]

Earlier someone mentioned the effect of the boomers. It's possibly quite significant. I'm 57, I have purchased $000's of music through both vinyl and cd's over the years, most of the music I will ever buy. I am part of a large group of folks who have helped the music business over the past decades. Sure, there may be a lot of great new music out there, but without hearing it on a radio station ( I do not hear things I would ever buy-it's {censored}e-I do not plan to pay for Lady Gaga electronica or the like-that;s all that plays) or my son telling me about it, I'll never hear it to buy it. I've just bought a USB turntable to move my vinyl into the mac. That's another 350 LP's worth of music I haven't heard in years.

 

My son is a holdout, as a musician himself, he still clings to the idea of supporting an artist, but he is in the minority, according to him. An earlier poster is right, if you give folks a chance to buy a title or cd for free, they will.

 

If you want to play in the music game, your gonna have to find YOUR way to make coin and most of that will probably include live shows and merch.