memphis -
I really respect you a lot man, and we've been together philosophically in a number of threads on a number of issues, but here I have to respectfully disagree. Please take this response with the respect that is intended, despite our differences in opinion.
The single greatest issue for declining sales is rampant piracy and the ability for consumers to share massive amounts of music very easily via harddrives.
Neither of these phenomena occurred prior to year 2000 in any real mass consumer way. A minority of early adopter perhaps, but nothing like the Moore's Law curve of it's increase since then, essentially doubling every 18 months at like half the cost. My first 1gig harddive was $1,200 - I just bought an 8gb flash stick for $19.99...
If you look at average household bandwidth/connectivity, and price per gigabyte of storage it's a no brainer. People can argue the correlation, but really it's pretty obvious.
To say that declining sales are due to a lower quality in music I believe is misleading. Again, my soundclick versus itunes argument - the same stuff being purchased on itunes is the same stuff being stolen en mass via P2P.
If there were a real, and suddent end to P2P, all P2P, I'd expect to see a 20-30% per year increase in sales until the industry were to surpass it's previous high water mark.
No industry can compete w/ Free. This is the undeniable heart of the problem. Anything good enough to steal, is good enough to purchase. And if I'm lying I'd expect to see every iPod filled with the druck from Soundclick and not the Top 40.
The truth is, music is more integrated into peoples lives today, and is more a part of their daily experience than every before, music consumption is in fact at an all time high - but the same technology that allows for these experiences also allows for the mass scale looting of the industry and the complete disregard to copyright and IP that the recording industry (not the music business) has been built on.
It should also be noted, the single largest earning year in the music business was 1999... driven by Britney Spears, N*Sync, The Backstreet Boys and the like - I don't think this is what you are referring to as "money making quality music".
Britney is as much a pop phenom as any female superstar that has preceeded her, whether we like her or not.
I'm not sure what's driving your perspective, because from your posts I would assume that you are engaged in making quality music - and surely, you can not be the only one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by memphisindie  I agree with 99.999% of this.
I don't agree with consumer tastes have changed, they crave quality, when it isn't being served, they aren't paying.
Indies are not developing artists, they too are milking them.
I think the big diff between older folks music and todays kid's music is the older stuff made money and todays music, well, it's debatable. |