George Massenburg's AES Convention Keynote Speech

[Johnny B]

George Massenburg is a creative mind who can also use his skill as a critical thinker... a skill which is apparently in short supply the world over.

At the time of his convention speech, GM raised some difficult questions...

difficult questions...many of which have gone unanswered to this day...

Read it for yourselves...

http://www.aes.org/events/103/

[Oldone]

Originally Posted by Johnny B

George Massenburg is a creative mind who can also use his skill as a critical thinker... a skill which is apparently in short supply the world over.

At the time of his convention speech, GM raised some difficult questions...

difficult questions...many of which have gone unanswered to this day...

Read it for yourselves...

http://www.aes.org/events/103/

The key point is reinvestment in our youth. This is why the music industry has all but died. Even the NFL uses money for youth leagues to keep the supply of talent continuous.

I think its ludicrous that the people who benefited the most from the music industry over the last 50 years put the money up their nose instead of into cultivation. Artists and studio executives took the money and ran. Little to no reinvestment in the culture, art form or technology. Greed, greed, greed; look where that has taken us.

Warner Brothers, A&M, Atlantic, Sony, BMI, ASCAP just to name a few should have been investing in youth programs in our neighborhoods instead of taking money for nothing!

[Gavin]

I'd love to see someone do some double-blind scientific tests, as I'd imagine Massenberg was suggesting, of some of these topics. How does analog v digital storage, bit rate and resolution, amount of compression and limiting, affect how much listeners enjoy the song itself.

[BrianT]

Major labels are well on their way to irrelevance. I say this as a person who has made my living doing records for them for over 2 decades.

They are just too unwieldy and top-heavy to adapt and survive in the current world. Think I'm wrong?

As far as consumers are concerned, the greatest innovation in buying and enjoying music in the last 20+ years since the Audio CD was invented, is the iPod/iTunes combo. It was created by Apple, a computer company, not a music company. And the primary involvement of the record companies was opposition.

That pretty much says it all, in regards to how saavy and relevant the large, conglomerate record companies are at this point in time. In their current form, they are dead men walking, in terms of longterm business viablity.