The real reason for the death of the music industry

[elfro89]

As far as "pop" is concerned, singles are the new albums.

I still buy CDs for the most part.

This statement is very true. A lot of artists and performers when they make an album, they don't just make an album full of songs that they wrote, they make an album that acts as one big window into their creativity, paying attention to song orders and creating an overall feel for what they are all about or were feeling at that time. Since I started listening to music this way, statements like "I've never really liked an album all the way through," don't mean anything to me any more since I don't listen to music on a random song by song basis. Although most bands now still make albums and have that overall vibe in mind, since the internet is making music so accessible bands are releasing, far more work on a song by song basis. I certainly see a lot less drive to buy an entire album. People ussually just buy single songs from an album because "they don't like it all the way through."

I used to be this way also, I would often hear people say "yeah man, I totally wore that album out I listened to it over and over and over man I love it." I never got that cause I could never sit and listen to a whole album, only certain songs. Something changed that though, and now I can't stand to listen to single songs or Shuffled play-lists cause it doesn't take on any meaning for me(which is fine if my goal is to just have background noise while I perform another task) Since I started listening to whole albums, I can name hundreds of albums I enjoy all the way through. If I had heard someone else say that to me about 10 years ago I would never have understood how someone could like that much music.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Good point about listening to music as background music while doing other tasks vs. listening to music for the sake of listening to music.

I rarely use the shuffle feature on my iPod.  When I do, its mostly when I'm working at something like painting a room or cleaning the kitchen and I don't want to take the time to find exactly what I want.

If I am driving in my car, or sitting in my living room I like to listen to entire albums on my iPod.

Over the years, it has so often been the case that a little known song on the album becomes my favorite instead of one of the songs released as a single.

As far as the digital vs. analog argument, I didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest. Like I mentioned, MP3s work fine for me, they allow me to have an incredible amount of music in an easily portable format.  When I first started ripping CDs I used the default settings at the time, and consequently ripped the music at a pretty basic sample rate.  I have since moved on to a higher sample rate and find that music perfectly acceptable through my modest stereo equipment.

In my opinion every music format has pros and cons.  Vinyl sounds great when you first open the package and play it for the first time, but each time you play it thereafter it seems to degrade a little bit (or a lot depending on how the record is treated.)  As a kid I used to tape my albums to cassette tapes.  Those sounded OK, but there were often hiss problems.  There were Dolby systems to minimize the hiss, but I always thought that changed the tone of the music.  In the '90s we used to get digital soundboard tapes of Grateful Dead concerts loaded onto HiFi VHS tapes.  These sounded really great, but you had to play them through a HiFi VCR machine and weren't very portable.  When CDs came along I thought they were the perfect format--the music was so much clearer than vinyl or cassette tapes.  There is an argument for the sterility of digital CDs vs the warmth of vinyl, but on my modest stereo system that never bothered me.  And as I mentioned, MP3s are what I now mostly use for the convenience, and when created with a good sample rate sound just like a CD to my ears on my stereo.

But my main point was that there is so much more music easily available now that was difficult to obtain even 25 years ago.  My MP3 music library is huge and incredibly diverse including stuff as varied as classic rock, punk rock and new wave, opera and classical, reggae, early country music, outlaw country music, folk and bluegrass, jazz, Christmas music, and God knows what else. 

The huge variety I have in my library encourages me to play albums instead of just a straight random shuffle because its jarring to hear a Puccini opera one song and a Rob Zombie song next.  I do like to make playlists and smart playlists within those categories, but I never just put the entire library on random shuffle.

In short, I am happy with my digital music these days.  Its a better experience than when I was a kid in the analog age.

 

[Alfang]

I think what some of you are missing is this, we used to put on an album and listen to the whole side, so we got to know and like more of the artists music, than just the 2nd track on the album that was popular on the radio.

And I agree thats missing, sorta. I guess it depends on weather you create a playlist, or put in a CD and hit Play.

Back in the day we all had milkcrates full of albums and a good turntable, as much as like like my mp3's I miss the old turn table days

 

[Mor Paul]

Back in the day? I need to get a new picture of the collection, actually.

 

[swarfrat]

Great thread.
btw Swarfrat, what was the album that you wouldn't take because you have it memorized? Just curious. For me it's Abbey Road.

 

[NQbass7]

Great thread.
btw Swarfrat, what was the album that you wouldn't take because you have it memorized? Just curious. For me it's Abbey Road.

For me.. it's not a classic or anything, but Blessid Union of Souls' self-titled is the one I've got memorized. It was the first CD I ever got as a kid, and the next CD I got was a year later... so for a year it was the only non-radio music I listened to. I know it pretty well.

And even with my iTunes, I still sit down and listen to an entire album all the way through. And if I stop partway through to do something else, I resume where I left off. My roommate is the same way. Listening like that is still alive and well in my generation - though for the kids born a little after me, I'm not sure because they never even had CDs.

 

[Justinginn]

Petra!  :icon_jokercolor:  arty07: :icon_thumright:

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

For those that care, John Schlitt of Petra can br heard pre-Petra with Head East. Their big hit, Never Been Any Reason.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Way to go, Max!  Thats what college should be all about.

Going way back, I remember listening to the Electric Company on my close and play as a kindergartener.  Those were the days.  Soon thereafter I learned about Layla, Stevie Wonder's Innvervisions and then Bob Marley's Live.

Its been all downhill ever since.

 

[Mor Paul]

Ha, no records at college. Not enough room.

 

[Jusatele]

When you think it about music has actual done more of a circle when it comes to singles.

If you go back half a century, more music was sold as a single.  I keep thinking back to Les Paul saying he'd just go into the studio, record a song, and release it.    That was really the dominate way of doing things.  Since then putting together a whole package of songs, with one or a few of those songs being the single, has become more the norm.

Another great example is the Beatles.  I picked up the two box sets last year and it's crazy when you realize there are 2 full CDs' worth of Beatles music (Some huge hit singles like "Hey Jude") that were never released on a Beatles album.

Can you imagine an artist in the past 30 years only releasing a single (other than a soundtrack, etc) and not putting it on a full album?

However now it seems to be we're actually heading back to that. 

Look at the internet/youtube sensation Pomplamoose.  They record a youtube video/song, then release the single on itunes all without a record company.  Of course the sad part is they probably make most of their money, or a better chunk, through T-shirt sales and ad revenue.

Maybe that is the new normal. We don’t sell albums anymore, just a few MP3 singles, then offset it as ad whore's with Google ads and T-Shirts to make ends meet.  It's a brave new world for music.

Anyway…

Contrary to what people say though, I don't think CD's/albums are dead.  Concept albums and albums in general paint a full picture of an artist and their music at a given time.    A collection of songs can be just that, a collection of songs.  That will definitely be the main  focus for Pop artists.  But at the same time the album can also be a work of art, with an arch, or telling a story that only be told in a series of songs (think movements in a symphony).  And as long as there still  are "artists" out there, the album as a collective piece of musical art will never die.

Fantastic post, and took the words out of my mouth

I think we saw a HEYDAY of entire album sales over the 33 rpm, cassette, cd rules decades between the 70s and the 2000s and I think the entire thing was driven by the technology and marketing of the day.
with the internet marketing and MP3 formats we now can buy single songs very easily and they are more portable than a Sony Walkman was 15 years ago. My MP3 player has over 590 songs and I am only 2/3rds full. I actually need to get different players for different genres I think.

Anyway, with the return of the single format I think a musician is going have to depend more on personal appearance that sales for his money such as he did during the early days of recorded music. And remember some of the most famous musicians of all time we have either no, or very primitive recordings of. Music will live on, it is just the Barons will need to figure out new ways to live off the talent of the Musicians.

 

[swarfrat]

Justinginn, they're doing a reunion tour with the Beat The System lineup this year. I keep checking the website for dates, but not a lot of US dates so far.  I like Schlitt's tone, but my favorite material was w Greg Volz.  I never got to see them with this lineup as a kid, so this is a once in a lifetime take a day or two off work roadtrip kinda deal for me.

As for albums as an integral body of artistic work... I realize there are artists who do that. They tend to be the ones who release an album every 5 years. Most of them are probably just the best 10 songs pulled from a hat under pressure to get a record out. But I still think listening in order changes the way we form attachments. And yes, I will still skip songs, rewind..

I'm w Steve on the formats. I grew up on vinyl.  I don't really miss the rice krispy triplets, rumble, etc. I think a far far bigger deal is that we've all replaced floor standing speakers that could reliably hit 40 hz with teeny tiny satellites and one note "subs" crossed over at 100Hz or higher, not physically colocated with the with rest of the spectrum,  that can only wheeze out 85 db 1w/1m efficiences.  I really don't care if the sub can do 20 Hz if the crossover is sitting right on the guitar's A string.

 

[Updown]

OH they we're the good'ol days, still have a few hundred albums & lots of singles here.
Couple of my very 1st singles we're 'Zoot' Eleanor Rigby …. 'Shocking Blue' Venus …. The Monkees
Yep I'm that old  :cool01:
We use to stack them on top of each other, on a tall spindle & when one finished the next would fall down
and play, then the next & so on it went, till we turned them over & played the other side.
Did the same thing with Albums too.

:icon_scratch: Ever heard of a 3 sided album ?

Well there was one I can remember, it was a 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' album.
On one side it had double grooves.
You'd play the record from the start then to play the 3rd side you had to put the needle down in the right groove.
(not sure if anyone else did that)

The thing I really miss mostly from albums was the art cover & write ups etc of the albums.
This is something that sold an Album in those days.
Plus the sleeve inserts sometimes had heaps of writing / lyrics / picture's on them too.

Who here remembers Alice Copper's 'Schools Out' record, Came with a pair of nickers over the record.  :laughing7:

Now with CD's I gotta get my reading glasses  :glasses9: out to bloody read whats written on the CD covers.
Or see whats happening in the picture on the cover.
(don't laugh you will too when ya get to my age)

I always listen to an album / tape / Cd from start to finish, it's how a album was put together for listening to.
ie: different tempo for the next song.

Try listening to  :icon_scratch: Ummmmmm …. Pink Floyd on shuffle ….. It just doesn't work.

These days playing CD's I don't use shuffle as you might get 4 up tempo songs followed by 4 slow tempo songs.
It's NOT how a album or CD is but together.

A mate of mine (Blackouts) who is on this forum as well, use to manage some large Record Stores in Sydney.
Then worked for the Polygram Record company.
Holy crap    did he have one hell of a collection (still has) You name it, he had it !!
All kept in absolute mint condition.

Use to love dropping in, and spending hours looking though all the album covers in his shop.
Plus you always had people in there from known bands looking at albums too.

Used my old mans record player (Till I got my own) the needle could be turned over, so we had to use
one side for your records & he had his side for his.  :doh:  And he knew if we used his side !!

The days of the records we're doomed when internet etc took over.
Plus wasn't it the materials used to make them as well.

Al thou there are some still putting out albums / records ……… Yep the old large plastic dinner plates.  :laughing3:

I do have a large CD collection but I'll admit it, I haven't bough one for a while now ….
Usually get CD's these days as Xmas or B/Day presents.

I can honestly say I haven't bought anything from iTunes !!

Plus now making my own music, so I get lost in that now.  :icon_biggrin:

Thanks for the memories all  :toothy10:

 

[ptirman]

For those that care, John Schlitt of Petra can br heard pre-Petra with Head East. Their big hit, Never Been Any Reason.

Great trivia tidbit there. It's funny but I was at a fish house in Ventura the other day and classic rock was being played and Head East's song came on. I whipped out my iphone, identified the song by the app Shazam and then downloaded it all while at the restaurant. Then listened to it with my wife as we drove home. She hadn't heard it before. Thus is the state of technology in my life today.

I wondered what happened to them. Now I know, Petra. I need to listen to that one.
Cheers.

 

[Cagey]

OH, and the record industry isn't dead by any means! It's only the giant labels that are hurting, not all the artists on their own labels selling away with fewer middlemen. I think this is a brilliant time for musicians and listeners.

God's own truth. The RIAA would have everyone believe (including lawmakers) that the sky is falling due to piracy, but it's not so. The music industry (not the record industry) is actually growing. However, the recording industry is shrinking. People aren't buying disks the way they did when they were replacing their vinyl and tape collections, or even as much for new stuff. There's just no point to it in many cases. Recorded music has become a product known as "infinite goods". That is, the marginal cost of creation has fallen very nearly to zero. You can make 1,000,000 copies of something for roughly the same cost as 1. So, the recording industry is left without a product. At least, not on the scale they were used to. They used to be able to sell a million albums. Now they can only sell one, and it's reproduced a million times. It could be reproduced eleventy bajillion times, and it would still be as good as the original. There's no generational loss.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

For those that care, John Schlitt of Petra can br heard pre-Petra with Head East. Their big hit, Never Been Any Reason.

Great trivia tidbit there. It's funny but I was at a fish house in Ventura the other day and classic rock was being played and Head East's song came on. I whipped out my iphone, identified the song by the app Shazam and then downloaded it all while at the restaurant. Then listened to it with my wife as we drove home. She hadn't heard it before. Thus is the state of technology in my life today.

I wondered what happened to them. Now I know, Petra. I need to listen to that one.
Cheers.

They had 2 vocalists, as that song is actually a duet.  Surely him leaving didn't bankrupt the band, for all I know he was fired.  I'm not familiar with their body of work, but as far as 70s synth rock goes, that song is as good as any and holds it own to Steve Miller Band.  FWIW, playing that guitar intro, do not have the Stone's Brown Sugar or AC/DC's You Shook Me on the brain or it will quickly morph into one of those.

 

[Eric Banjitar]

A few more reasons for the death of the music industy:

1- Studio time used to be exclusive and expensive, now it is abundant and cheap.
2- Records (vinyl) were expensive to distribute (heavy and heat sensitive)- now distribution is weightless and FREE.

And you know what else?  F*&@ the music industry.  When cds started to replace vinyl in the stores we were all told how this revolutionary new media has superior sound and was virtually indestrutable (lies).  Many, myself included, payed $12 to $15 a piece to replace our "now-outdated" vinyl. A few years later I realized that their cost of production was much lower than that of vinyl and the whole process could be duplicated with my cheapo home pc for a few cents per unit. I felt ripped-off as a consumer. The printing on a cd booklet is the greatest cost during production and they are printed so small as to not be able to be read. F@ck them.

 

[Justinginn]

swarf, I regret to inform you that I don't really listen to Petra. But me and my worship-leading buddies joke about them all the time as the cure to contemporary Christian music. That's why this exists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozCnrPeUrzM

And yes, this is how my church plays the song.

 

[stubhead]

There are two main reasons that the "death of Bambi, the Innocent record company" reports keep popping up, year after year, steady for the past 15 years. The first is lazy reporting. Traditional newspapers still have a few "senior" reporters on staff in Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles. The reason they exert such influence on the perception of the industry is because they've been around a long while, and they're not dead yet. Which is thought to impart wisdom and/or accuracy in their reporting. And because it's written, it must be right, and it's already there, so all the (lazy?) V-jays copy the same few "sources" over and over. And, over the years these old-guy reporters have cultivated great sources among the old-guy, old-fashioned, declining major labels like Sony/BMG and Warners.

Now, in order for reporters to justify their own existence (and remained EMPLOYED), they need to file stories. Over and over and over, the stories remain the same, just different names. And when a reporter needs an easy 1,200 or 1,500 word article, all they have to do is pick up the phone and call one of their "reliable", "in-the-know" sources within the major label record companies. And we all know what story they'll get out of that: CD's are getting murdered because sales have dropped so precipitously, it's the goddam Napster/Pandora/bootleggers/Chinese counterfeiters that are robbing us blind! "We've 'lost' 50 million dollars to these criminals in a single month!"

One really weird thing - these corporations never had this money to begin with, it's not THEIRS and never was - when they calculate how much money they've lost, it's by comparing how much money they really did make, against how much money they thought they ought to make. And companies attract investors and increase their stock value by "projecting" that they're about to make a whole shitpile of money.

The names and supposed methods of the thieving, anti-business anti-Amurricun scum change over the years, but it's still a super-easy story to write, especially if you're a "senior" reporter and you've got all 50 of those articles you've written over the years stashed on your hard drive. You just pull out any old one, it's already structured properly to tell the story - lead paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion, a real human in there somewhere as anecdotal "evidence" of the suffering of the millionaires. It's already practically writ, you just have to change the dates, names and amounts. It's like an hour's worth of work, and you can go out drinking for the rest of the week.

Ever notice how concert and club reviews have kind of a sameness to them? If you were supposed to review the U2 concert in New York, and you can used the newspaper's database to pull up the U2 concerts in Philly and D.C and Baltimore the previous few nights, why, you could almost just write the review before the concert! Just give your premium-seating free press tickets to some kid, he calls you at 3am to get the setlist right and account for odd costumes, broken strings... and this is pretty much industry-standard, no biggie. It's all good.... You don't want to do it too often, but you're certainly not going to get fired over it unless you get caught in a major boner - you got your column inches filled, with an article that made the readers happy. Every once in a while, it gets goofed and the editors print the review before the concert. And the reporter gets fired, of course, not the editor.

And the (gasp) SECOND reason for the "death of...." is the astonishingly misguided, greed-powered and totally hallucinatory dollar value that the companies place on their own services, executive expertise (for pete's sakes) and executive salaries and... their stuff - buildings, studios, Learjets & limousines (for the execs, natch); coo-cuddle'n'bang'm "secretaries." And what blew these guys up to the size of inflatable rubber love gods with egos and expense accounts to match was - CD sales.

Specifically, CD's containing the back catalog that they already owned. Up till the mid-1980's CD's were of new music - then some wise guy figured out that they could re-release music that they already OWNED - it cost them pennies on the dollar to start plumbing the back catalog, and to this day some of the best-selling CD's ever have been old music. And they're still scraping around the (metaphorical) bottom - how creative can you get with old Beatle tapes? "Hey - let's break the tapes down and reissue each single track - in mono! Bwa Ha Ha Ha.... suckers'll buy ANYTHING!"

Anyway, the point of the reissue issue is that at it's peak of late 80's to mid 90's the record companies were clocking ridiculous profits of 800%, 900%, even 1,200%. And the computerized !Profit Alert! klaxon at Giant Greed Incorporated began to howl, and investment companies like Seagrams and Bain Capital (Mitt Romney's band of pirates) said "Whoa - nobody's allowed to make money like that - except US!" and they  gobbled up the ownership stock of the record companies. 

And then what happened? NOT file-sharing and NOT the internet and NOT downloads vs. CD's, what happened was that all the CD's-replacing-old-vinyl got sold. There was no more old music to BE plundered, it all got used up. Nobody wants any more producer's cut select re-mastered by God blessed by a monk n' liner notes by the apostles re-re-re-crap. It's DONE... And they've cast about desperately, re-re-re-releasing the "master" editions of a record with all the outtakes and releasing FOUR-CD "gold editions" of single CD's (mebbe the bands threw out the other stuff fo' a reason?) But it's all gone, dried up, ghost town... and they've tried making NEW old music, dog knows all the Beatles throwback bands with their bangs and Chuck Taylors and skinny ties are doing exactly what Giant Greed Incorporated orders them to - but they suck; and Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and Amy Winehouse and the Dap Kings play old instruments and record in black & white, but they're just imitating what once was good and now it's wore-out; and the neo-psychedelians play far more in-tune than the real psychedelians ever did, but that's only 1/10th of why they suck.

The problem is, now that GGI has gotten used to making 1,200% profits, they think it's their due - "I'm so-oo smart!" - and they've got payments to make on their yachts and Learjets and cut-crystal toilets, coo-cuddle'n'bang'm's preggers with rat #2, and they're like a big fat bloated blind baby and not only has mommy taken their bottle away, there is no more bottle and there is no more mommy! And baby is angry, oh-so-angry. Sue your own fudging customers, sure, that's a smart way to make money.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/8766110-452/how-romney-grew-rich-by-plundering-companies.html

(kin I have like, a prize?) :hello2:

 

[tfarny]

Stub, I love it when you smoke a little too much weed and give to a forum post 100% of your stubheadedness. Cheers dude.  ccasion14: ccasion14: