Good read: 'Off the record' (Robert Sandall | Prospect Magazine August 2007: In recent years, the economics of pop music have been upended

This is a great read if you want to know what's coming (and not only because I am quoted in it ;): 'Off the record' by Robert Sandall | Prospect Magazine August 2007

My favorite nuggets (quoted here cause I could not have said it better myself):

"Record sales as we know them are in long-term decline," says music business analyst Keith Jopling. "Whereas the wider music market—live, merchandising, streaming video and music social networking—is in rude health. After seven years of gradual change, we are about to see a major shift. Record companies are, at last, in a hurry to transform themselves into proper consumer marketing companies."

My comment: reminds me a lot of what Don Tapscott is saying in his book "Wikinomics": In 2006 the successful companies launched open access platforms while the losers were building walled gardens.  How true.

"...although Britons still buy more CDs per head than anyone else—2.7 in 2006—the market for recorded music is in rapid decline. In the first quarter of 2007, the market for the top-selling 200 CDs in Britain shrank by 20 per cent compared to the same period in 2006. In the US, CD sales in 2007 are down by 15 per cent, in France 25 per cent, in Canada 35 per cent. The German market, once the largest in Europe, is now no bigger than that of the Netherlands..."

My comment: Boy, is it URGENT to sell access not copies. Even a blind person can start to see this now. License ACCESS. Share revenues. Read Muserati!

"...Rather like the "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign mounted by record companies in the 1980s, the arrival of illegal file-sharing coincided with an increase in legitimate sales of recorded music in the three largest markets: America, Japan and Britain. This supported the file-sharers' defence that their activities were no more harmful to music sales than the arrival of free radio airplay in the 1930s..."

"A rediscovery, or a renewed appreciation, of the communal source of music-making—and listening— must lie near the root of this upending of the music business. As personal stereos and MP3 players have grown in popularity, so has an appreciation that music isn't just something that goes on between your ears. The guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax expressed this rather neatly: "Our album is the menu," he explained. "The concert is the meal."

My comment: nice bottom line. I should start using that. Menus are free, meals are not.

Comments

[Colie Brice]

Perhaps the only thing I can hope to do as an individual artist is produce works of sufficient substance, merit or appeal that inspire patronage. Music is everywhere and is an essential component to many for a life worth living, but it is all too often taken for granted by many people - like fresh air or water. I believe that the government should be making educational and vocational training available to music business professionals who have been utterly displaced by these profound changes that have occured.

A lot of people express such contempt for labels without ever even knowing the full score or reality of life at a record label. Major labels employ more than fat cat lawyers and accountants. There are engineers, archivists, shipping clerks, warehouse pickers, etc. - all good, regular people who are also suffering from this radical transformation. There will always be people willing to pay for live music, but not all studio work or composition is intended for live performance. These people deserve compensation for their efforts too. Its endemic of a contemporary society that frequently values style over substance and is ruled by selfish greed and apathy towards the plight of others.

I'm 39 years old, I support a wife and two children. I have been in the music business for over twenty years. I have been a major label artist and I have swept studio floors - most of the time I've been somewhere in between. I have often worked twice as hard for half as much as people in comparable positions in other industries because I know I have been fortunate to work in the area of my heart's desire.

Now as I approach my fortieth birthday I am eeking out a living in the fragments and scraps of an industry where at this stage of the game I should have been enjoying some of the fruits of my labor. I earned the right to health care and financial security just as much as anyone else in another field. In its stead, survival has become the new success in my area of expertise.

I hope people at least think about people in my position the next time they visit lime wire.

Granted I'm not a young kid in Iraq dodging bulletts over a bullshit war, and I know its all a relative matter of perspective and that I have much more to be grateful for than bitter about.

Yet all the same I believe working artists and musicians deserve to make a living too..