Recording Industry: Beginning of the End?

[Highlander179]

I thought she had her own label... Maverick? She dumped herself?

[kstar]

Originally Posted by Highlander179

I thought she had her own label... Maverick? She dumped herself?

I think the point is that she is dumping the "industry" - the fast becoming "old" model.

FWIW.

Best,

Kurt

[bpoteat]

Originally Posted by kstarnes

More News: "Madonna Dumps Record Industry"

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/10/and-the-walls-came-tumbling-down-madonna-dumps-record-industry/

Excerpt:
The deal shows that even for a world famous act, a record company is no longer required in the days of digital downloads and P2P music sharing.

It's no longer required especially for a world famous act.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by stuartj

I hope not. Not to bemoan the fate of record companies, but the kiddies down loading one song.....can you imagine not having the experience of Dark Side, or Close to Edge, or Grace, or Blood on the Tracks, or OK Computer or the White Album or Sgt Peppers...music and recording is more than Beyonce, I hope.

Or probably Im just old.

Exactly my point with the comment on the ADD generation... so many tracks on those and many more albums I would have never heard and loved had I just picked out the hits off those albums.

Can you imagine someone going to Beethoven and asking him to cut out part of one of his symphonies?

[nostatic]

I should sue them all...we gave away our album online in '04. AND made remix tracks available for free

http://www.simpleflower.com/sounds.php

http://www.simpleflower.com/remix.php

[Sonic dB]

If record companies go away, it won't hurt the already successful ones. It will make it that much harder for new bands to take off and get national exposure.

I agree, now Madonna as powerful as she still is, is able to sign with the Live Nation (or whatever they are called) to promote her records...but I still do not see how they will handle DISTRIBUTION of the CDs, (85% of CDs are still bought in stores believe it or not).

KC911 -- Led Zeppelin Credited Willie Dixon for "You Shook Me" and I believe he ended up getting royalties for it.

WhippedPuppy -- Downloading music for "free" (aka stealing) for most people means never having to pay for it. You are in the exception if you really do buy the CDs of bands who's music that you liked after you downloaded it.

Most artists have MySpace or some other form where you can preview the music, often the entire song before you purchase it..... so would that eliminate the need for folks such as yourself who download first before buying? heck now you could just go to their MySpace and listen to some cuts before you buy... Note, im not being critical here...just saying.

Most artists who are established get about $1 out of a CD store sale. But note that it comes out of the wholesale price to the store...which is more like about $11.99... and then you have other considerations cause it is usually 90% or even as low as 80% of the retail -minus- packaging costs -minus- "breakage" -minus- returns -minus- recoupable recording costs and other associated costs... so there is your $1 for the best of artists, and actually lower than that for the less established artists.

Now, there we are talking about Mechanical Royalties, there are other forms of royalties which include publishing, statutory and synchronization rights etc.

Obviously the traditional Record Company does its best to keep as much money as possible and pay the artist as little as possible.

I do not think the RIAA will die, it will just need complete restructuring to survive.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by lfot

Exactly.
I'm an independent artist, and for every song I sell on iTunes, I personally get around 65¢. That adds up QUICK! I get as much return from iTunes as I do from selling actual CDs after you include distro and shipping and all that.

iTunes is a god-send for the independent music industry, no matter how many people complain about Steve Jobs and/or Apple.

The other god-send is CDBaby.com. Amazing company for independent artists.

How do you get yourslf into iTunes without label help? Is this something anyone can do? How much do you have to front?

And who gets the royalties for all the millions of cd's of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.? Their families? Estates? How does that work? I always wondered who got royatlies on Bibles or Mein Kampf too.

[Sonic dB]

Ifot, checked out your music, very nice stuff. The concept of the film and music together is great.

[imcarthur]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

And who gets the royalties for all the millions of cd's of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.? Their families? Estates? How does that work? I always wondered who got royatlies on Bibles or Mein Kampf too.

Works registered before 1/1/1923 - Copyright protection for 75 years has expired and these works are in the public domain.

See Public Domain Music

With this movement to downloading, doesn't it bother anyone that the quality of the recordings you are d'loading and/or buying sucks? Compression is compression is compression & whether mp3 or aac or whatever, it ain't as good as the original recording. And yes, you can tell.

Ian

[Porsche-O-Phile]

It would only bother me if the recording was something worth listening to in the first place. Most of the over-produced noise coming out now isn't worth a discriminating ear.

[lfot]

Originally Posted by Sonic dB

Ifot, checked out your music, very nice stuff. The concept of the film and music together is great.

Thanks much!

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

How do you get yourslf into iTunes without label help? Is this something anyone can do? How much do you have to front?

I get digital distro through CDBaby.com. So I'm actually available just about anywhere in the world music is sold on the internet. For each album on CDBaby, they charge you I think $35. That includes CD sales and shipping and distro to digital outlets. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll automatically be on iTunes. They have some sort of approval process. But past the first album from an artist, it happens much faster.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by imcarthur

With this movement to downloading, doesn't it bother anyone that the quality of the recordings you are d'loading and/or buying sucks? Compression is compression is compression & whether mp3 or aac or whatever, it ain't as good as the original recording. And yes, you can tell.

Ian

All compression is not created equal . You are indeed correct regarding MP3, etc. but serious audiophiles avoid these like the plague. "Lossless compression" is indeed indentical to the original when decompressed. FLAC, SHN, etc. are "lossless" and the only compressed formats that I use. MP3 is fine for ipods, etc. imo.

[rammstein]

Originally Posted by KC911

All compression is not created equal . You are indeed correct regarding MP3, etc. but serious audiophiles avoid these like the plague. "Lossless compression" is indeed indentical to the original when decompressed. FLAC, SHN, etc. are "lossless" and the only compressed formats that I use. MP3 is fine for ipods, etc. imo.

That's what I was getting at with my earlier post. Somebody was mentioning the initial recording process too, which I'd love to learn more about, but definitely not all digital music is the same.

[kstar]

Madonna was at Warner Brothers, and still owes them one record according to this from Variety. Of course, WB says this is no big deal while it's stock has lost 2/3 of its value in the past year:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117973901.html?categoryid=18&cs=1


A Madonna exit won't trouble WB
Studio issues statement regarding departure
By PHIL GALLO

Madonna

The day after news leaked that Madonna was close to leaving Warner Bros. Records and hitting the road with concert promoter Live Nation, Warner Music was quick to issue a report from a Bank of America subsidiary explaining why the former material girl is no longer worth a nine-digit payday.
Knowing that Warner will still receive a Madonna disc next year, Banc of America Securities analysts wrote a report titled "For $120 Million, She's All Yours." Here are some of the highlights:

There is "headline risk associated with a Madonna defection. However, the bigger risk would be to overpay for an artist that does not seem to be generating the revenue to support the contract being discussed."
Beside the fact that Madonna will turn 60 years old in the last year of the proposed deal, it is "fantastic" for her but does not "make economic sense" for WMG.
"Her loss will not meaningfully impact Warner's near-term sales."
Banc of America has a "buy" rating on Warner Music Group stock, which closed down 16¢ on Thursday at $11.13. BofA figures WMG will rise to $16 based on its strength in the digital delivery department. Over the past 12 months, WMG's stock has dropped from $27.24 to a low of $9.41 last month.

Wednesday's news did not do much for Live Nation as its stock price dropped 87¢ to $22.49.

[Sonic dB]

Somebody was mentioning the initial recording process too, which I'd love to learn more about, but definitely not all digital music is the same.

Digital encoding compression is one thing.... but one of the other major reasons why music today 'sounds like crap' is the overuse of audio compression that is used during the tracking, mixing and mastering process of both the individual instruments and the entire mix. This is to "get everything to sound loud" but in many cases sqashes the life and dynamics out of a song. Compression IS important to the recording, mixing and mastering process...but the overdone compression which has really become prevalent from the early 90s on to today is one of the major reasons why the music can sound bad.

Regarding digital compression loss during encoding...yeah it may be there but
not as big of a deal to me personally...as I grew up listening to scratch records and hissy cassette tapes. To my ears the major concern is the music, how it is recorded, mixed and mastered...

[john70t]

What about an artist links network?

The way it would work:
Each artist has a homepage with previews, direct downloadable music (choice of several brokers), with a standardized itemized list of:
1)Favorite bands in each music catagory, with multiple tags for some.
2)Favorite recent upcoming bands seen in concert, etc..
3)Other favorite other media-books, movies.

The user/consumer could just follow direct links from their favorite artist sites to find references to new bands.
--------------Or---------------------
From a direct search site(or three) the user could enter their favorite bands and tag words to find music.
For example, [Favorite=NIN and Favorite=Madonna], [Find=rockabilly, best recent concert]).
A set of algorythims would search outwards from a [5 link layer] for any common band references, each additiional layer, of course, being exponential.
[Results in order of numerical occurences=Line Dancing Fools[Link, from Link], Buck Tooth Morons[Link, from Link], Wailing Violas[Link, from Link].

This way artists can get paid directly, help supprt other unknown artists they like, and the user/consumer can find bands they never would have discovered on their own, and not be force-fed the latest fad by the RIAA.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by john70t

What about an artist links network?....

Here is just one example of a site that bands use for live show downloads while generating an income stream for the bands. Most of these sites are a smaller "grassroots" type of effort, but there are lots of them out there "under the mainstream radar" and it's the future imo. The "bigger" artists will go it alone as they have already begun to do. It's a good thing... for artistic freedom imo.

edited: ps: forgot the link: digitalsoundboard.net

[Superman]

Record companies with their distribution networks have been sucking artists dry and commercializing their art. The new developments are good ones. Artists can now access markets much more easily and directly. The Man is going to get a big raspberry from the artists.

The Man has focused on revenues. That's not the same as artists' goals. Artists are more focused on distributing their expression to the widest audience. Not the same goal as the record companies.

As I say, these new developments are positive. Very much so.