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The recording industry's bigger problem has been that for the past twenty years or more, it seems to have gotten the idea that its consumer base consists almost entirely of twelve year old girls, and at the same time the bigger companies have been absorbing or destroying all the smaller labels that actually produce the innovative music that people want to hear and would willingly pay for. You know there's a problem when kids are saying that all the new music is garbage and listen to music that was made before their parents were born. That's not to say good music is not out there, it's just really hard to find sometimes. I have heard a few owners of small labels say that they actually welcome the emerging distribution models, and if some of the music is downloaded or whatever (within reason) then that's cool too. That means that they are reaching an audience that is increasingly hard to reach, and so have the potential to find revenue by less traditional means. So while the days of super-bands are probably over, small labels and bands can actually make a decent living now doing what they love to do - producing good music that people like. Consider this: most bands make their money through live performances and licensing. When you look at the total record sale for a band like the Rolling Stones versus their overall net worth, it becomes pretty apparent that, considering their percentage of the sales, they could not have made all their money by moving boxes full of vinyl, CDs or whatever. The same is true for just about every artist you've ever heard of. To the irritation of the big labels, though, these new models are quickly cutting out the guys in the middle who don't really care about the quality of the music. They don't seem to get the idea that if they made an effort to produce a product that people want, then (surprise) people will but it. Instead of putting a pile of money into five "artists" that suck, spread it out to smaller projects that collectively do well - like the small labels do it. I actually heard one of these boring suits discussing the downloading problem on a business program, and he said that if illegal downloading continued on its present course then they would no longer be able to finance all the mega-expensive music videos. All I can say to that is that we should all fire up BitTorrent and make it happen. |