Change Of Heart in the Music Biz
Posted by rexdixon on December 6, 2006
I guess it took them almost 8 years to recognize that mp3’s are a legitimate format for distributing music via the internet. Napster was on to something big, and I’ve said it time and time again – you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Instead of figuring a way quick enough to capitalize on the distribution format, the industry instead stuck back at the consumer. They wanted to somehow make a ton of cash off it first, and then let the consumer have it.
At the end of the day, you can argue DRM (digital rights management) or that the record companies were losing money (as they still say 20% decline in sales) and whatever excuse you come up with. The bottom line was the fact that some music attorney was about to be out of his record company job. It was all about the money for the record companies, and was never anything about the musician ever. It wasn’t anything about copyrights and paying the musician.
All in all, when push has come to shove, mp3’s basically are a durable format. Not perfect by any means. But very easily portable, and interchangable with many devices. Recognizable worldwide, and referred to in the same token as “album” is still to this day when in fact it is a CD.
You will almost never hear someone say “Hey dude, what .wma files do you have on your computer.” or “Do you have some .wma files we can burn to a CD to jam with?”
No. It’s always been “You have any mp3’s you can burn off for me?” or “Dude, you got a crapload of mp3’s.. let’s burn some discs!”
Yes. mp3’s were always here to stay, the only people in denial were the lawyers sitting at the corporations that were going out of business. The record companies. Long live the mp3 format.
Technically Speaking 
Jay said
Professional artists/writers/producers are compensated through a number of royalties from the sale of their music, not from the theft or “donation” of them.
I believe that the internet is a great tool for promoting your music and connecting with your fan base, but you can’t support yourself by allowing everything you create to be given away for free.
With that being said I agree with your comment that the labels are indeed trying to protect their bottom line, but I don’t know what artist would argue that the bottom line is not important to them as well.
The term independent should not be synonomous with being “broke and care free” so those labels and artist will soon understand that they have to protect their music. The market place is evolving and the companies have to adjust to smaller margins and alternate revenue streams.
rexdixon said
I agree to a certain extent, but artists that are independent CAN make it, and in fact DO make it. Good examples of that are – Cowboy Mouth, Spin Doctors.
Spin Doctors never signed with a label until they had their market down, and were running profitable.
It’s all about running your music/band as a BUSINESS vs “care free and broke”. Point is, you can do it, but you have to be smart about it.
Rex
RIAA « Technically Speaking said
[…] It’s kind of funny when I’m right. Artists (musicians) have been getting the shaft for years. I go and made this post the other day, and my one comment was basically in defense of the industry and against independent artists. Well once again, Rex Dixon does know a bit more then you think. […]
Anders Jackson said
There is research that state that the music distribution companies losses isn’t as large as they claim. I guess that there claimes of “loosing” revenues in size of BNP(swedish term?) of France should give some perspective to there claims. And the income of house holds for recreations isn’t relativly bigger now then 10-20 years ago. Now there is other stuff that cost money, that music has to compete with.
So, yes. The music indudtries are loosing money, but that becouse they stick to an old buisness model, just like automatic piano roll manufacturers back 100-150 years ago went out of buisness.