The music industry is going down. The Label executives are going out kicking and suing but we all know its over. The music production model has changed and there is no room for them anymore.
In Michael Calore blog post on Wired, ‘The Web’s First Rock n’ Roll Success?’, Michael touts proof of what everyone has know since Napster started up: File sharing of MP3s is good for the consumer and bad for the old school Record Industry:
“Their story is remarkable because of one fact: grassroots communication channels like MySpace and P2P file trading networks worked better than the major-label hype machine. The Arctic Monkeys became hugely popular because they wrote good songs, made them available to their fans for free, and encouraged them to share the MP3s with their friends.”
The Arctic Monkey, after this sort of promotion realised “the fastest-selling independent debut in UK history”. The article/post goes on to say “The major labels are still scratching their heads wondering why the kids aren’t buying records they way they used to.”, and teh answer to that is, I say, is because the stuff the record companies have been pumping out is not art, its manufactured shite. They spend X million on promotions and more than double their money before the teeny boppers figure out that its shite. Now, the teeny boppers are downloading the one song on the album an realising the rest is garbage and before they go out and buy it (if they still intended to) the next fad hits them and they have forgotten about what they were just listening to.
I noted an article back in 200x called ‘The New Economics of Music: File-Sharing and Double Moral Hazard’ in which the same argument is put forward but using economic theory:
Fundamentally, I’m going to argue that consumers download music, as much to derive extra value from getting something for free, as they do because they want insurance against buying something they didn’t want in the first place. File-sharing is as much about risk-sharing as it is about the ‘theft’ of value. Technological changes have made this possible - but the way the business model of the music industry is at odds with the implicit contract it signs with listeners is what makes it probable.
Ultimately it means that the record industry has to start finding real artist rather than manufacturing fads. Good for real music artist, good for us the consumers. Everyone wins except the fat middle men. Maybe the internet can eliminate all the middle men of the world. I hope Real Estate agents are next.