i think Trent Reznor "gets" it

[yermom]

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,page=1


Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.

make money on shows and tshirts. selling CDs really is a dying business no matter how much Sony/BMG, etc... tries to fight it, they are becoming less and less necessary

[King Crimson]

this is the truth of "branding" and the digital marketplace. the actual commodity as a extension in physical space that costs a finite amount is not the revenue stream not the true "product".

by the same token, the indie bands of the early 80's were saying the same thing when the big guys controlled access to recording (REM promised to sell their records through the mail) and David Bowie was saying this stuff in the mid 90's with the dot.com "gold rush". we'll see. the bastards are resilient if anything.

[OUstud]

I respect Reznor because he's seemingly the only voice of reason in the music industry...if only I liked his music though. :(

[bluedogok]

What most people don't understand about the large record companies is they are really nothing more than a bank that specializes in speculative lending at exorbitant rates to people making music. Their business is not making records, that is just the widget they use as collateral and that why it is just "product" to them. Most artists have always made their living touring, it's only when you become mainstream huge like a Michael Jackson, U2, Metallica, Garth Brooks, etc. that you make a ton of money on your record contract but by then you have already made them enough money that they are basically paying you based on past profit they have already received.

As far as distribution now, the digital medium has made it much easier for independents to distribute over what the indies in the 80's had when the record store was still pretty much the only means of distribution. I still prefer to have the physical medium in my hands over a digital download (I have over 600 CD's along with albums and tapes) just in case something would happen to it. Whatever I have bought online the first thing that I do is burn it to an audio CD as a backup but given a choice, I will buy a CD over the download. Maybe it is my old record store roots or knowing that anything digital can vaporize in a moment.

[StoopTroup]

Live good music is always been where it's at.

[yermom]

What most people don't understand about the large record companies is they are really nothing more than a bank that specializes in speculative lending at exorbitant rates to people making music. Their business is not making records, that is just the widget they use as collateral and that why it is just "product" to them. Most artists have always made their living touring, it's only when you become mainstream huge like a Michael Jackson, U2, Metallica, Garth Brooks, etc. that you make a ton of money on your record contract but by then you have already made them enough money that they are basically paying you based on past profit they have already received.

As far as distribution now, the digital medium has made it much easier for independents to distribute over what the indies in the 80's had when the record store was still pretty much the only means of distribution. I still prefer to have the physical medium in my hands over a digital download (I have over 600 CD's along with albums and tapes) just in case something would happen to it. Whatever I have bought online the first thing that I do is burn it to an audio CD as a backup but given a choice, I will buy a CD over the download. Maybe it is my old record store roots or knowing that anything digital can vaporize in a moment.

i still buy CDs as well, but i'd rather buy them from the artist than from the record company

but also, there is no reason the prices should be so high either. sometimes a CD is as much as a Blu-ray disc. that makes absolutely no sense

[yermom]

this is the truth of "branding" and the digital marketplace. the actual commodity as a extension in physical space that costs a finite amount is not the revenue stream not the true "product".

by the same token, the indie bands of the early 80's were saying the same thing when the big guys controlled access to recording (REM promised to sell their records through the mail) and David Bowie was saying this stuff in the mid 90's with the dot.com "gold rush". we'll see. the bastards are resilient if anything.

MPEG compression, broadband internet and cheap storage have changed the game, i guess P2P file transfers was what really threw gasoline on the fire though

[bluedogok]

i still buy CDs as well, but i'd rather buy them from the artist than from the record company
I try to as much as possible as well and much of what I buy for older stuff is used. One thing about living in Austin is we have a pretty good selection of independent and used CD stores for a city our size and they do a real good job of promoting the local artists.


but also, there is no reason the prices should be so high either. sometimes a CD is as much as a Blu-ray disc. that makes absolutely no sense
Well, the price has never been about the physical medium but rather the "intellectual property". It seems though that with each new technology introduced the majors have always used that as an excuse to raise prices.

[yermom]

really though, the only difference between buying used CDs and P2P downloading from the recording industry's perspective is that one is legal

the IP thing is true, but i still think an album isn't nearly as much work as a movie

of course, a CD should be promoting a tour. movies are different since you are buying them after the fact and lots of people just wait for the DVD now

that's really more of a problem, but they have a little more time since the files are bigger and harder to process. you have to be a touch more technical to have all the movies you'd ever want to watch on your computer with little loss in quality. although NetFlix is really mucking with that a lot like the used CD market

[picasso]

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,page=1



make money on shows and tshirts. selling CDs really is a dying business no matter how much Sony/BMG, etc... tries to fight it, they are becoming less and less necessary

Isn't that easy for an established artist to say? Dude has already made his millions.

[King Crimson]

MPEG compression, broadband internet and cheap storage have changed the game, i guess P2P file transfers was what really threw gasoline on the fire though

i realize that, compression, bandwidth and storage and such. but, conceptually the issue is not different. how do the artists get their music out and bypass the Sony/Viacoms of the world. 1. how do create a reproducible text and 2. how do you distribute it.

what i'm saying is that the nature of the commodity is changing. or has changed. and the laws are behind.

read any of the Larry Lessig stuff. for a start.

[OUAlumni1990]

Maybe this is why concert ticket prices are going through the roof, to make up for album sales.

[Frozen Sooner]

Of course the laws lag technology. They have to.

There has to be a way to commoditize works of art without categorically saying that they should be free for download. In the example that Reznor cites, albums should just be promotional material for a tour-but what about someone who creates music they wish to sell but don't wish to tour? Shouldn't there be an avenue by which that person could still sell the product of their work and control its distribution?

What about artists who don't generate a revenue stream by touring and where media sales are everything? If you own an eBook reader, you can get dang near any book you want for free and quickly-it's not like it takes much time to torrent a .3MB file. If you own a fancy enough printer, anything Picasso puts up on a website can be reproduced and hung on your wall without a single wampum going in his pocket.

I've been reading a lot of Doctorow lately-he's of the opinion that Creative Commons is the way to go and that his book sales have gone up since he's made his work available for free download. He explains this with the usual pirate's justification-that someone samples his work that normally wouldn't and gets hooked, then goes out and buys the physical medium. I'm still not convinced that this is something that's universally applicable, but it's interesting to watch him put his money where his mouth is.

[King Crimson]

Of course the laws lag technology. They have to.

There has to be a way to commoditize works of art without categorically saying that they should be free for download. In the example that Reznor cites, albums should just be promotional material for a tour-but what about someone who creates music they wish to sell but don't wish to tour? Shouldn't there be an avenue by which that person could still sell the product of their work and control its distribution?

What about artists who don't generate a revenue stream by touring and where media sales are everything? If you own an eBook reader, you can get dang near any book you want for free and quickly-it's not like it takes much time to torrent a .3MB file. If you own a fancy enough printer, anything Picasso puts up on a website can be reproduced and hung on your wall without a single wampum going in his pocket.

I've been reading a lot of Doctorow lately-he's of the opinion that Creative Commons is the way to go and that his book sales have gone up since he's made his work available for free download. He explains this with the usual pirate's justification-that someone samples his work that normally wouldn't and gets hooked, then goes out and buys the physical medium. I'm still not convinced that this is something that's universally applicable, but it's interesting to watch him put his money where his mouth is.

Creative Commons IS the way to go. i've been saying this for years on this board in one way or another.

by/buy the way, an eBook reader won't EVER get you all the books you should want to read same as iTunes won't EVER get all the records you should want to hear.

ain't the same.

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity .html

[Frozen Sooner]

I didn't say that you can get them legally. And yes, there's going to be some books that are so rare or esoteric that nobody will take the time to scan them in. On the bright side, a lot of the books you "should" want to read are in the public domain now and available through Project Gutenberg. Finally read the complete Sherlock Holmes that way.

The point is that for these artforms the revenue stream from sales of physical media is seriously threatened.

[bluedogok]

Much of it is the natural transition of business models. Much like the Model T rendered horse-drawn carriages obsolete for the most part it happens to almost everything. The desperation that the recording industry acts with now is about preservation of the current system and nothing more, they don't want to have to adapt because old media people can't see the forest for the trees.

[Frozen Sooner]

Question:

Do you think that the people who create art (whether it be printed words, music, pictures, whatever) have a legitimate economic interest in that work and should have the right to commoditize it?

I agree that the current business model has been obviated by technological advance, but I haven't heard anything I find credible as yet that will protect the artist's interests.

[bluedogok]

Yes, I guess that I would not have 600+ CD's if I didn't.

I also have family who makes their living through music (country). Right now my cousins band is label-less and have gone into self distribution. When they were together the first time they were somewhat successful, a platinum and several gold records and something like 10 No. 1's on the country charts and a couple of crossover No.1's. When the band broke up in 95 he was pretty much done with the music business and was sick of the business side of things. Since getting back together they had one album come out on Koch Records and have put out a few things on their own. I've heard his gripes on the artist end and I worked at Sound Warehouse for awhile and saw the business from the distributor end 25 years ago so I have seen it from a couple of sides.

The record companies have tried to stall the inevitable digital distribution at every turn and screw new technologies like downloads, satellite and internet radio by demanding fees much, much higher than what terrestrial radio has to pay. It isn't something they can completely control so they don't want to participate, well that hasn't worked out too well for them as the marketplace just bypassed them completely. If they would have worked to help develop digital distribution instead of trying to block it they might have made the transition easier for themselves and adapt their business model for the future.

[Frozen Sooner]

Good deal. Just making sure we have common ground from which to start. I've been involved with these discussions where I found out that someone thought that artists didn't have a legitimate economic interest in their music, so the whole discussion was a waste of time.

[King Crimson]

a lot of the public domain stuff "you should want to read" as a kind of cultural heritage is taking a hit (google: Fair Use has a Posse in the UK). lot of corps want to shut it down.

my opinion about who create art is they should have the right to make their decision. and it should not be presumed that the commodity as commonly understood (as based on property law of the 18th Century and Ricardo) is the necessary beginning point.

a pig or 8 acres of land are the not same as roxio redup disc of OK Computer.

[yermom]

Isn't that easy for an established artist to say? Dude has already made his millions.

if you read the article he talks about this and how they should use the web/Twitter/myspace/forums to market themselves in the new technology and reach their fans and get started

the thing is that now the majority of the money spent on CDs doesn't even get to the artist.

[Collier11]

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,page=1



make money on shows and tshirts. selling CDs really is a dying business no matter how much Sony/BMG, etc... tries to fight it, they are becoming less and less necessary

Didnt read the entire thread but I always thought bands made money by touring and merchandise, they only receive about 10% or less of CD sales anyway from what ive heard

[Half a Hundred]

Isn't it weird that media companies, even though this is included in the name, forgot that they were never selling content in the first place, but rather the media that contained the content?

The internet undercut your entire business model. Get over it. Evolve or die.