But APE.. if it weren't for modern tech and youtube, we wouldn't have justin bieber. How can you consider something like that and honestly say that musical quality is declining!
There has always been a lot of musical crap but when we think of the 60's - 90's, time fortunately seems to filter out most of it. Modern tech and the net has just made it possible for many more to join in on the act! Also, the concept of the completely manufactured artist is not something new to this modern era either, it goes back to the 60's. The Monkeys were probably the most well known early example. Again, modern tech just makes it easier/cheaper.
Okay so in seriousness.. sounds to me like.. it's easier than ever to build an audience, but harder than ever to monetize an audience when you have them.
I'm not sure if it is easier than ever to build an audience. In the 90's we were looking at the opportunities which virtually free digital distribution could bring us. And, to a large extent this was our error because we were thinking about "us" in terms of the relatively few of us who could afford the recording equipment and/or could afford to hire the commercial studios. Obviously some of the tech was becoming way cheaper but the other tech and the knowledge/skill to use it wasn't, what we didn't foresee was that this cheap tech would inspire new "underground" genres of music which didn't value production standards and therefore bypassed this other expensive tech and the expensive knowledge/experience to use it correctly. Hip Hop and Garage being the two most obvious genre examples. I remember being horrified listening to an album of one of the foremost UK "bands" of the time; "The Streets". The album I listened to was essentially made in Mike Skinner's bedroom and was full of editing clicks, overload errors and pretty much every single one of the other most basic "beginner" mistakes and in addition was based on the poorest quality samples imaginable. What this all meant was that not only everyone with a couple of hundred dollars could now afford the tech but that anyone who could be bothered to play around with the software for a couple of hours or so could attain commercial quality standards because commercial standards were now complete newbie level! The "us" went from thousands to many millions! Was it easier to build an audience when you were one amongst thousands with extremely limited distribution opportunities or is it easier with essentially unlimited distribution opportunities but being one amongst many millions?
The other part of the equation is as you say monetizing that audience. It seems to be more and more a case of it not just being extremely difficult to monetize that audience in any meaningful way but of it being actually impossible! Last year David Lowery (of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker) posted his royalty statement from Pandora for "Low" in an article titled: "
My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!". Lou Reed was also quoted in a Guardian interview last year: "
Reed compared his recent royalty checks to the $2.60 he got for playing a bar at age 14. "I understand young people were brought up on downloading, and Steve Jobs tried to make it into some kind of business which benefits Apple, but you get about a sixteenth of a penny," Reed said. "You used to make a record but they reduced the size of it and put it in this plastic that breaks immediately ... You realize they are really fucking with you, so people didn't want to pay for anything. But meanwhile the musician doesn't get paid anything. Now making a record is kind of a promotional thing." If people like these can't monetise their considerable audiences in any meaningful way what hope is there for someone starting out in the business? And these are not isolated examples, there are many more, in fact pretty much all of them, either privately or publicly speaking out on the issue. Quite a few in the UK have got together and formed the "Featured Artists Coalition" to present a collective voice, just the board of directors comprises: Kate Nash, Master Shortie, Ed O’Brien (Radiohead), Dave Rowntree (Blur), Howard Jones, Mark Kelly (Marillion), Hal Ritson (The Young Punx), Sandie Shaw, Annie Lennox, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Lucy Pullin (The Fire Escapes), Ross Millard (The Futureheads), Fran Healy (Travis), Rumer, Chris Difford (Squeeze) and Crispin Hunt (The Longpigs).
A 50% fall in sales sounds bad but it doesn't sound like a complete catastrophe but the reality is that this remaining 50% is mainly going to people with no connection to the music industry (corporate shareholders for example). Some of what remains goes to a much tinier handful of artists than ever before and the little that's left over is being shared amongst countless thousands of others, pretty much none of whom earn anywhere near the annual minimum wage from making/selling recordings.
In one way the record companies have also been big losers because in a sense there really aren't any record companies anymore! EMI, BMG, Virgin, RCA, Island Records, Columbia, Polygram, Decca, Atlantic, Sanctuary, Epic, Chrysalis, Arista and many more besides don't really exist anymore. Either they literally no longer exist or they mainly exist just as brand names, all of which are owned by the 3 main remaining record companies. But to call these remaining conglomerates "record companies" isn't really accurate, while they do still invest in some artists and make, market and distribute recordings, this part of their business is now more of a side-line. Their main business is "rights management", in other words the management/licensing of their vast back catalogues of music copyrights. Very clever they've been at it too, maximising profits from revenues in part by minimising royalty payments to artists!
There are a lot of similarities between the music industry and film industry, the film industry is also mostly controlled by a relatively few companies (the main studios and distributors). There are some differences though, the recording industry's end user is (via various delivery methods) always the private home consumer, whereas in the film industry you've got the cinema goers as well as the home consumers and maybe this is enough to ensure the film industry doesn't follow the same path as the music industry, or maybe that's not enough?! No one really knows at this point but there are a lot of nervous people in the film and TV industries just now, that much is for sure!
G
