| StoreTags: music industry, album
Viewed 6190 times. 24 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: bleen, utofbu, colin, Roshi, minisystem, airliner, FailedSitcom, reehc, jdg, bodo, AtlusZero, Artsigreg, craque, frnortnr, Bruno, oscar, skab, chri5, room, quicks, jogn, bbwax, damon, deltasleep
-->
I'm reposting this from the IDM list - Thor from Highpoint Lowlife talking about the current state of the music industry. There are no real surprises in here, but it has me thinking a lot about this music and what comes next for electronic music in general and Emulsion in particular.
From: thorsten AT NOSPAM highpointlowlife.com
Date: January 8, 2007 6:45:21 AM CST
Subject: Re: [idm] CD sales and the music industry
To: idm AT NOSPAM hyperreal.org
>wow, this is nice. To bad this cd is only available from overseas(I live in the US). To >much money. I would buy this if I could purchase from a US distributor. Very >surprised with this.
Which part are you surprised about? That its only available in the UK, or the exchange rate?
I wish i could help you out and say you can get it somewhere - but basically no you can't - 2007 is year the arse falls out of the music industry. No-one is interested in buying music anymore, and especially not electronic music. An electronic label to a distributor is a joke - They'd never sell more than 5 copies of yer release, so they wont even consider you.
That quote from Norman Records that Alan posted is a good indication of it, but basically sales of CDs stopped dead about 6 months ago. (i think a strong influence in why Smallfish records also closed)
Electronic music has been unfashionable for a good few years now, and i think its going to be one of the first hit areas which will feel the effects the worse. Its only at the top end of the popular music spectrum, that mainstream people are still buying CDs. Even people like us, who still buy CDs - i bet at most you can afford maybe 5 CDs a month (being optimistic here), and yet, theres like maybe somewhere between 50-100 decent electronic releases a week! So yeah, even if you bought 5 cds, thats still at least 195 that you didnt. Who supports those labels and artist?
At the beginning of 2006 i was getting quite confident about Highpoint Lowlife, we were doing pretty well in sales, and getting good press and reviews. Somewhere during the summer tho - sales just completely stopped, and every month since then we've been getting lots of returns from record stores which has just continued since then.
Our reviews and press have kept picking up since then, but sales are just gone. zilch.
i have one more release planned for Highpoint Lowlife, but beyond that, who knows what will happen, its just not feasible to run a label the same was it has been done - i.e. relying on CD sales. I have so much debt from the label, that i need to start paying that back.
What is interesting to compare though - what i think will happen, is that niche releases and handmade efforts are what will continue.
To compare economics of normal releases -
In the past, doing a run of 1000 CDs, which has been pretty standard - total cost for producing that runs to about £1500, including mastering, replication and promotion. If you only sell about 200 of them (and thats if you're doing really well!), and you only get abour £3 per disc (from your distributor), then you've covered £600. You've sent out about 100 promos, so that means your bedroom now has an additional 700 CD sitting around which will never sell, oh and you're also about £900 out! excellent fun.
Now, compare that to the limited run of 100 DVD-Rs we did recently -
That whole project cost about £200 for materials, the blank DVD-Rs, the cases, tracing paper for the artwork and the photocopying. They sold out pretty much straight away, on average for maybe £4 (£5 direct sales, but i sold a lot to Norman records for £3), and thats £400 in sales, so around £200 profit within a month! It just seems crazy, why didnt i start that years ago??!! 
I just saw this article this morning link
It's a pretty accurate predictions article for the music industry in 2007, and ties in very much which what i've been seeing.
Digital download sales are going okay, but they're very much a novelty i think, and used more by people with a conscience rather than normal consumers. They certainly dont make up for the hit in lost CD sales.
hope that doesnt sound all too gloomy gus! Big changes afoot, and in the end I don't think the music fan or the musicians will suffer, but we're in the middle of a massive watershed, and things will be radically changed in even a few years time..
thor
| |
Comments
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
oscar
lol... weren't you the one who fired up the singularity meme? if it comes it all, it will be sooner rather than later
I finally read that lefsetz blog... actually, that dude makes even less sense than I do. Incredible!
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
p
It's kind of like the .com bust. Supersaturation causes everyone to take a hit. Eventually there'll be NO money in it...many will jump ship and it'll recover. I hope for a great shift away from the spoonfeeding of radio from new technology...but I honestly think it'll go back to the way it was.
just give that one guy that owns all radio and his yes men time to figure out his new strategy (<this is a joke).
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
deltasleep
It's has only just dawned on me what happened. And it's hilarious.
The power of the people armed with the internet killed big labels. We all stood around and cheered when their statue fell down.
And we were like "whoopee power to the people to decide what they like!"
And then, viral video showed us what they liked(bears on trampolines and monkeys picking their asses.) And we all cried. "OH SHIT!"
We killed the tastemakers who were sorting through the piles of shitty music because we didn't think that they were doing a good job(and they weren't) but we didn't realize that they were the filters that were separating us from the world of music as we know it today.
The bottom line: instant worldwide profitless distribution for you. but you're either going to have to sort it all on your own, or start trusting somebody to do that for you again, except this time they don't make any money.
and in regards to iTunes: doomed. You just can't SELL a less functional product than users can get for free. iTunes is propped up by the goodwill of some, and the fear of others about being sued. So its a record label that promotes relieving your guilt about getting more functional files for free. To be an enforcer of guilt you've got to keep a spotless image, and when thats tarnished, so is your ability to guilt trip your users. So just wait till everybody finds out that the artist gets like 5 cents. Some bad news like that, or they get sued.
The RIAA is already starting to lose lawsuits, become disorganized and stupid in whom they sue, and get lawsuits dismissed by judges. Once that threat is removed, pay for download is in trouble.
Really, I just see no way that I can complain about not ever getting label distro or money, because so many people who 'got signed' to major labels only lost the rights to their music and came out even or in debt. they were the only people making much money off of music. unless you're a headliner- and we're not. sorry guys, you were never going to be van halen. your opportunity to sell your artistic integrity for money is gone.
I'm SO going to cry.
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
Fredo
don't cry Deltasleep! come to chat with me on AIM!
edited: Jan 09 2007
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
bbwax
want less physical waste and easier distribution methods? have easier "file trial" methods, downloading, and buying procedures. people are lazy. make it as easy as turning on the tv and you've got a winner. higher quality compression techniques are also key. make the audiophiles stop complaining and you're in like flynn. "who needs cd's have you heard the new ____ format?" more music videos and downloadable artwork. give people something to look at while they listen, replacing the paper cd artwork.
99 cents a song? i don't fucking think so. maybe 10 cents per song, tops. and give 9 cents to the musician, 1 cent to the digital store, fuck the record companies. who do you think gets most of that 99 cents anyways? and the majority of people are simply not going to pay a dollar for a low quality file when they can download the same file at a higher quality, for free, for less hassle. preach morals all you want, but it's not gonna happen. when people see news about killings and bombs and enron and iraq, you think they feel bad about downloading a song? nope.
sufficient pr, advertising, playing live, and actual musical talent and quality are other things to worry about.
i don't think it'll happen for a loooong time though, if ever. there are simply too many greedy people involved in this industry. it takes someone as powerful as a steve jobs just to get things started in the right direction but they are still plagued by high prices and low quality compression. and as apple has never been about reasonable pricing, i don't think they will be the ones to lead the way forward. they've already signed contracts with labels anyways, i don't think they can lower prices. i'd like to see some demos on who buys from itunes anyways. i'm going to guess older people who want a couple songs to listen to while they jog? ;-)
edit - delta beat me to the itunes bashing while i was typing.
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
Roshi
Hmmm...deltasleep. Maybe that will be the future. We pay the tastemakers themselves to wade through the morass of free crap. Essentially the librarians (DJs, Critics, Collectors) will have the filter power.
I like that word - morass.
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
emulsion
Yeah deltasleep's "morass" theory is excellent. It's true -- all the web 2.0 "power to the people" stuff can leave us with a lot of lowest common demonimator nonsense. Reminds me of MP3.com when that was around. What a load of utter shit that was!
I think a new method of curating this stuff/sorting through it HAS to come along. Part of what I love about a lot of indie electronic labels is that they take (took?) that role very seriously. .
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jogn
I never really thought i'd feel the generation gap, but there is a generation who don't give a toss about the quality of the music recording and will purchase mp3s, and continue with it until they find a more convenient way to consume their music, or have something other than just the music to look forward to, which is going to be packaging, extras, liner notes and other what not. They would have grown up not caring about audio fidelity, but then again how good is enough? And if you're a kid, how much is too much?
If we've grown up in a world with just mp3, would we jump for CDs when the cost is so much more higher? I would if there are more extras on that disc. The audio fidelity is a bonus. You see this happening in the DVD world, where the extras are included to entice consumers to buy, rather than downloading a ripped copy.
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jogn
also fuck web 2.0 and the 3.0 version after that.
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jdg
im with jogn.. unless your 12-17yrs old.. your opinion does not matter.
thats who you are going to try to "sell to"
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
mlbot
Or "buy from"
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jdg
would like fries with that?
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
room
audiobulb is 10 cds away from selling out of ultre cds
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
Unknownforce
how many were manufactured? (if you don't midn me asking)
01/09/07
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jdg
11
Register / login
|
^
EM411 is Copyright 2001-2008 EM411.com
All rights reserved. | Contact | RSS
|
