| StoreTags: music industry, album
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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
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edited: Jan 11 2007
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astroid
thanks room
i think my ideal position would be behind the scenes, doing scoring. the big boys in scoring today all started with rock bands, but i think that's gonna shift a little bit to people who are dedicated film scorers, more like the olden days. of course, the content and method of those scores will change...
01/11/07
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deltasleep
sour grapes- yes and no. yes I wish I was making money, licensing or selling music. I would trade making money though, for getting heard. I really just want people to hear the record and enjoy it. So what I really want is a way to sell or license the music to somebody, while still letting anybody who wants to listen to it download it for free.
the real trouble is, i'm a poor kid from the bad side of town and i don't know how to get good jobs or make money in general. working on that.
01/11/07
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ricemutt
maybe musicians will be forced to do something useful with their music instead of writing a bunch of stuff about how they stubbed their toe this morning, or whatever... like write music for a public event, or a movie, or for a game, or a concert. It's a bummer the nature of the "record sales" source of revenue is changing, but I mean, jesus christ, look how much music people download and listen these days -- I mostly don't download music, I just buy albums, and I have more music than I could listen to at a pace of one album a day a year already. Plenty of poeple have just more. The stuff musicians make and sell as records today is like the equivalent of those big picture books people buy and use as coasters on their coffee tables. There has to be a point where someone calls the whole trend out on being ridiculous--the speed that people acquire and belch out information, the ridiculous level of commodification that has taken place with music.
01/11/07
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djugel
In the end .. I just don't think the kids care about live music these days... With all the penny pinching .. I can't see kids handing over $20-30 to hear some underground music like I used to.
01/26/07
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lunatinker
that email sucks and is overtly negative. equivelant of giving up. i disagree completely with their statement that "digital downloads of music is pretty much a novelty". bollocks. bullshit. asinine. this list of factual sales numbers shows that albums, singles (both digital and physical) went upwards for the year '06.
There is no indication that Justin Timbersnake or the like can keep pumping out shit forever. eventually someone will make it with some talent and personal ability.
01/26/07
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lunatinker
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