mlsstl wrote: > I'm rather confused. You slam the specific Sparklehorse example and then > admit the article's author probably knows "much more" than you about the > details. I don't understand the logic of claiming this is a bad example > while at the same time admitting the author almost certainly knows the > facts of the situation far more clearly. > My comment re the author knowing "much more" was about WHAT SPECIFIC issue with the record company EMI (and maybe between the artists) led to the delay. However what I DO KNOW (and what is undisputed, btw) is that it was an issue with EMI causing the delay and loss of income. And that it NOTHING to do with piracy.
And all of that while the author claims that piracy kills artists while record companies are their saviors (sorry, this is NOT me exaggerating, that's what he says with his examples). Sorry, this hurts. > > The music business has always used the massive sales of their most > popular artists to support the whole > This is not true. The music industry has used the massive sales of their most popular artists to develop a marketing and distribution chain that allowed them to promote other artists from whom they made more profits. What music industry also did was "develop" new artists, yes. But they did not do this by subsidizing them with revenue from more popular artists - they can't because the really successful artists have way too much negotiating power, they don't earn the record companies a lot of money. What brings profit for record companies is long-term contracts with newly "developed" artists who profit from the marketing push and give away a greater revenue share in return. This model is indeed falling apart. But the reason isn't piracy (piracy hits pretty much all artists in the same way), the reason is that the marketing channels (the ways through which especially young people learn about music and exchange about them) have completely changed. There is no MTV anymore (ok, MTV is still around but they don't play any music anymore but do "dismissed" instead. Why? Because record labels now want money for the clips instead of paying them for addition to the rotation) and twitter, facebook and YouTube have taken their place. Record companies have not been able to keep up with this development. Partly, because they are slow corporate dinosaurs and because they were so focused on piracy but also because in that environment there is no real need for them. Today, you don't need a contract with record shops, and the like, you don't need the heavy upfront investments so band's managers have been able to do the marketing side themselves. It's the same dissolution of value chain thing the internet has triggered in all service businesses. And regarding that "most musicians can hardly live from their music": that's always been the case. The reason is simply that most artists don't make straight business decisions into becoming a musician but because it's their calling, they dream of the fame and the chicks or simply because the music itself matters to them. In such an environment you'll always have too tough a competition for most to live. The same thing has been true 10, 20 or 100 years ago. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pippin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13777 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95541 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
