Declassified: Here We Are
 

When I first started in the music industry, I couldn't tell anyone what I did for a living without having a conversation about their favorite bands and what music they are currently in love with. As annoying as that should have been, it was never unwelcome. The whole reason I got into this industry was an addiction to the high of music discovery, and sharing that high with others led me to some of the best shows I've ever seen and the best bands I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Over the years, this behavior has changed. I tell people what I do for a living and rather than excitedly telling me what revs their musical engine, they look at me as if I had just said I push paper in a cubicle farm. They literally could not be less interested. Is it me...or is it them? A quick survey of even casual acquaintances reveals all- people don't love music like they used to.

Let's break down some numbers from 2008 to get a better understanding of where we are right now. The year saw a 20% drop in overall album sales with the top seller for the year, Lil Wayne, barely cracking 2 million copies sold, most of which came the first week of release. Seems like a lot, but ten years ago the top seller clocked in with 11 million sold. The fifth best-seller from that year, Shania Twain's Come on Over, managed to sell more than 100,000 copies per week, every week, for the entire year...and it came out the year before. While digital downloads have substantially increased over the last few years, record labels are still losing massive amounts of money because of the way people are purchasing. Music has become a disposable commodity. People buy many songs from many artists with little regard to quality making it incredibly difficult for any one artist to gain traction and become successful.

I'm the last person to try and convince you that record labels deserve pity. Their problems are numerous and almost entirely self-inflicted. But what hope is there for an unsigned band if the ones with record deals can't make money or build a strong fan base? The situation today goes far beyond avarice getting the better of label executives, or conservative old fogies being resistant to change. The music industry as we know it is over. There are kids carrying around 120GB of music they know nothing about, made by other kids who don't actually know how to play their instruments. None of it is real. There is no physical product, there is no emotional connection, there isn't even an exchange of money. It's all a fantasy.

Fuuuuck.

Unless the world blows up, I can say with some certainty that things will get better. I'd put money on it. We, the lovers, appreciators, creators and consumers have a rare opportunity here to rebuild the entire music industry, the way we want it to be. Are we going to make the most of that opportunity? Or will we allow it to pass us by and settle for whatever the old executives can dream up? We will continue to explore how we got to this point and where we are going, but first we need to accept that we all share in the blame and we all share in the power to make it better. I am incredibly optimistic.


Next week: Redefining Success

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

Gone are the days when a music fan would hop it on down to his local indipendent music store on a Saturday morning to trawl through the latest 7 inches....sigh.

I still love my hours spent in Vinyl Exchange in Manchester, buying music on a whim because the cover looks nice, or I like band name, rather than because I downloaded one of their tracks once and quite liked it.

Don't get me wrong, downloading has its place, just not in the hands of the majority who want to use it as their only or main means to obtain music. Actually downloading has no place in music, it should be uploading only, so you can hear a track, and then get yo ass over to your local record store (or online music store - I'm not a complete old romantic) to buy the physical single. And this should be for odd tracks only. You should NEVER listen to an entire album before you buy it - that's just plain wrong (unless you are reviewing it of course).

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

Actually, vinyl sales have been slowly INCREASING.

Music is all about rebellion. If everyone is downloading and treating music like it's disposable, the more rebellious among us will cling tighter to things like vinyl and live shows. The rebellious activity will eventually catch on. It always does.

Downloading used to be rebellious. We were all sticking it to the record labels because we believed they were charging too much money and putting out a lame product. This activity caught on and became mainstream. It was no longer about sticking it to the man, it was about being greedy and cheap. It's been going on for so long that many teenagers have never paid for music before in their lives... and they don't even feel bad about that. They don't own any CDs or records and they don't even pay for the downloads that fill their iPods.

The rebellious activity now is to connect and collect like never before. It will catch on eventually.

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

Yeah but I bet it's 90% (at least) DJ's. I meant more your avarage man in the street (who IS that man?)

It's not just vinyl, I mean you don't even see people shopping for CD's as much anymore. I know this is not exactly news, I am just saying....it's a shame.

Thing is, now that the technology is there, I am not sure there is much that anyone can do about it. Just because a band decides to only release their music in physical form, doesn't mean it won't end up online before it's even released, let alone right after its release. You can even convert your vinyl tracks into MP3 now.

There will be demand for new vinyl for the near future at least, thanks to DJ's, but how much longer for CD's (or any other physical format that may take its place)?

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

It's not like CDs serve any sort of unique purpose sound wise (as in, you'll get the same sound from a CD as you will online) - but I still think there is something gained when you're waiting outside a store with a whole bunch of other fans waiting to get a new album on the day it's released.

My only reason for purchasing something online is if I need it straight away. I don't even mind if I'm paying more in store for the physical CD, or to get the original vinyl copy, but to me, it doesn't seem real if I can't touch it.
I think the unbelievably simple access to music these days is entirely taken for granted, and consequently, saturated with rubbish also.

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

This is interesting:

95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal - DiS reacts and suggests two solutions / Music News // Drowned In Sound

And more than a little worrying.

Re: Declassified: Here We Are
 

It's also interesting to see an artist's view point. This is from a new Animal Collective interview from the same site. I think he makes good points:

"With the whole downloading thing I suppose it's easier for people to have an opinion immediately after they've heard, like, half of a 128kbps vinyl rip or something like that. What are your views on leaks?
We take whatever minimal steps we can to prevent it, but we know records are going to leak. It's not even about whether it's free or not free, I mean the day you release it it's free to the world anyway, what with the technology these days... I have a lot of strong personal feelings about how people consume music these days, even myself. That's why I have these feelings; because I can see how my own listening habits have degraded over the years with the advent of the internet. Like, when people tell me about a new band that I should check out, before I would have gone and bought the record but now I go to Myspace and listen to 20 seconds of their song through my laptop speakers and I'm like 'whatever' - I think that's disgusting on my part to form an opinion that way. I'm trying to break myself out of the habit. People ask, 'why do you give a shit about a leak, it's going to leak anyway, it's such an outdated, antiquated way of approaching music' and I guess that's true, but I'm unapologetic about it, in a way, growing up in a time when the internet wasn't around. I always think back to when I discovered Will Oldham's music... at first I bought the record because it was on Drag City and I was like, 'Well, I don't get this, is it country music or is it Americana music? It doesn't sound like Pavement, I don't get it'. Y'know, I was like 15 years old and if it had just been MP3s on my computer that I didn't buy or have a physical copy of I'd probably just have deleted it and never listened again. But because it stayed on my shelf I put in effort to get into it, I kept going back to it. And there's just one day, I don't know if it's because the weather is right or you're just in a different mood, but it suddenly clicks for you. Personally, I don't have that many experiences like that anymore because I've been taken in by the accessibility of music and I'm disappointed by what that's done to _my_ music. That's why I'm not into the whole leak culture or digital music in general. I don't want to take part in it by being, like, 'Leak our record' or whatever. Even streaming it before it's released, that goes against my views on how music should be listened to. Doing that or putting it on iTunes first, it's giving people another option from which they can hear your music for the first time. That's my feeling, it's very personal and it has nothing to do with the industry war that's going on right now or anything like that."