It’s the end of the recorded music business as we know it
Not a surprise, I know, but the graphs in this article are still eye-opening. Short version: the recorded music business makes its money from albums; people don’t buy albums any more.
Archive for 'Music'
If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like
Long-time readers will know of my borderline-obsessive love of Irish band The 4 of Us, so I’m quite delighted to see that the solo album from their singer, Brendan Murphy, has made its way to iTunes. If you like low-key, late-night acoustic songs, it’s definitely worth your time. More details and previews here.
Elbow: Lippy Kids
I really like this. Sorry if I’ve already bored you with it on Facebook.
Major record labels in “sensible move” shocker
Sensible doesn’t mean timely – this should have happened about ten years ago – but at long last two major record labels have wised up: they’ll no longer release records to radio months and months and months before anyone can buy them.
David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: “Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation. It’s out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance.”
Better late than never, eh?
Illegal downloading did not cost the UK record industry £1 billion
Fun with bullshit statistics: the BPI says dodgy downloads cost record companies nearly £1 billion this year. But as the Guardian points out, even the BPI knows that figure is massively exaggerated:
While the notional worth of the 1.2bn illegal downloads was almost £1bn, the BPI estimated the actual loss from “forgone spend” was £219m in 2010.
Andrew Orlowski at The Register has a wonderful take on the news:
The British record industry group estimates there are 8 million people, or 23 per cent of the UK online population, using P2P software.
That means around two-thirds to three-quarters of people don’t indulge in piracy – a figure rarely mentioned in this debate, and a remarkable figure considering the risk of being caught (which are negligible) and potential savings (which are considerable). That means most people are fairly honest, and a considerable amount of money is not being tapped by the legitimate music business.
The BPI figures also neglect to mention that the music business is growing. Yes, sales of physical products are declining, but overall it’s party time. A report by PRS last year showed a changing industry:
retail product sales have declined, but the other parts of the industry have grown noticeably more than the decline in retail sales. This growth has come from a few sources. Live show attendance has increased more than retail sales have decreased. Consumers have actually spent more. On top of that, the business to business side of the industry (sponsorships, licensing, advertisements, etc.) has grown as well, opening up new and lucrative means of making money.
It’s not all good. There are real concerns that the money’s coming largely from established acts, the U2s and the Muses and the Rihannas and so on: they get a disproportionate share of the money pie, and there are fears that there isn’t another generation of enormo-acts behind them.
That may be true, but the reason for that isn’t piracy: it’s a whole mess of factors including an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the rise of alternative forms of entertainment such as videogames and so on.
Another big factor is the way in which record companies have changed: increasingly the landscape is one of mega-corporations whose need to satisfy shareholders means they want results now, not ten years from now. As the cliche goes, if U2 were around today, they probably wouldn’t get signed – and if they did get signed, they’d be dropped before their third album.
Over at No Rock, Simon H B adds:
Taylor [Geoff Taylor of the BPI] ends with a plea for more legislation. The BPI always think that what is needed is more unenforceable legislation.
How could the record labels ensure their demands get a sympathetic hearing? Here’s one idea: Private Eye reports that Universal Music gave £80,000 to the Tories in July.
Back to Simon:
The trouble is, with the bunch of turnips sitting in Westminster at the moment, they might get their wish. More time, money and effort trying to buck the marketplace. It’ll still fail, though.
Wrong about the Beatles
Last week, I said that The Beatles on iTunes wasn’t a big deal. What kind of diddy hadn’t ripped the CDs or torrented the discography already?
The kind of diddy that buys 450,000 Beatles albums and 2 million individual tracks, it seems.
Oops.
Beatles for sale. So what?
About 200 years after it stopped mattering, The Beatles’ catalogue is finally available on iTunes.
Do you remember where you were when Apple made its world changing, unforgettable Beatles announcement? I was right here, on this chair, in front of this computer, making this face: meh.
“People Who Do Not Like Muse are annoying”
I think Wendy Roby enjoyed the gig.
Are 360 deals bad for musicians?
360 deals – contracts where record companies get a share not just of record sales but of other things such as concert revenues – are becoming increasingly common. Are they good for artists? Perhaps not, according to this Billboard piece by Bob Donnelly.
When you read the fine print, you’ll also discover that the labels want to make money from the books that artists write, the Hollywood movies in which they act and the fan clubs they create. In fact the labels want to share in absolutely everything. Does that sound fair to you?
In many of these 360 deals, the record company will demand that their earnings come out of gross revenues. This means that if the cash the labels actually receive has been reduced by any parties in the middle of the transaction (even if those parties themselves add value, as, for example, many music publishers do), then the label will add those amounts back in before calculating the percentage of revenue they retain.
Think about that for a moment. The manager doesn’t get paid on gross, and the artist certainly doesn’t get paid on gross. Why then should the record company be paid on gross?
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