Actually the music industry was in a slump in the early 80s too, and that had nothing to do with technology. It took Thriller to take it out of the slump.

I think the difference between then and now was that there was more diversity; Rap was still a relatively, new genre and it hadn't yet saturated the market to the extent it has now, where it leaves no room for other musical styles. Now everyone is doing the same thing and are clones of each other.

MsLegs said:

i think some music fans, especially of SY, would consider this a sell-out...especially since the starbucks brand has a reputation of being megaconsumerist/evil/blah blah blah - i think musicians are people with jobs like anyone else, and especially the less mainstream they are, the more they gotta have money to eat.

and macca can pretty much do what he wants at this point.

EmbattledWarrior said:

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

whatsgoingon said:

Serioulsy I don't think it has to do with diversity.


Music will always be popular because young people (who are the biggest consummers of Music) always listen to the new artists. Like it or not. But young people only care about what is hot and new.

krayzie said:

Yes, but even young people like different things. Not all young people like the same thing, therefore if there if there is a lack choice, like we have today in the mainstream, then the record sales will go down.

As I said back in the early 80s there was a similar slump but with the help of Thriller the music industry recovered, but then again you had acts like Bruce Springstein, Prince, Wham, Lional Richie, Boy George and even Madonna(who I've always felt was talentless) and rap was still fresh and new, therefore there was no one sound that dominated the charts thus more choice. Also MTV, which was still in its infancy helped, it is a given fact that MTV helped thriller to go on to be the biggest selling album ever. But today with the lack of diversity and new technology I can't see the music industry ever fully recovering.

whatsgoingon said:

Yeah i gotta agree but there was so much more to offer in the 80's, MTV was actually important and that was sparking sales etc.. I dont think all kids buy whats hot and new, i think thats the issue and the way its marketed today but you didnt have that issue back in the 80's, just scan a Top 100 from the mid 1980's and look at the average age of the performers, they average in the later 20's to late 30's. Look at today, your artists are about 20-22 on average and not only that have a life span of a single and maybe an album. Just the fact that you had a Madonna,Michael,Janet,George,Bon Jovi,Lionel,Bruce and Prince all in a decade as dominating artists puttng out VARIED music, you just dont have that today, you dont have an iconic person, that can even compete on that level and offer the difference in musical tastes.

Anxiety said:

Agreed. And, sometimes people forget this point. I'm not a fan of Starbucks either b/c I prefer Borders.

Anxiety said:

The sooner it dies and comes back as something rational and sane and good, the better.

MsLegs said:

i could be way off the mark here, but i think starbucks gets a bum rap. i think they've come to represent things that are worse than they actually practice. but i haven't researched them in-depth, so i'm not speaking from any great position of authority, just from what little i know and what i haven't heard about what they're supposedly doing that's so awful. of course, there's no shortage of obnoxious customers in a starbucks at any given time, so there's that. but i don't have an issue with 'em like i do with, say, walmart or mcdonalds. maybe i should.

Anxiety said:

More or less, I think its the vibe at Starbucks that gives it the bad rap. It's too Yuppish/Buppish for all the wrong reasons.

Anxiety said:

But what i dont understand is how we look at artists, McCartney goes to a Starbucks label and he's selling out, Toni Braxton we think is dumb because she got ripped off twice, so which is it? Do we want our artists to be stupid people or smart? To me McCartneys move was perfect, he gets his solo catalog the ownership, he gets a new label, and he gets airplay in every starbucks all over now because hes a featured artist, i mean thats what labels do when they BUY radio time for a young artist, i think we all forget that these people are Human beings too, and make bad decisions and good ones, is McCartney selling out at 65 years of age? gimme a break. I mean think of it in our everyday lives, would we buy a car that worked or didnt work?

lastdecember said:

i think what paul did with his latest album is very smart, and in interviews he justifies it beautifully. he figured that starbucks will do what the record labels won't, which is promote the hell out of his new album. he's using them AND the web - posting his videos on youtube, etc. - to his advantage. SMART. and the people who are diehard paul/beatles fans probably don't care where his CDs are being sold, as long as they can get their mitts on it.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Well, with the tech revolution, some changes are on the horizon.

Anxiety said:

As for Paul's move, I think that's a great creative marketing move. Simply because, nobody would expect him to do it . Plus, the CD has some kick ass cuts on it so I say more power to him.
[Edited 6/22/07 15:28pm]

MsLegs said:

i like that he's trying something different, and really the marketing decisions make plain sense.

Anxiety said:

“Selling Out” is certainly the most subjective of terms. And, as you say, it should be getting reevaluated constantly in this new splintered marketplace.

For me it simply means allowing your self/songs to be altered to fit the market demands. I don’t give a damn about coffee shops or bookstores. Tell me if you changed your songs for the sake of sales.

Is that your heart or have you already sold it?

Prince said he sold out once before (uttered some time around 1999/2000), but that he’ll never do so again.

I have no idea what that means to him personally, but “Rave” to me is a sellout.

It sounds as though he altered that album to appeal to the largest possible audience. More rock/pop, Prince. OK, if you insist.

In doing so, he may have alienated most everyone.

But then again, I’m not even close to him. For all I know his “selling out” would be something totally different. Maybe even something that turned out totally great in my eyes.

Anxiety said:

Hence, that's the whole idea of creative marketing. Shock value.

Brendan said:

You're dead on it about the Rave project. It was a sellout along 3121 and Musicology on many levels.

Brendan said:

Yeah i agree, when you alter what your vision is, than its selling out. People got on John Mellencamp earlier this year because he had a song in a car commercial, and he said and still says its wrong to sell out to commercials, his point was thats an alternative to how the world is now, his music is the same, he didnt sing "go chevy go" for a check, but he did say that because he got his song out there, thats something a label or radio cant do for someone his age. Shoot thats why Bon Jovi allowed "Who says you cant go home" to commercial use, it turned to be one of their biggest american hits, and won them there first grammy ever in their 25 year career.

MsLegs said:

And what makes a sellout in the eyes of the beholder certainly might not to its maker.

We might not find out about these albums from Prince for many years or decades.

Are these album sellouts to me?

I’m not sure, but I thought Prince’s heart sounded different. I’ve heard him recently (“TRC”, “N.E.W.S.”) and I’ve heard him wail like no other in diversity. But, it's true, a lot of this did not sound completely authentic to me.

But perhaps my heart is the one that needs mending?

lastdecember said:

That John Mellenamp issue is a tough one.

To be honest, I have no idea where I fall on that.

I’m just digging the music and putting most material on TiVo so that I rarely have to witness commercials myself.

Part 2 is now online too

http://www.rollingstone.c..._what_next




Theory 1: Ad-Supported Music
Yahoo! Music General Manager Ian Rogers says all music will be free - paid for by ads - and any song by any artist will be accessible from anywhere in the world.

"I can imagine a future where you just consume a hell of a lot of music - just hit 'play' on any player, and hear music. There's an ad experience there, and we'll pay the labels a percentage of that ad revenue. All devices will be connected to a network and we can find anything we want and hit 'play' without connecting our device to our computer and dragging a physical file over. People are going to have the expectation that they can get to anything whenever they want to."

Theory 2: Peer-to-Peer Goes Legit
Eric Garland, CEO of digital-music research firm Big Champagne, says people will pay a monthly surcharge on their cable bill to download an unlimited supply of tunes.

"Tens of billions of songs are downloaded for free by people all over the world, representing a huge market - not in changing their behavior, but in creating businesses around that fact. People that provide access to networks are the logical place for payments to be administered: Today you pay your cable company, not only for bits and bites, but for services like HBO or a tier of basic cable. It's in everyone's interest to administer payment there, with royalty payments made from pools of money collected based on stat rates or voluntary rates. You'll have Time Warners and Comcasts and Verizons working with content companies to convert these marketplaces without trying to change customer behavior."

Theory 3: Endless Access Points for Music
David Pakman, who founded the indie-minded download site eMusic, says the more outlets there are to buy music, the fewer people will turn to piracy.

"The future of the music industry is bright. The old way, you'd buy a CD because you heard it on the radio. Now we have 20 different ways to go out and sample new music, whether it's blogs, downloads, ring tones, full-length mobile downloads, Internet radio, personalized subscription radio, or on-demand on your cable box. Those will continue to proliferate. It's important to offer music for sale everywhere. Selling more music is the way to monetize it and compete with piracy."

Theory 4: Labels Change Their Stripes
Rob Glaser, the head of Real Networks and Rhapsody, predicts that labels will operate more as managers, earning most of their profits from licensing, touring, and merchandise.

"The notion of a company that is only in the business of selling recorded music is an artifact of the physical world. In the next year or two, as physical growth continues to lag, the labels' pain will just get so great, they'll move to a more rational approach: The smarter way for music companies to work as venture capitalists, where they help to support bands through recording contracts, tour support, licensing, helping them artistically, essentially as business partners. If the artists succeed, the labels succeed. In a digital world that's the only way to align the interest between the label and the artists and it's been surprising to me how slowly the industry has been to embrace it."

Theory 5: Consumers Become Retailers
Terry McBride, founder and CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, says social networking will be integrated with commerce.

"We'll be looking at a space where the consumer is the retailer. Within a text message, an email or an IM, I can say, 'Listen to the new Avril single,' you click on her name, you hear it, you like it, you hit pound-four, and you instantly bought it, but you bought it from me. And maybe it's for twenty-five cents, and maybe five of that twenty-five cents goes in my PayPal account, the rest of it goes through a payment system to the copyright holders. You've got your price point down to where it's not worth the effort of going online to find it, and you really tap into the social nature of how social groups work."

asg said:

Great stuff. Thanks.



Perhaps in the real long term.

But I’m not willing to give up my entire ad-free music collection for commercials.

However, possibly a very cheap way to find new music!?



The most obvious theory to me is that iTunes is working. Make music easy to access and cheap and most will pay for it.

Don't like it, change your old business model.

Greed will kill this industry. If anything, without a tangible product, you need to lower the price here, not raise it.

So I don’t see the Peer model working unless somehow this model is broken first.

And to make Peer-to-Peer easier, more convenient and less costly than iTunes would be extremely difficult.



This is what’s happening now, but will anything dominate our new musical world like the brick-and-mortar CD Shoppe of today?



This seems inevitable.

It would seem that the young ingénues who find it impossible to win over an audience are mostly what’s holding the giants together.

But to solve that you’ll need music experts. People are not going to wade through thousands upon thousands of releases each year to find that 5% that may be great.

It needs to be weeded down. In the past we had disc jockeys (the real ones who chose music) and labels to help us sort through the minutia.

I don’t and wouldn’t recommend that anyone trust one other person without question.

But it seems that a preponderance of experts do find some great music/artists a lot faster than we could without them. It may take years or even decades, but strangely enough we do eventually surround the truth.

Will word-of-mouth alone solve this problem?

Anyway, as a venture capitalist I would put my money on certain albums/artists, but only if it were truly a free market where quality wins.

In this market, I’d say quality mostly loses, so don’t invest. Put your money in something safe and predictable (read: formulaic, read: hip-hop beats).



Again, iTunes is the model that’s working. You must first break the model that’s winning through greed or other means in order for other ideas to flourish.

I don’t think a large group of people need to buy their music on the go. Lots of people enjoy shopping for music online.

And I’m sure that iTunes could go mobile if that becomes an overwhelming desire (Perhaps they already have).

Brendan said:

Musically, I assure that the music listening public (beyond the teens) expect artist who've been in the biz a substantial amount of years to record a body of work with substance that isn't mediocre or below average with filler.

Rolling

Stone said:

Wait! Wait! They could call this..... RA-DI-O.

I always knew what the industry was doing was full of shit. Being that I am now in school obtaining an MBA in marketing, I now know that the industry made a "textbook" mistake. i mean textbook, y'all. You find a lot of marketers in exec positions that fail to keep in touch with new things. With the music industry, which is soooo ego drivin, those guys did not wnat to hear it all. They were the shit, and ain't nuttin stoppin a hot record.

If anyone wants to see what happens when a dinosaur of an industry fall off in times of modernization, the music biz is one to read up on. They did it themselves.

I'd also mention some other things that radio does to get a peice of the marketing dollars (ain't just some little payola, this is on some corporate shit) but I'll wait until I'm out of that trade too.

Oh yeah, talk all you want about radio if you want to, but it is the majority of record labels marketing budgets....why does radio "suck" who pushes the records to radio? The A&Rs are picking wack records to push out.

It's a mess. I had a ball in my twentys working in the music arena. But shit... no one makes any money unless you are top execs. I said fuck it and went back to school.

OK... I wrote a book. But we all saw this coming in 2001

Now you can get anything you want for free because technology allowed us to do so. So Album sales have dropped.

But to me the real issue is much deeper.


I think in the Music business there ARE WAY too many conflicts of interest and hypocrisy. Different elements that ONLY care about making as much money as possible no matter what.

You got :

-The Major labels
-The Electronics companies
-Internet services
-Microsoft/Lenux/Mac

All those elements are responsible of the situation of Music nowdays.

And All those elements don't give a shit about Music but Money.


If ALL those elements decided to sit around a table and start working on a new standard to protect music and guarantee profits to all the elements involved, there will be a possibility for a way out.

But like I said, there's aro too MANY conflicts of interest.

whatsgoingon said:

Young people love Music of nowdays. And it has alays been like that, always. Don't confuse what you think, and what young people think.

Again it has nothing to do with diversity. You'll never see young people complaining about music of nowdays. Young people care about the music of their era. Artists of their generation. They love it.

I don't know why you want to put divesity.

That's why music will never die.
Young people are the reason why music will never die but only if the Music business makes sure that the only way to get music is paying.

krayzie said:

But as you correctly state, the record companies don’t care about young people, they care about money.

Young people only wish they controlled everything. The people still listening to the radio consistently think that they are in full control and that's the beauty of current format.

“Were just giving the little beasts what they want -- nothing more, nothing less. Don’t blame us!” -- Anonymous record executive

The listeners are to blame, but so are the record executives. They are both perfectly complicate in this mess we call a market.

That the kiddies are in full control is only what the record giants want you to believe. It's a very profitable belief. So strong it is that even their critics make their arguments for them.

On UK radio right now the DJs and the public overwhelmingly love “Guitar”, but it has to be debated for rotation. They wouldn't waste time debating some young person that sounds like everyone else.

But in this marginalized world they’re scared to death of losing just one listener due to actual thought. Don’t do what’s right, do what fits the format and shut up already. You're not paid to think, monkey!

“If you play it, it must be good and it must be kid approved.” – Record Company executive in his 60s receiving a big fat bonus check for another 100 million in losses.

Besides, the people that would listen to this shit obviously don’t listen to the radio anymore (that’s marginalization and it can be very profitable for those that survive).

Making music that is predictable is where it’s at. Record execs hate different. In this terribly rough market they need something they can bank on and they’ll cling to whatever they can.
[Edited 6/23/07 8:55am]

Screw my fingers!
[Edited 6/23/07 8:56am]