Timmy84 said:

Norman Bates killed this industry. Who knew the industry was actually a woman in a shower?

Fool.

TD3 said:

Timmy84 said:

Norman Bates killed this industry. Who knew the industry was actually a woman in a shower?

Fool.

Bill Gates

Prince.org killed it by ranting about it.

Timmy84 said:

Norman Bates killed this industry. Who knew the industry was actually a woman in a shower?

That is not correct. It was Abdulla, because he was tired of "The Man" and his clown show.

MickyDolenz said:

Timmy84 said:

Norman Bates killed this industry. Who knew the industry was actually a woman in a shower?

That is not correct. It was Abdulla, because he was tired of "The Man" and his clown show.

babybugz said:

Prince.org killed it by ranting about it.

I said this site played a part in it.

babybugz said:

Prince.org killed it by ranting about it.

You know if this question ever is brought up again - and it will in the next six months - I know my REAL answer to it.

PRINCE.ORG

Timmy84 said:

You know if this question ever is brought up again - and it will in the next six months - I know my REAL answer to it.

PRINCE.ORG

Taking credit for my answer I’m happy to inspire you though.

What killed it for me was around 2004 when hip hop completely took over music. Not only did it make the music boring to listen to, but it made performances and awards shows a borefest too. No one in hip hop is really a personality, the best time in music was when there were so many big individual personalities with their own different sounds and styles. That all died when rappers took over. All the big stars werent as succesful and merged their looks/sound to fit in with it too.

MickyDolenz said:

TD3 said:

Greedy ass Bastards . . . the suits of the Music Industry.

The music business has always been this way. Look at all of the old blues, soul, rock, country, etc. acts who died broke and/or have to do oldies shows at carnivals and such. The performers have been ripped off anyway by bad contracts, shady magagers, promoters, and so on. So downloading didn't really make much of a difference to them, except maybe the superstar acts who spent a lot of money recording. Only when it cut into company profits, is when the labels started crying. In the past, many acts made their money touring, not record sales. During the 1960's, Motown acts didn't even get this, since Motown was their "manager".

I guess I shall have to repeat myself since Mickey is kinda new - I think - to the org.

We had a thread here a couple of months ago that reported 7 million people in United Kingdom were illegally downloading music. My question then was, What are the other other 60 million UK people buying or not buying? Because I suspect if the other millions of UK citizens where purchasing music, that 7 million the record industry claim is stealing would be a moot point. Just as it was a moot point when millions of people once upon a time recorded music off the radio,

made tapes and/or burned CD's via the Public Library collection, bought music from the boot-leg man, people buying used albums at open air-markets, and recording, making, trading tapes / mix tapes amongst friends and groups. They couldn't do anything about then, like that can't do a damn thing about now.

There's nothing new under the sun here, other than the recording industry has lost almost all of their power to control the distribution of their product. That's what has hurt them.

Oh well... too bad so sad.

The record companies goal has always been to produce the minimum amout of music while gaining maxium profits:hence their buisness model was one of having a narrowly defined demographic for which they sold to and pushed their product, this has come back to bite them in the ass also. Even more importantly it was a BIG mistake eliminate the single. It was also a mistake to "fix" the prices of CD prices so high when in fact it costed cents on the dollar to produce one. That's called collusion and is it's against the law. I don't think it would be an understatement to say how much conglomerates such as Clear Channel have destroyed radio. How many home grown singers / bands have you heard on your local radio station in your area? I can name at least 12 singers and bands from the Chicago area from the 50's, 60's and 70's.

If anyone wants to think Limewire, Apple, Amazon, Mp3's, burning CD's, and/or downloading is the main culprit for why the music companies are losing profits and marketshare, I'd say you've been drinking the music industry Cool-Aid. Losing market share? It's your product stupid and not seizing ceasing all the advantges that computer technology and the net had to offter.

--------------------------------------------------------------

[Edited 4/11/11 7:56am]

babybugz said:

Timmy84 said:

You know if this question ever is brought up again - and it will in the next six months - I know my REAL answer to it.

PRINCE.ORG

Taking credit for my answer I’m happy to inspire you though.

I said this site ruined it a page back.

728huey said:

The rise of Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, iTunes, BitTorrent were all just symptoms of the downfall of the recorded music industry, not the cause.

In reality, the decline in the recorded music industry can be traced all the way back to the dawn of music videos and MTV. While it was a great idea at first to be able to watch your favorite musical artists on TV 24 hours a day, savvy bands and artists who weren't the most musically gifted performers but had a great look and could prance around in front of the camera suddenly found themselves an outlet to display their otherwise limited musical abilities by having exciting looking videos. In addition, you had Michael Jackson and Prince suddenly become huge megastars thanks to the advent of MTV, and soon a huge number of artists were selling gazillions of records. The record companies, being smart at recognizing a money making opportunity, suddenly discovered that they could put out medicore product and still rake in huge sums of money if they could present a "good looking" artist. That's when the original hair band explosion and dance diva craze came into being.

During that time, the record companies also manufactured a lot of dance groups who could sing on record but either couldn't cut it live or didn't have that photogenic appeal to young music fans, so that's why they got people like Milli Vanilli and models to lip synch over recorded tracks for music videos. The Milli Vanilli lip synching scandal should have been a huge black eye to the music industry and brought down a number of producers and record executives for putting out a false image, but the fans shrugged it off and kept buying the records anyway, so the record companies just kept on doing the same thing. It was the triumph of image over talent.

The technology part didn't catch up until around the late 1980's and 1990's, when CD's and CD players became more affordable, and digital technology became cheap enough to use for making, recording and mastering music production. Suddenly, with pre-programmed drum beats and synthesizers which could be programmed to loop melodies and even sound like other instruments, it decimated the session music industry, leading to layoffs for a huge amount of studio musicians. Then with the advent of Pro Tools and Autotune, even crappy voices could be reprocessed to sound listenable. In addition, with CD's lasting up to 75 minutes in length for one album, the record companies pressured artists to fill that time with extra music, so you ended up with a lot of filler tracks plus a lot of interludes and skits which previously weren't found on older albums.

Also adding to what would be their eventual demise was the fact that record companies got greedy with their pricing of CD's. While they charged up to $10 for a brand new vinyl record or cassette tape in the past, they charged $15 to $20 for a new CD. They originally justified that pricing by saying that CD technology was new, but that when CD players became more affordable and ubiquitous, the prices of CD's would come down as well. Yet, while the prices of CD players did become very affordable, the prices of CD's did not come down; in many cases they went up. While this hurt a lot of established artists, the record companies made up for this by raking in huge profits by their cash cow artists, which by the late 1990's were mostly disposable pop acts who appealed mainly to teenagers.

So by the time personal computers with CD-R burners became affordable for the masses and the internet came into being, the record companies were already building their huge empire on a house of cards. Even before Napster came into being, more geeky music fans had already figured out how to rip tracks from CD's and put them on their computers, and there was already music sharing through FTP sites. Plus a number of internet service providers were increasing their transmission speeds for transferring files, which made it possible for people to download an entire album ripped into mp3 format in an hour, which for that time was extraordinarily fast.

And for those who believe the record companies were't fighting over music copying prior to Napster, remember that in the late 1970's they brought lawsuits against cassette recorder manufacturers because they allowed people to copy their viinyl records to tape so they could be played on their Sony Walkmans. And even just before Napster and Apple's iPod, the record companies brought a huge lawsuit against the manufacturers of the Diamond Rio, which was the first popular mp3 player. They accused the manufacturers of facilitating piracy, which the manufactirers vehemently denied. The record companies lost that case, and it would result in the creation of the iPod.

It was the iPod that became the straw that would break the back of the recorded music industry, because it allowed fans to put a huge collection of their favorite music in one place to carry around with them. And because of that, sites like Napster, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, WinMX, Limewire, and Bearshare became enormously popular, allowing fans to quickly download their favorite tracks onto their iPods. And while these sites were at best questionably legal, Apple created iTunes to create a legal download site for record companies to charge fans for new digital music. But the record companies were oblivious to its impact, for while they made some decent money to counteract all of the file sharing going on over the internet, Apple raked in huge sums of money by using iTunes to encourage more people to buy iPods.

The record comapnies, seeing Apple make enormous profits at their expense, eventually shot themselves in the foot by bringing lawsuits against their fans and attempting to set up their own music download sites with cumbersome DRM restrictions wihich were easily broken by tech-savvy pirates. This created a lot of ill will towards the record companies, which saw their sales drop precipitously. Then when the overall economy crashed in 2008, it dropped sales even further.

It was only in the past four years or so that a few record executives saw the writing on the wall and belatedly began embracing digital music and creating alternative streams of revenue. But the industry as we know it is dying and not coming back. Music will survive, but it will be much different that what we have seen in the past.

there is the mathias amendment, where a royalty tax would have been added to any blank cassettes that were sold. the RIAA went to congress for this, and congress apparently did not support it. but now we have different measures recently by john conyers, which would affect radio, and music played on the internet, in particular.

Time.

Nirvana!

MJJstudent said:

728huey said:

The rise of Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, iTunes, BitTorrent were all just symptoms of the downfall of the recorded music industry, not the cause.

In reality, the decline in the recorded music industry can be traced all the way back to the dawn of music videos and MTV. While it was a great idea at first to be able to watch your favorite musical artists on TV 24 hours a day, savvy bands and artists who weren't the most musically gifted performers but had a great look and could prance around in front of the camera suddenly found themselves an outlet to display their otherwise limited musical abilities by having exciting looking videos. In addition, you had Michael Jackson and Prince suddenly become huge megastars thanks to the advent of MTV, and soon a huge number of artists were selling gazillions of records. The record companies, being smart at recognizing a money making opportunity, suddenly discovered that they could put out medicore product and still rake in huge sums of money if they could present a "good looking" artist. That's when the original hair band explosion and dance diva craze came into being.

During that time, the record companies also manufactured a lot of dance groups who could sing on record but either couldn't cut it live or didn't have that photogenic appeal to young music fans, so that's why they got people like Milli Vanilli and models to lip synch over recorded tracks for music videos. The Milli Vanilli lip synching scandal should have been a huge black eye to the music industry and brought down a number of producers and record executives for putting out a false image, but the fans shrugged it off and kept buying the records anyway, so the record companies just kept on doing the same thing. It was the triumph of image over talent.

The technology part didn't catch up until around the late 1980's and 1990's, when CD's and CD players became more affordable, and digital technology became cheap enough to use for making, recording and mastering music production. Suddenly, with pre-programmed drum beats and synthesizers which could be programmed to loop melodies and even sound like other instruments, it decimated the session music industry, leading to layoffs for a huge amount of studio musicians. Then with the advent of Pro Tools and Autotune, even crappy voices could be reprocessed to sound listenable. In addition, with CD's lasting up to 75 minutes in length for one album, the record companies pressured artists to fill that time with extra music, so you ended up with a lot of filler tracks plus a lot of interludes and skits which previously weren't found on older albums.

Also adding to what would be their eventual demise was the fact that record companies got greedy with their pricing of CD's. While they charged up to $10 for a brand new vinyl record or cassette tape in the past, they charged $15 to $20 for a new CD. They originally justified that pricing by saying that CD technology was new, but that when CD players became more affordable and ubiquitous, the prices of CD's would come down as well. Yet, while the prices of CD players did become very affordable, the prices of CD's did not come down; in many cases they went up. While this hurt a lot of established artists, the record companies made up for this by raking in huge profits by their cash cow artists, which by the late 1990's were mostly disposable pop acts who appealed mainly to teenagers.

So by the time personal computers with CD-R burners became affordable for the masses and the internet came into being, the record companies were already building their huge empire on a house of cards. Even before Napster came into being, more geeky music fans had already figured out how to rip tracks from CD's and put them on their computers, and there was already music sharing through FTP sites. Plus a number of internet service providers were increasing their transmission speeds for transferring files, which made it possible for people to download an entire album ripped into mp3 format in an hour, which for that time was extraordinarily fast.

And for those who believe the record companies were't fighting over music copying prior to Napster, remember that in the late 1970's they brought lawsuits against cassette recorder manufacturers because they allowed people to copy their viinyl records to tape so they could be played on their Sony Walkmans. And even just before Napster and Apple's iPod, the record companies brought a huge lawsuit against the manufacturers of the Diamond Rio, which was the first popular mp3 player. They accused the manufacturers of facilitating piracy, which the manufactirers vehemently denied. The record companies lost that case, and it would result in the creation of the iPod.

It was the iPod that became the straw that would break the back of the recorded music industry, because it allowed fans to put a huge collection of their favorite music in one place to carry around with them. And because of that, sites like Napster, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, WinMX, Limewire, and Bearshare became enormously popular, allowing fans to quickly download their favorite tracks onto their iPods. And while these sites were at best questionably legal, Apple created iTunes to create a legal download site for record companies to charge fans for new digital music. But the record companies were oblivious to its impact, for while they made some decent money to counteract all of the file sharing going on over the internet, Apple raked in huge sums of money by using iTunes to encourage more people to buy iPods.

The record comapnies, seeing Apple make enormous profits at their expense, eventually shot themselves in the foot by bringing lawsuits against their fans and attempting to set up their own music download sites with cumbersome DRM restrictions wihich were easily broken by tech-savvy pirates. This created a lot of ill will towards the record companies, which saw their sales drop precipitously. Then when the overall economy crashed in 2008, it dropped sales even further.

It was only in the past four years or so that a few record executives saw the writing on the wall and belatedly began embracing digital music and creating alternative streams of revenue. But the industry as we know it is dying and not coming back. Music will survive, but it will be much different that what we have seen in the past.

there is the mathias amendment, where a royalty tax would have been added to any blank cassettes that were sold. the RIAA went to congress for this, and congress apparently did not support it. but now we have different measures recently by john conyers, which would affect radio, and music played on the internet, in particular.

We have a law like this in Finland, but in addition to blank cassettes the tax is added to the price of blank CDs and more recently to the price of memory sticks and external hard drives, which is just plain stupid in my opinion.

dancerella said:

Nirvana!

Oh, yeah. That too.

728huey said:

In reality, the decline in the recorded music industry can be traced all the way back to the dawn of music videos and MTV. While it was a great idea at first to be able to watch your favorite musical artists on TV 24 hours a day, savvy bands and artists who weren't the most musically gifted performers but had a great look and could prance around in front of the camera suddenly found themselves an outlet to display their otherwise limited musical abilities by having exciting looking videos. In addition, you had Michael Jackson and Prince suddenly become huge megastars thanks to the advent of MTV, and soon a huge number of artists were selling gazillions of records.

But...albums sales actually peaked around the mid 90s and had been falling off since. Also, around the time Thriller came around wasn't the music industry in a slump?

Also, music just doesn't have the same cultureal significance as it used to. There's so much of it now and tastes are becoming even more particualr, I think. There's also new things now, like video games, television, the internet, and etc. People can occupy themselves in so many other things now. Things changes as time goes on. No one can expect it to stay the same forever.

That being said I think that the real money is in licensing/publishing and merchandising.

Nobody killed the music. But protools, the pitch shift plug-in for audacity and the people who created the internetz killed the industry

Unholyalliance said:

728huey said:

In reality, the decline in the recorded music industry can be traced all the way back to the dawn of music videos and MTV. While it was a great idea at first to be able to watch your favorite musical artists on TV 24 hours a day, savvy bands and artists who weren't the most musically gifted performers but had a great look and could prance around in front of the camera suddenly found themselves an outlet to display their otherwise limited musical abilities by having exciting looking videos. In addition, you had Michael Jackson and Prince suddenly become huge megastars thanks to the advent of MTV, and soon a huge number of artists were selling gazillions of records.

But...albums sales actually peaked around the mid 90s and had been falling off since. Also, around the time Thriller came around wasn't the music industry in a slump?

Also, music just doesn't have the same cultureal significance as it used to. There's so much of it now and tastes are becoming even more particualr, I think. There's also new things now, like video games, television, the internet, and etc. People can occupy themselves in so many other things now. Things changes as time goes on. No one can expect it to stay the same forever.

That being said I think that the real money is in licensing/publishing and merchandising.

When I said that the decline could be traced back to the dawn of music videos, I didn't literally mean that the record industry went into decline by then; I was implying that they were sowing the seeds of their own eventual demise by pushing image over talent. IOW, it was going after short-term megabucks over the long-term viability of tyhe industry. It was a paradigm shift that would water down music in general and make people less interested in buying records.

spacedolphin said:

Nobody killed the music. But protools, the pitch shift plug-in for audacity and the people who created the internetz killed the industry

I find the thought of the pitch shift plug-in audacity having something to do with it quite funny, but I don't really get it. What do you mean by that?

Nothing killed the music industry. It's more alive than ever. There's more music being consumed than ever. More artists are making money in more ways than ever before.

It's pretty naive to consider the major labels "the music industry". And they are the only ones arguably suffering.

As it was said previously the industry is not dead, the way we think of it has been dead. Alot of people on this board cant get out of the 90's mentality of sales, grow up already, if U think an album is going to sell 10 million in this day and age EVER again you are smoking the biggest Marley joint ever. That kind of selling is way over, first week sales thinking is OVER let it rest already, look at your calendars folks, the 90's are gone.

The idea that the pricing in the 90's killed things is way off, mainly because CD's peaked sales wise in this time period, so that goes out the door. And the quality is kind of BS, thats more of a marketing thing and what is pushed and what isnt, but that comes in waves and i think we see the signs of that going away.

But what is missed is that no matter what you sell a cd for, people KNOW they can get it for free regardless, do u want to spend $5 or get it free, people will say shit i need that 5 for something more that has VALUE to me, people dont value music like they did, there is NO longevity or growth or catalogs being built in artists. JUST like we have to save for our futures as people, LABELS forgot that they had to do the same thing, if you work just for right now well u get that kind of audience plain and simple.

The thing is there is TONS of music going round, ALOT of older artists sell straight from their website, why do they need soundscan to pat them on the back, they dont, they already have the audience, and they can tour, so a label a chart an MTV is irrelevant to them now. The industry right now is in pieces scattered all over the place, no one knows proper marketing because everyone is either a deadbeat, or some college business major which is useless in music. So add it all up, and you got what you have now. But if u just LET the 90's go LET the charts GO, and just keep doing what u always did, you will be happy knowing you can still find your artist.

lastdecember said:

The thing is there is TONS of music going round, ALOT of older artists sell straight from their website

The thing with this is that not everyone has a computer. Some people who do have a computer don't shop online because of identity theft issues (or they don't have a credit card), nor do they download, or in some cases don't have the internet. So there is still an audience that has to do things the traditional way. Many people complain that a lot of places they look for jobs at don't give out paper applications anymore. People assume that everyone has a computer.

[Edited 4/10/11 10:47am]

MY DICK (in the voice of Mickey Avalon) killed the music industry.

Militant said:

Nothing killed the music industry. It's more alive than ever. There's more music being consumed than ever. More artists are making money in more ways than ever before.

It's pretty naive to consider the major labels "the music industry". And they are the only ones arguably suffering.

It's kinda like those wealthy stock-broking motherfuckers who bitched because they have enough money to buy a ship but bitch because they can't buy an extra yacht and a jet ski.

MickyDolenz said:

lastdecember said:

The thing is there is TONS of music going round, ALOT of older artists sell straight from their website

The thing with this is that not everyone has a computer. Some people who do have a computer don't shop online because of identity theft issues (or they don't have a credit card), nor do they download, or in some cases don't have the internet. So there is still an audience that has to do things the traditional way. Many people complain that a lot of places they look for jobs at don't give out paper applications anymore. People assume that everyone has a computer.

[Edited 4/10/11 10:47am]

You know how the media likes to generalize? They ALWAYS compared what happened YEARS ago and think no one's doing it because "everyone has a laptop, everyone has an iPod, everyone has a desktop, everybody is doing this with one click of a mouse."

Uh...no.

I hate to say it but Michael Jackson did. He made it hip to make dance videos with big budgets, lots of dancers, so that little artists could not compete.

MJ is the cause. Sorry to say, but true.

Timmy84 said:

MickyDolenz said:

The thing with this is that not everyone has a computer. Some people who do have a computer don't shop online because of identity theft issues (or they don't have a credit card), nor do they download, or in some cases don't have the internet. So there is still an audience that has to do things the traditional way. Many people complain that a lot of places they look for jobs at don't give out paper applications anymore. People assume that everyone has a computer.

[Edited 4/10/11 10:47am]

You know how the media likes to generalize? They ALWAYS compared what happened YEARS ago and think no one's doing it because "everyone has a laptop, everyone has an iPod, everyone has a desktop, everybody is doing this with one click of a mouse."

Uh...no.

Yeah, a lot of these people are forced to go to the public library or pay at some "internet cafe" or Kinko's to do their business. They have to sign up and wait a long time for a computer at a library. If they live in a small town or rural area, there's no library at all, and they're just stuck out.