Take A Look A This Great 20/20 Feature:

If you had your doubts that the 'sky is falling' on the record industry, this video will seal the deal. Growth is slowing; there aren't enough super-sellers to bring revenue back. Albums are over shipped and stores are sending them back. Fans have access to too much free music. Rock is no longer viable. Fans just don't have to buy record anymore in order to hear music and the industry is in hard times. Major companies are folding. Layoffs are abundant. And the illegal copying of records is eroding profits. Yet, video might save the industry from this great despair. What year is it? 1980.

Take A Look A This Great 20/20 Feature:

[Edited 10/6/12 12:01pm]

Yeah so they jumped the gun, but it's really dying now and there's no turning back.

CynicKill said:

Yeah so they jumped the gun, but it's really dying now and there's no turning back.

How can you be so sure?

Because technology has caught up to the doomsdaying.

CynicKill said:

Because technology has caught up to the doomsdaying.

Well, I hope it will be the rise of the independent artist next.

Hell, if they hadn't had their silly little disco record bombing a few months earlier and killed off disco, the industry still would have been booming when this aired. The year 1980 on the pop side of the fence was definitely fading and it took it a good year or two for new wave to kick in revive it. I remember 1980 being full of adult contemporary stuff like Air Supply and even country was starting to get pop airplay. I simply said fuck it and switched to R&B radio which was still jamming hard like when disco was alive.

CynicKill said:

Because technology has caught up to the doomsdaying.

It sure has. Recording songs off the radio was never a threat to the music industry because people weren't satisfied with the recordings and still bought either the records or tapes. If you recorded a song off the radio, you didn't have the full song because you would have to wait for the DJ to stop talking before you began recording unless you wanted his voice on the tape over the song.

Also, lots of people didn't have cassette decks on their stereos back then because you would have to have a component system to get one which were expensive. Most people had the AM/FM/8 Track/Turntable combo stereos so if you made a cassette recording, you were usually restricted to a boom box which was not near as powerful as a stereo. Some stereos had 8 Track recorders but they costed a lot more and a lot of people didn't have them. Hell, by the time I was able to afford one, the damn 8 tracks went out of style about a year later.

Nowadays, with the internet, you don't need even need a radio. You can download a whole complete song just like it is on the album in only seconds and when it's burned onto a disc, it's just as powerful as the store bought CD.

vainandy said:

Okay, so I guess they must have given up on that music video disc concept because I don't recall anything like that coming to pass even for a short period of time. Those things kinda remind me of the laser discs that failed to gain popularity in the 80s.

I was recently going through the digital backissues of Rolling Stone and there was an article from 1996 about the industry being in trouble. Weren't 1999/2000 the peak years in terms of sales?

rialb said:

I was recently going through the digital backissues of Rolling Stone and there was an article from 1996 about the industry being in trouble. Weren't 1999/2000 the peak years in terms of sales?

Yep, at least for the big sellers. Britney, Limp Bizkit and so on. People had money and I remember the record stores were still quite full of customers (I'd hang in those places all the time). I suppose by the time Prince put out Musicology and bundled the record with the concert ticket the industry was already in big trouble.

So what REALLY killed it? Piracy? A decline in the quality of the artists/songs? Corporate greed? Is there a true root cause?

jeidee said:

vainandy said:

Hell, if they hadn't had their silly little disco record bombing a few months earlier and killed off disco, the industry still would have been booming when this aired. The year 1980 on the pop side of the fence was definitely fading and it took it a good year or two for new wave to kick in revive it. I remember 1980 being full of adult contemporary stuff like Air Supply and even country was starting to get pop airplay. I simply said fuck it and switched to R&B radio which was still jamming hard like when disco was alive.

I feel as though the 2010s have seen a disco revivial with this cheap computer formulaic sound that every major seems to do. Do you agree? Isn't the 'cheap sounding sex and money' style of now just disco with better computers and cornier metaphors for sex drugs and money? That new No Doubt album could rock a metronome behind the whole thing and it would not sound awkward. They raped Etta James legacy for some lame ass C&C Music Factory sounding nonsense. Usher, CB, JLo, Nicki Minaj, Lmfao etc. The rise of the independent artist sounds fun and utopian but ya can't eat, drive, or build a house with bar tips, free drinks, and tshirt sales.

Hell naw. There's more to music than just lyrics. When I listen to a song, lyrics and the subject matter of the song is the last thing I pay attention to. Disco was fun, rhythmic, dance music where the focus was mainly on the drum beat and bass line. Disco was basically polished funk sprinkled with glitter and all things shiny at a slightly faster pace than funk. Hell, I've always considered disco as "gay funk". The stuff today that's considered "dance" music is rhythmless dull trance. Whatever type drum machines they use these days sounds like weak Fisher Price toys and there's certainly no bass line.

SchlomoThaHomo said:

So what REALLY killed it? Piracy? A decline in the quality of the artists/songs? Corporate greed? Is there a true root cause?

The answer is All Of The Above and then some.

All of the above, but I think the thing that actually pushed it over the edge was streaming.

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records. You know, that group of people has myself included (a bit sad, but that's the truth). In any case, streaming - youtube and other services - just made people even more passive and sometimes it may seem like too much work to even download the music.

novabrkr said:

All of the above, but I think the thing that actually pushed it over the edge was streaming.

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records. You know, that group of people has myself included (a bit sad, but that's the truth). In any case, streaming - youtube and other services - just made people even more passive and sometimes it may seem like too much work to even download the music.

DAMN has it come to that!

novabrkr said:

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records.

I don't see much of a difference in people looking at Youtube and people decades ago listening to the radio. There were many people then who only listened to the radio or a jukebox at a restaurant/juke joint, but didn't actually buy records and tapes.

MickyDolenz said:

novabrkr said:

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records.

I don't see much of a difference in people looking at Youtube and people decades ago listening to the radio. There were many people then who only listened to the radio or a jukebox at a restaurant/juke joint, but didn't actually buy records and tapes.

Huge difference. You can search for the stuff that you want and listen to it immediately. Sometimes I'm too lazy to go pick up even the CD from the shelf and will just listen to it on Youtube. Actually, that's more often the case than not if I just want to hear a single song and not the entire album.

This all coming from a person that used to spend stupid amounts of money on records just 5-6 years ago. A lot of the people I know are the same and it's obvious that the increased availability of material through streaming services has also decreased traffic on p2p and torrent services a lot.

TD3 said:

novabrkr said:

All of the above, but I think the thing that actually pushed it over the edge was streaming.

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records. You know, that group of people has myself included (a bit sad, but that's the truth). In any case, streaming - youtube and other services - just made people even more passive and sometimes it may seem like too much work to even download the music.

DAMN has it come to that!

Yep. People are getting too lazy to even bother to steal the music.

novabrkr said:

All of the above, but I think the thing that actually pushed it over the edge was streaming.

Too many people just became accustomed to watching videos on Youtube and aren't interested in listening to that much music in the album format anymore, let alone actually purchasing the records. You know, that group of people has myself included (a bit sad, but that's the truth). In any case, streaming - youtube and other services - just made people even more passive and sometimes it may seem like too much work to even download the music.

Good post! And yes I agree, of all the things to come along and change the consumer mindset, it is the massive availability of everything at a click.

Even in the Napster era you still needed to "own" a piece of music you liked if you ever wanted to hear it again. You had to go to the effort of searching it out, and then storing it on your hard drive.

Now just sign up for a free Spotify account or click on Youtube and you can listen to just about anything. The only people whose work is not available are the ones spending time & money to keep it unavailable by flagging posts and reporting them to management. You don;t need to waste 2.3 MB on your hard drive even.

This has kind of re-shaped my own view about my own collection! Records I don't care that much about but are kind of nice to have around? Now there's no such thing.

This is massively different from the old days of jukeboxes and radio simply because the selection is nearly unlimited. You'd have to look for a place with a "good" jukebox, one that fit your taste, or else keep listening to the same tracks over & over again.

Like it used to be if I picked up a copy of Trouser Press and read about five unknown bands that sounded exciting to me, I would have to choose one to invest in an LP just based on what critics had to say. There was almost no way to hear them before buying unless I called my college radio station request line during the couple of hours a week they played new rock music. And that might get me access to two songs a week but it was the only way to use some consumer discretion.

novabrkr said:

MickyDolenz said:

I don't see much of a difference in people looking at Youtube and people decades ago listening to the radio. There were many people then who only listened to the radio or a jukebox at a restaurant/juke joint, but didn't actually buy records and tapes.

Huge difference. You can search for the stuff that you want and listen to it immediately. Sometimes I'm too lazy to go pick up even the CD from the shelf and will just listen to it on Youtube. Actually, that's more often the case than not if I just want to hear a single song and not the entire album.

This all coming from a person that used to spend stupid amounts of money on records just 5-6 years ago. A lot of the people I know are the same and it's obvious that the increased availability of material through streaming services has also decreased traffic on p2p and torrent services a lot.

But there's still more people without a computer than with one, so Youtube and downloading are not relevant to them. Many of the people that only listened to the radio didn't care that much about music to buy it or they couldn't afford to. Some only had a radio, not a stereo with a record player or tape player. The difference is that back then, if you wanted a record/tape, you had to buy it. You couldn't get it for free, unless you shoplifted it from the store, which was a small percentage of people. Some people might have recorded an album to a 8-track/reel to reel/cassette, but you actually had to play it to do that, so it was slow.

Musically, 1980-82 was definitely a transitional period for the music industry.

Just think about it: Before Michael blew up with the Thriller album in 1982, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!!!

But serious, the "death" of disco was a setback. But electronic dance music (EDM) genres such as synth-pop, italo-disco, electro, house, techno, and (Latin) freestyle would come about because of it. Meanwhile, funk was still alive on black radio, even with its own transitional moment of going horn-driven to synth-driven (READ: electro-funk/synth-funk). And of course, the uprising of hip-hop/rap culture was just warming up.

With all of THAT^ said, I strongly disagree with the notion that the music industry was dying in 1980. I think it actually started to died a slow death in 1994. But this is another discussion in another thread.

MickyDolenz said:

novabrkr said:

Huge difference. You can search for the stuff that you want and listen to it immediately. Sometimes I'm too lazy to go pick up even the CD from the shelf and will just listen to it on Youtube. Actually, that's more often the case than not if I just want to hear a single song and not the entire album.

This all coming from a person that used to spend stupid amounts of money on records just 5-6 years ago. A lot of the people I know are the same and it's obvious that the increased availability of material through streaming services has also decreased traffic on p2p and torrent services a lot.

But there's still more people without a computer than with one, so Youtube and downloading are not relevant to them. Many of the people that only listened to the radio didn't care that much about music to buy it or they couldn't afford to. Some only had a radio, not a stereo with a record player or tape player. The difference is that back then, if you wanted a record/tape, you had to buy it. You couldn't get it for free, unless you shoplifted it from the store, which was a small percentage of people. Some people might have recorded an album to a 8-track/reel to reel/cassette, but you actually had to play it to do that, so it was slow.

I don't understand your points at all.

Most people that were actively buying records before online piracy and streaming had an impact on record sales certainly do have a computer. As for the younger generations, they have used computers throughout their lives and I am pretty sure that more than 90% of people under 25 in Western countries use services like Youtube and Spotify for music.

The existence of a group of people that do not use a computer for music listening purposes at all is irrelevant. It's about the overall impact of online piracy and streaming on record sales. The services established around the selling of music recordings as physical copies have been dying out very fast and people just aren't as interested in them anymore.

Maybe you have something else in your mind, but comparing radio to the Internet really doesn't make that much sense. I know that you're not the first one to make it, but it just doesn't work. If I want to listen to some record that I don't have as an original copy the easiest way for me to hear is just to search it on Youtube these days. I'm not going to be able to hear it by turning on the radio.

In This Order.

1. inferior product / Greedy

2. record industry no longer controls the distribution of their product.

3. the digital age 24/7 entertainment media... Internet/TV /computers/mp3 players/tablets (iPad)

Of course Andy and I are soooooo despondent of the demise of the industry.

Whether you have a smartphone, iPod/mp3 player, tablet, notebook, open it up turn it on and you have over a half of million other things you can do besides purchase music. Whatever you are into: wanna watch, porn it's a click away. I hope all the bastards go bankrupt. The sad thing is they think people still give a damn about what they produce, they don't. Folks are getting gitty over a phone for Christ sake. Instead of talking about downloading music to the damn thing most people are interested in all the other shit they can do with it. A lot of that shit is for free. See the problem?

If its true what novabrkr said, folks have grown so indifferent they don't wanna expend the energy to steal music, than damn the industry is in much deeper trouble than I thought.

I received an email last week from Pandora asking me to call my respective Congressional Reps to request their support of the Internet Radio Fairness Act, bill number 3609". These fools are still snatching and grabbing and fucking with folks who could possible help them become relevant again. Just like they fucked with MTV. They need to leave Youtube and 8Tracks alone and allow those people to run their business with little of any interference. They need to allow YouTube to put a repeat button on their interface so if people wanna hear Prince's "Purple Rain" 100,000 times they can. They need to stop harassing music fanatics such as the founders of soulwalking.com with legal action for embedding music samples into their site. One of the founders said, they were told if they were willing to pay quarter of a million a year they could embed classic soul/funk music. Talk about having your head far up in your ass.

TonyVanDam said:

Musically, 1980-82 was definitely a transitional period for the music industry.

Just think about it: Before Michael blew up with the Thriller album in 1982, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!!!

But serious, the "death" of disco was a setback. But electronic dance music (EDM) genres such as synth-pop, italo-disco, electro, house, techno, and (Latin) freestyle would come about because of it. Meanwhile, funk was still alive on black radio, even with its own transitional moment of going horn-driven to synth-driven (READ: electro-funk/synth-funk). And of course, the uprising of hip-hop/rap culture was just warming up.

With all of THAT^ said, I strongly disagree with the notion that the music industry was dying in 1980. I think it actually started to died a slow death in 1994. But this is another discussion in another thread.

I agree with everything you said.I also don't believe that disco actually "died".It simply evolved into those other genres you mentioned.Or if it didn't really fit in those groups,it was simply labeled "dance music".

SoulAlive said:

TonyVanDam said:

Musically, 1980-82 was definitely a transitional period for the music industry.

Just think about it: Before Michael blew up with the Thriller album in 1982, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!!!

But serious, the "death" of disco was a setback. But electronic dance music (EDM) genres such as synth-pop, italo-disco, electro, house, techno, and (Latin) freestyle would come about because of it. Meanwhile, funk was still alive on black radio, even with its own transitional moment of going horn-driven to synth-driven (READ: electro-funk/synth-funk). And of course, the uprising of hip-hop/rap culture was just warming up.

With all of THAT^ said, I strongly disagree with the notion that the music industry was dying in 1980. I think it actually started to died a slow death in 1994. But this is another discussion in another thread.

I agree with everything you said.I also don't believe that disco actually "died".It simply evolved into those other genres you mentioned.Or if it didn't really fit in those groups,it was simply labeled "dance music".

In my neck of the woods its called House Music.

I remember this issue of People magazine from late 1979

SoulAlive said:

I remember this issue of People magazine from late 1979

Now we know who inspired Prince to adopt the "I just sucked an entire lemon" look!

Death of the record industry? Good. Kill it. Kill it completely dead and let something better grown in its place.