The Ap reported today that sales of digital music have failed to make up for slumping cd sales.. and in that release stated, "legitimate music sales did not come close to offsetting the billions of dollars being lost to music piracy, with illegal downloads outnumbering the number of tracks sold by a factor of 20-to-1."
At some point, perhaps, someone should send the message that, uh, maybe they should stop making crap. The vacuum of innovation and imagination in new music today is heartbreaking - the neverending line-up of elevator-music worthy hip-hop and r&b, talentless Green-Day wannabe's and, oh yeah, Hannah Montana probably has more to do with why no one is buying music, just, uh, "borrowing it".. In the last month, I've purchased:
Bruce Springsteen - Magic; Marvin Gaye - What's Going On; ELO - Out of the Blue; Bif Naked - Superbeautiful Monster; Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
Note - the only relatively current music purchased was Magic and Superbeautiful Monster, and Magic, sadly, wasn't that good.
If the industry keeps focusing on being greedheads and continues to distance itself from promoting true talent, well.. hello limewire :)
My Trusted MOGs
I'm starting to think that part of the problem is that occasionally, newer bands like Paramore come along with smash summer hits and surprising record sales and that gives false hope to the labels, seeing as they automatically assume that every artist they sign and publish is the 'next big thing' ... It can't possibly be that label folks are out of touch with what qualifies as listenable music - it absolutely HAS to be because people are just downloading music.
Someone needs to slap industry folks around a bit on this one. Could I, feasibly, download tons of major label releases? Yes, I could. Would I bother downloading 99.9% of the shit they put out, even illegally/for free? FUCK NO. Why gum up the hard drive space?
My Trusted MOGs
The "industry" once again showing off their failure to keep up with technology and adapt to times of change...
Perhaps not everything currently produced by the industry is rubbish, but the corporations just give off the impression that they only produce rubbish because it seems they predominantly allocate their marketing budgets to advertise rubbish marketed at under-12s (an outdated strategy in itself if you look at social and cultural trends) and focus their CD releases on repeated compilations of the same artists (a strategy obsolete when people can buy similar previously released compilations cheaply on eBay, or create compilations to suit their own taste by picking and choosing songs on iTunes).
Piracy may be an issue, but not as big as they consider it to be - perhaps their main problem is their inability to do their homework right, and, to name but one example, focus on marketing music releases that would stand out in the saturated market.
Even complaining about 'slumping CD sales' is another illustration of how they're not in touch with today's reality, as, while all UK retailers recorded relatively disappointing Christmas sales, HMV reported record sales of CDs, indicating a trend that certain groups of people are reverting from downloads back to buying 'hardcopy'.
I wonder if perhaps the inability of the music industry to 'keep up with the times' has anything to do with the industry now being run by 'business' people rather than 'music' people?
My Trusted MOGs
..following up on this thought, I highly recommend the movie, "Almost Famous" as a beautifully acted and written film, which makes a not-so-subtle comment on what Lester Bangs in the movie refers to as "swill merchants" who take the beauty of rock music and ruin it with commercial considerations.. and here we are, where we, the customer, are now in fact, "the enemy".