The 'Demise' of the Music Busine$$ | What's Missing from the equation?

"I'm the guys honest truth / they decide the lie / they just divide they legs, I divide the pie" 

— Iggy Azalea, 'Murda Bizness'

The 'Demise' of the Music Busine$$ .... What's Missing from the equation?

Greed. 

There have been countless articles postulating on the so-called 'demise' of the music industry. I say 'so-called' because - unbeknownst to most - the Music Busine$$ is alive and well.

While pre-internet, artists would pull in most of the earnings from their shows & merchandise while on the road, that pie has grown significantly smaller. Post-internet, the record labels saw a prime opportunity. They began to perceive artists' songs as lost leaders, in a sense, making the shows the focus of their profiting. The 360 deal was born.

While it's true that digital music sales have suffered, what's missing from the oft-discussed 'demise' of the music busine$$ equations are all of the profits on back-end. 

In the pre-internet (hence, free download) days, the record labels would make most of their earnings from the sale of records. But those sales took a nose-dive as the rise in illegal downloads soared, and those once-robust sales now experienced an inverse relationship with the rise of those free downloads.

While it's true that the success of the mp3 brought with it a certain malaise amongst listeners, free downloads are still taking a huge bite out of the potential for profits amongst independent labels. The majors, however, at this point have little incentive to fight the illegal download battle.

The Music Busine$$ responded to the inescapability of lost album & single profits by contracting, combining forces by merging and forming huge, conglomerate, monolithic entities. I myself was caught up in the drama of those early merger days with the Seagrams takeover of MCA. (for more see here & here) And with that joining of forces came a new approach: a new mentality was borne from that paradigm shift. The new guard saw new opportunities for profiting, not from the sales of music, but from the sales of ancillary events & items: performances, merchandise, etc.

So when we talk about the reasons for the demise of the music business, we're really talking about a Trojan Horse. If we look inside, what we'll find is a Music Busine$$ that has learned to adapt, one that has shape-shifted, reconstituted, and risen to new lows.



For more on the 360 deal read Digital Music News, and Disc Makers Echoes. 

 

LOVE is (not) Black & White

Love! So closely aligned with regret & too often, revenge!

I prefer the quiet, personal kind, by re-grouping & re-calibrating yourself & rising above the remorse & turning the negative into positive creative energy.....

Write a song, sing it, dance, and remember : time is wasted looking back & regretting....! XO

Vanessa Daou - Black & White (Jori Hulkkonen Dub)

Black & White



Black & White

Here's the pen you gave me
To write my poetry
I said I'd give it back to you
The day you stopped inspiring me
Here's my glass it's empty

When the burning comes
When the liquid numbs
We go on to say
"Hey isn't Hell fun?"

When Salome said 'No'
The first to ask had to go
When the second tried
She just kept on dancing

All night with her boots on
All night, all night long
All night 'til we can't go on
All night long

Here's your portrait I painted
It's in black & white
"There is no in between for you."
I said when you ask me 'Why'
We ***k through the night

When the burning comes
When the liquid numbs
We go on to say
"Hey isn't Hell fun?"

When Salome said 'No'
The first to ask had to go
When the second tried
She just kept on dancing

We live in a dream
No reality
We who believe in Love
Life goes on without you
Love always, V