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Is There Big Trouble Brewing?

It seems there is some trouble in the recorded music industry. Sales of recorded music has fallen 5% in 2001, 9% in 2002 and the global forecast is for a drop of 12-14% in the year 2003.

Regulators, especially in Europe have blocked mergers between companies including Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI and BMG, and seem to be holding firm on their positions. The music industry feels that consolidation may be the answer to many of their woes. I don't know if I can agree with this.

Do you remember when you purchased an album that contained 12 or so songs? Usually 70-80% of those songs were great recordings with quality content. Now if you find 10-20% of the recorded content to be of any quality you are doing well.

The recorded music industry likes to blame piracy and the world economy to be the culprit. Could it be the lack of quality in conjunction with out of proportion pricing? Many companies feel that format changes may provide the diversity for multiple income streams. Is that why they continue to introduce recycled music in the new formats?

I myself feel a great resentment towards the music industry. I am sick and tired of paying high prices for low quality and I'm sure many of you feel the same way. If the industry would like to see the new formats have a higher acceptance factor, don't you think they would do so by releasing new material on the newer formats?

I don't get it. Is there anyone out there willing to embrace the new formats so that they may listen to recordings that they have been listening to for the last 30 years? Will the industry ever wake up and realize that the consumer is disgusted with the bill of goods we are presently being sold?
buscis2

Showing 4 responses by seandtaylor99

seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
there certainly is trouble brewing. In my opinion we need record libraries and download technology to allow us to "try before we buy" and to explore more music without having to pay up front for music that often does not live up to the hype.

The good news is that there is a tremendous back catalogue to explore, and that a good redbook / vinyl system can be extremely enjoyable to listen to.

The other good news is that technology may allow more artists to bypass record companies altogether and market direct via the web. So overall I'm not too worried.

My final point is that ultimately the quality of a service industry is linked to the quality of its consumers. If consumers are buying video games at the expense of CDs, or buying loads of britney or gangsta rap then at the end of the day they've only got themselves to blame for the fall of the music industry. Everyday we vote with our wallets.
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
Thanks Buscis. The first company that I worked at out of college had 5000 employees on a single campus, and there were many active hobby groups .. pretty much like college with a salary ! Anyway, one of the groups ran a vinyl library (CD's were just starting to take off) and you could rent an LP for about 50 cents a week. I started working for the club cataloguing albums ...we had over 7000 albums !!!! I'm sure the RIAA executives would have tried to close us down had they known that people could rent good condition LPs and record them to cassettes. I recorded hundreds of albums to cassettes. In the execs. short sightedness they would probably villify me for killing record sales.

But here's the thing ... for every album that I ended up liking I probably went out and bought 2 new LPs. Those that I didn't like stayed on the cassette. If I really like an album then I've just got to have the original, and the club got me into many many new artists who I would never have otherwise have heard about, since they don't attract any airplay in the UK (where I was at the time). I must have bought over a hundred albums directly as a result of that library.

Hence my suggestion that lending libraries (or virtual libraries, if we use internet downloading) could be the saviour of the industry, not its demise. I don't condone companies like napster (jumped up techies stealing intellectual property), but at the same time how slow can the RIAA execs be ? Look at apple's new service ... I'm sure it's going to be a screaming success.
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
Buscis ... you are preaching to the choir! I was born in 1969, so my prime music buying years (assuming we start at age 14) were 1983 onwards. Looking in my collection you'll find tons of 1960s and early 1970s material, maybe 1 or 2 1980s albums, and then a slew of 1990s albums. I actually think that things are better now than they were during the 1980s, but I blame the synthesizer for that, more than the record companies.

Also I'm not sure if there's less talent now, just that record companies (like the rest of US and UK industry) is hooked on the quick buck, and so it's easier to fabricate bands for pimply teenagers than it is to nurture the next Beatles, Queen, Led Zep, Elton John etc etc. Unfortunately they are discovering that pimply teenagers like to get their music for free ... hah !

You might like to try some of Paul Weller's solo albums ... self titled, Wildwood, and Stanley road are all classic albums from the mid 90s, and will stand up to ANY Elton John or Beatles album. But does anyone promote Paul Weller in the US ? I'm certain good stuff is out there, but I'm also certain it will not be nurtured by the big record companies, nor the increasingly corporate radio airwaves.
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
Bomarc .. I envisage lending libraries where the CDs lent are "special" non-production CDs, either with clever copy protection, or more likely the age-old copy protection of just cutting off the last 30 seconds of each song. That way you are forced to get the real thing to get the whole experience. I'm sure it could be made to work.

Lugnut ... I'm sure you're on the right track, which is why I am loading up on used LPs and CDs at the moment.

Buscis ... great thread. And guess what, I haven't managed to have this thread closed or shutdown yet :-)
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