OT R2 State Of Music Biz

Did anyone else hear the debate 'The State of The Music Biz' on R2 last night. It was good, but the arrogance of them in the biz was outstounding. Every accusation was met with 'Not us...You're wrong....That's not our policy at all...You don't understand how it works....etc' Basically, their ivory tower is falling to bits because they've flogged the lead off the roof, and somehow it's our fault for not paying the extortionate fees they want to charge. One story was basically this, A manager of a small band was refused broadcast of a single because he couldn't show the company a video for it. Not unreasonable until you realise this was for RADIO!!! They've got their snouts so far in the trough they can no longer see us.

I think that wins the group award for the post with the most mixed metaphors.

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I missed the broadcast, but was listening to a discussion a few weeks ago on R5. One of the points was the decreasing sales of CD singles, with the music industry reps complaining about the MP3 downloads taking much of the business. He went on to explain that the reason for the £4 price tag on a single was all the extras you get - Club mix, Disco Mix, Radio Mix, possibly even another different song etc., so it was worth getting the CD and people were really getting their money's worth. It didn't seem to occur to him that people just didn't want the extras, all they wanted was the original song, and that if the music companies set up a simple £1 a shot MP3 download (minimal distribution costs, royalties and pure profit), they'd give the paying public what they wanted and probably make more money in the process.

Phrases containing the words Gun, Foot and Shoot come to mind all too often now where the recording industry is concerned. Instead of trying to make the internet work for them, they spend time (and money) trying to find ways to prevent its use.

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does that mean they'll be playing reunion tours for ever more ?

argghhh

Cheers

Looks useful. I note the price at 99 cents. Knowing the UK record industry it'll probably be 99p here. With a bit of luck it'll be available in the EU and we'll be able to get them at 99 EuroCents.

Then we'll all get our downloads from Europe or the US, and the record industry will tell us they're scrapping the idea in the UK because there's no demand.

Does anyone have a rough/exact idea of the number of old, established artists (David

Bowie, Mark King etc) who have rid themselves of old contracts/commitments to major

labels and set themselves up to distribute their new material exclusively through the web

or their wholly owned label?

Any new artists who started out this way and have never had a major label contract, but

have still 'made it' to 'stardom'? Just a thought.

To be honest, I think not too many. Mark King probably did it because he wasn´t going to be offered a great deal these days by a major. Prince did it as he was against the evil labels and their greed, but went back to one when it didn´t work out (I think). He really dissapeared when he did that. I didn´t know Bowie did that. I thought he had a strong web presence but was still under contract somewhere

It´s sad, but as long as the labels can still hand out 80 million to a few lucky stars, there will be plenty of other stars hanging out for a

In't old days the singles often were songs not obtainable on the album. OTOH the total album playing time was less than a current CD, but you still sometimes get CDs with 45-50 minutes playing time, unless padded with remixes of earlier tracks.

AFAIK Bowie (at some time) 'floated' himself on the stock market (but it may have been just his back catalogue).