Sunday, October 2, 2011

Is The Music Industry Going To Collapse?

By Marcus Chamberlain


Record sales are falling significantly. These days an artist only needs to sell about a thousand records to make it to the pinnacle of the charts. In the old days you needed many thousands per week to make it into the top 10.

Now you only need about a thousand and it is not physical records, but more like downloads. Not all of them are legal neither. Downloading they say has finished the music industry. But has it not put the control over the music back into the artist's hands?

The music firms historically were the ones making the majority of the money from the record sales. The artist may have gotten 2-5% of sale revenue. But they would pay their record production and tour costs out of this. That's why the record companies tied them to such lengthy contracts.

Prince famously modified his name and etched the words Slave on his face in the 1990's when the launched a famous campaign against his recording contract. He was called the artist previously known as Prince. He didn't give in and consequently his record company had to let me out of his contract.

Many recording artists feel that they were in the power of marketing managers instead of their creative impulses. Now the internet lets bands and new artists put out their stuff and get spotted. Lots of new net companies have launched online record labels. With a bit of SEO management their music stores can shortly be found.

The principle of the Net is you give something away to get something back. The great majority of a band's earnings now comes from touring. By offering special releases and record editions on the internet a band can attract new proponents, and quickly fill the seats in concert locales. Touring also affords bands the ability to sell touring products which can often be quite moneymaking if not way more than record sales.

So the balance of power is swinging back to the artist. The music industry isn't dying, it's just changing with the times and technologies. The touring industry is now larger than ever before and fans have an increased taste for seeing live bands.




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