Music Downloads

Hate rap. What's up with their joining up with other bands for songs?

xxxxxx with yyyyyy featuring zzzzz?

Trying every combination until it works? Trying to find someone with talent?

 

That's the panic of the record labels. Have you noticed all the "remasters" and old artists putting out new collections lately? They are afraid to release new talent because it might not sell. At least with old established artists, or mashing new established artists they already have an audience base and proven record sales. Minimal risk on the labels part.

The big labels used to take in new artists, fund their entire album recording/mixing/mastering, fund the videos, give the artists advances to live off of, pay for all the marketing, etc. It could cost them in excess of a million per album depending on the artist. Not anymore, they want to sign artists with a huge fan base that has their album recorded/mixed/mastered already, so all the label has to do is call in some connections to market the record, possible make a music video or 2, and ship it out.

It's rare they take on a band that doesn't have their album finished already, with a huge fan base.

 

Record companies lost $ because of the internet? Hog wash.

here is the deal... nearly all music labels are publicly held companies. They have to report earnings from their different divisions. Take a look at the earnings for the companies crying the loudest.

Next take a look at what the numbers are REALLY telling you. Is someone claiming a 10% drop in sales from last year? Look at the number of releases from last year vs. this year. See any similarities? Hmmmm, perhaps? Next look at revenue streams created by new technology, digital downloads, ringtones and the like. Are those up? Ya think?

Not buying it. The numbers dont support the claims, and frankly I'm suprised the SEC hasnt looked into some of the claims made by record co. exec.s.

 

Are you sure that you work in the music business?

 

??

 

He is positive. 100% positive. Are you in the industry?

 

I gotta tell you I do not buy any of these arguments the industry uses. Yes, I know that some of the bling you see on Cribs is owned or rented by the labels. Let's eat a little humble pie here...you cannot talk out of both sides of your mouth. It's awfully hard to say you're broke one minute and the next show LIL G-IDIOT (with one minor hit) standing in the middle of a 25,000 square foot mansion talking about a cabinet full of Cristal and all his ho's. Just like most endeavours, only a few talented people will survive. I made plenty of money and downloading hurt my business, too. I really see it as progression and people like me need to learn new business models.

Anyway...

ask yourself WHY the largest grossing concert tours are those of the Eagles, Elton John and U2. Even Kylie Minogue had more people at her concerts, while doing FEWER SHOWS than Eminem did.

Great thread!!

RMX

 

Let's not forget the Rolling Stones. I think djui5 is stating that the recording side of things are greatly affected. Plenty of people are making money on the road. Merch has seen no loss at all and there are still ways to make big money for many bands. Labels have definitely cut production costs big time, even opting to purchase pro tool system for the bands to keep pre production cost down. But from the studio side of things artists that aren't household names are not getting the big budgets the label once threw around. I made cassettes tapes from friends LPs when I was a kid as I'm sure many of us here did. There is much dispute as to the real need for a label today. If you can get a distribution deal from say Universal, then you can probably get airplay and all you need then is someone who has the booking connections. itunes and the different download sites have opened alot of opportunities for bands without deals to start making good money and greatly increase their fan base. I'm working with a band now that has no deal but has picked up 2 major stations in Philly and recently hit no. 1 on the one station. They have moved 20k cd's on itunes and at shows in a very short time and are starting to make good money. The money is out there. You just need to be a little more creative to get it. Universal and Atlantic seem to be the 2 label now that aren't in disarray. But I think there are solutions to all the problems. I just think it's the studio engineer's, studio owners, songwriter's and regular people in the business who are going to get hurt by all that's going on in the recording business.

 

That's the funny thing, labels are not screaming they're broke, but that record sales are down which means PROFITS are down. Big difference Those execs have plenty of money, trust me. The issue is when the bean counters start to realize that they are not making AS MUCH as they used to, so they cut costs somewhere. I read somewhere recently about a petition from the majors to cut artists percentages, like they get too much in the first place.

Think of it as a big coorporation. You've heard of downsizing right? Well that's what is going on, major downsizing, through the whole industry.

Some of the greatest studios in history have shut down in the last 3 years, including the Hit Factory. It's almost as famous as Abbey Road, and was one of the biggest studios in the world, full of the top shelf of the industry. Cello in LA also shut down, which was one of LA's biggest studios. I could go on, but I won't.

Bands are making albums in houses these days, with rented gear. Even worse, a lot of artists have resorted to recording themselves, seeking mixing through a big shot somewhere. In order for a guy to make any money on the recording side you have to produce, engineer, play, arrange, secretary, assist yourself, etc. It's insane. A friend of mine in LA told me he used to spend more on Caviar for albums than he's getting paid now, for the entire album, recorded mixed and mastered!

While I can agree that part of the problem is the ****ty music coming out now, a lot of the problem is the downloading/cd copying. I mean, if one guy buys a cd, then burns it for all his 30 friends, then the artist has sold 1/30th the amount of cd's they would have before. 1/30TH!! How would you like 1/30th the paycheck you get? It would suck right...


Great post EC308 You bring up a huge deal with the movement of bands these days. Many artists are side passing the labels and doing things on their own. You can do almost everything yourself these days, aside from getting on some radio. You can sell records online everywhere, and get more per record than you could on a major. The only downside is getting your video on TV costs $$, $150,000 at least...

 

Just a thought, I'm listening to a rough playback of an artist and am wondering if the introduction of vocal pitch correction hasn't been the single biggest downfall in the industry? How did this person get signed to a major?
Sorry to go off thread.

 

There is a lot of talk about that, pitch correction, etc. It's amazing what they can do in studios. The artist is the singer is dying a painful death. Same goes for the drummers and such, you can edit the hell out of a band these days. I can even replace the sound of the individual drums, so if a drummer isn't hitting the snare right to get the proper tone, I can use one of my samples and replace his sound. This retains his performance also. If the drummers performance sucks, well that can be fixed too, edited right on the grid. You can adjust the amount of "swing" so to speak to make it feel "natural". This with the raw audio files! Then you get into triggering samples from MIDI instruments/drum machines/sound modules/etc. They've been doing this since the 80's though...

You know it's funny though, they've been doing pitch correction for years. Before Auto-tune, they used to vari-speed the tape machines just slightly up or down.

I won't get into all the studio tricks here as I'm sure it would bore you all to death.

If you ever get a chance to hear the multi-tracks of some older established artists you'll understand just how ****ty the artists have become these days. Not all of them of course, there are a select few great artists alive today, but for the most part 75% of the artists out there can't play/perform well. Ever see a band live and realize how much worse it is than the album? Studios can be a crutch.

 

All so true. You see SSL boards on ebay for a fraction of what they cost new. The downloading is hurting the recording industry as well as putting large music retailors such as Tower records out of business. Now you can say that Tower and other entertainment based businesses were late in seeing that digital was the future of the music industry. But if someone downloads a song and then email it to all their friends then how can the public say it not hurting the industry. It's not tolerated in any other industry. The general thought is F the celebrity he's living the good life. But there are many people whose livelyhood depends on everything working legally. The current state of radio and video have nothing to do with it either. People stating that all the music out there sucks didn't help Justin Timberlake sell millions of records, so it must not suck to everyone. Whether the artist sells millions or thousands it is still his product. When Enron screwed all those people out of their life savings the goverment jumped right in. If anyone of us on Fchat manufactured an item and even 20% of it got stolen it would be a real problem. For the manufacturer being you and all those working under you. If it's your music, it's your stock and if someone taking it then it's a crime. People overlook that because it entertainment and not a necessity.

 

I was just discussing this yesterday with someone in a very popular band who just found out he and 2 other members didn't actually play much on the last record. The producer and engineer rerecorded almost have the record themselves.

 

Not necessarily get used to it, but need to find ways of adapting to it. Illegal downloads with software, music, movies, etc.. will always continue to thrive. It's too simple and there's no real way to stop it, no matter how many people the RIAA and whatever other groups sue. As everyone has noticed, once one place gets shut down, there's 5 others waiting to start up. When Napster got shutdown downloading became more popular than ever.

 

Yeah, that's the other extreme, when the producer or engineer start playing on the album. Bob Rock did some bass for Metallica, "who cares who plays on the record?" he says....ha.

It's not really funny, but at the same time it's so shocking you gotta laugh...

You're not kidding about the SSL's and such either. You can buy a 9000J these days for less than $250,000. Those things were selling for $700,000 not even 8 years ago. You can buy an older E/G series for way less than that. It's sic really. On the other hand, there is a lot of new stuff coming out that's selling like crazy. I think they sold over 1,000 Icon's...could be wrong but it's some crazy number.

Enough lip outta me

 

I can do a lot of things with a software sampler like Kontakt, a copy of Cubase, Reason, a handful of VSTi's and a midi controller. No real need anymore for a big console, especially with rap music. That stuff is pretty much all electronic aside from the vocals. As far as pitch correction, I've been using Autotune on vocals since 1998. Really does what it promises and it's gotten better and better over the years.

The quality that can come out of a person's basement today is pretty mind blowing.

Don't forget that downloading actually helps some people and builds fans for those who have no real distribution channels. Lots of people out there are still honest and may download a song and contact the artist to buy the rest of the album.

Alright off to bed. I have to play in New Orleans tomorrow night. At least people cannot download **me**. LOL.

RMX

 

...yet...

 

Well crap, you should have posted over in the Louisiana section. I live in the French Quarter and would have enjoyed shooting the breeze or at minimum telling you about some of the not so well known places to get a drink in the Quarter. Hope the city treated you well, shoot me a PM.

John

 

To answer the original parents poster, I'm a fan of using newsgroups, but it's like fightclub pretty much, you dont talk about it.

Otherwise torrents are a "reasonably" reliable place to get music or p2p applications (my favorite being acqlite / limewire for mac or limewire for windows -- it operates on the gnutella network).

I download lots of music, infact I have literally more than 120gb worth of music. I own almost every single piece of music on a CD somewhere in the house. The stuff I dont own I can't find (most likely because it's no longer for sale).

I used to be one of those kids that downloaded just to stick it to the man. That got old quick. Now I download music to help find new artists.

I love www.last.fm btw, great place to find other artists that are similar to what you listen to. It helps me a lot because I LOVE music, I listen to everything from jazz, to electronica, to heavy metal, to flamenco, and everything in between.

http://www.last.fm/user/ricky.agrawal/

That's mine, add me as a friend if you're on last.fm

 

Limeware and spare me the crocodile tears over stealing. You want to talk stealing? how 'bout $18 for a CD to get one good song? Now THAT'S highway robbery!
Digital is here and the music industry has to get out of their old school business model. And proprietary formats? No friggin' way, make it MP3s and I'll pay, until then, fuggedaboudit.

 

I probably have 500 cd's that 90% of the songs suck. I just download the songs that I like.

 

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/02/13/1332214.shtml

Some study finds that p2p has no effect on music sales. Or something.

 

I am. I run two independent labels distributed by Universal/Fontana. We release about 8 albums a year. Our last release was iTunes staff pick of the week and the single was their free download of the week.

I'm just curious because a lot of what I read in this thread is pretty far from my experience. Some of it is right on, but much of what I'm reading about the labels is pretty far off - at least generalized to the point where it's irrelevant and off base.

 

Such as?

RMX