8 Votes
Music Distribution Paradigm Shift
Following in the footsteps of Radiohead and The Charlatans, British bands Jamiroquai and Oasis are also considering a free release of their next album. David Enthoven, a music management executive, stated "[W]hy would you sign your career away to a record label when CD sales are falling so rapidly?”
According to an article in the Telegraph, Radiohead’s website has seen an 11 fold increase in traffic since the announcement, making it the most visited music site in the U.K. A band spokesman also stated most visitors are opting to pre-order the box set, rather than pre-order the downloadable version.
Similarly tagged OmniNerd content:
- Will the 'Album' Format for Music Release Be Obsolete Soon?, by gnifyus over 4 years ago
- Music Purchase Log: December 2008, by Brandon over 4 years ago
- Keeping Up with Music, by Brandon about 5 years ago
- Music Review: September 2007, by Brandon over 5 years ago
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The landslide begins by twabulldogg
To prove that this is not just a British fad, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor announced that they are no longer associated with a record label.
The official announcement is on the NIN website.
Dinosaurs Will Die by NYoumans
These musicians are sending out a powerful message with their acts of bravery. They truly know what music is about: connecting with people. Contrary to popular belief, it’s NOT all about the Benjamens, unless your a business man rather than a poet.
It’s unequivocal. The music industry is suffering because of the movement that Napster sparked. However, a phenomenon as explosive as file sharing did not come about because of the denegration of morals or because the youth of America is an especially criminal group of people. The popularity of file sharing communities like Napster came about as an inevitable result of the greed and hubris of the music industry. CDs have become outragious in price. Everything orbits around the appearance and promotion of the musician, the album art, achieving a marketable sound which might fit into a genre that happens to be hot at the moment. Put quite simply, music has ceased to be music. The big wigs at Sony BMG, Universal, and other top record labels have taken hold of a relationship which was never meant to be theirs; namely, that between the musician and the fan. This new approach to music distribution is a step in the right direction.
It’s a scarcely known fact that popular bands and musical artists actually make more money by touring than they do selling their music. This is the case at least since the arrival and impact of file sharing. Word Magazine editor Mark Ellen writes, "Five years ago people toured in order to sell records and called the name of their tour after their recording, and probably lost money in order to promote and extend the life of the album. That balance has shifted and now people put out albums to justify going on tour and charging more to go on tour." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6897178.stm)
The artists who complain about losing money, such as Lars Ulrich of Metallica (who have sold 90 million records worldwide, acc. to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica), have an all too apparent problem with their priorities. The industry has lost sight of the bonding power of music.
In some ways, this paradigm shift allowing us to return to the musical spirit of the early industry where, as blogger Ben Hudson puts it, "it was all about the live show and radio was heavily leveraged to bring in those patrons." (http://www.musicdystopia.com/2007/07/touring-vs-album-sales.html). The new system would indeed be more profitable for the artists themselves as well. In the end, with any hope "the balance is being shifted back to the artist," i.e. where it belongs, and as NoFX puts it, "Dinosaurs will Die."