[dlink]

I was thinking of this the other day and perhaps I am wrong, but I am starting to believe that music downloading is having a severe negative effect on the quality of music produced. Here me out.

Bottom line is that the music companies want to make money. To make money they need to sell CDs (etc). I think we can all agree that there are certain genres of music that the general public likes, and then there are the genres of music that those of us who are internet savvy, the "geeks", like. At least in my town, there are not very many techno / hardcore / crunkcore / etc. lovers. Basically if the album isn't in the top 20, they don't want to hear it.

Now as a fan of, let's say Hollywood Undead, a band who has gotten fairly large thanks to myspace, I have a responsibility as a fan. Not only do I have an impact on the success of that particular band, but I also have an impact on the entire genre of music. Without fans like me going out to buy the CD, the companies make no money, so no incentive to produce bands of a similar type.

Now on the other hand we have the new, let's say Jonas Brothers CD. The internet savvy people like me wouldn't pay for the CD anyway even if I did like it (see above) so that is no real lost income. However, there is a whole group of, let's call them sheep, who want the newest, latest, lowest common denominator who think that changing the font on their myspace page is "1337." It is this group who is controlling the market. Their inability, or lack of desire to, download the albums means that they are the ones going to the stores, spending the money, and enable the market to say that this band is better than another. As such, the companies produce even more of the same thing. Look at how many Disney "stars" have had albums.

In short, I am saying therei s a vicious circle here. I download, not buy, the music I like, so the companies don't make any money off of it, so they won't produce it. The sheep will buy the lowest common denomonator music, so the companies make money, so they make more.

Bottom line: I, and downloaders like me, are a major contributor to the overall shittyness of the music being produced today.

[techs]

Quote

Bottom line: I, and downloaders like me, are a major contributor to the overall shittyness of the music being produced today.

I'm not sure I agree, for a number of reasons:

1. Although illegal downloading does not contribute revenue to the record label, it still gets tracked and counted. Or at least they claim it does when they estimate how much money they have "lost" due to illegal downloading. Thus, if something was exceptionally popular, but was only getting pirated rather than purchased, they should still notice that, and they'd probably still try to produce more of the same.

2. Album sales are not the only metric of success for a band or for a broader style of music. There are things like ticket sales, merchandising, and so on that allow the success of a band to be measured even if nobody is actually purchasing their albums. And if a band is popular by any one of these metrics, other bands are going to start following in their footsteps. So if a genre is dying, it's not just because everyone is downloading their albums instead of buying them. It's also because nobody is going to their shows, or paying for their T-shirts, or playing their songs on the radio, and so on. And that's something that's harder to pin on illegal downloaders than poor album sales, as downloaders are at least as likely to go to shows as anybody else. If anything they might be more likely, due to the broader exposure to music the downloading allows, the added disposable income from not having spent it on CD's, and possibly a sense of "I want to support this band" as well.

3. Downloading music for free may have started out primarily as a hobby for geeks (of both the computer and music flavors), but that's not what it is anymore. All but the most computer illiterate can easily download pirated multimedia for free, whether they're a hardcore music geek or a Top 20 whore.

4. In relation to #3, I believe that the law of averages is more-or-less in effect at this point, and for any group/genre of music, some percentage of listeners will always download for free rather than buy, and some percentage will buy at least some of the time. So the issue isn't that fans of genre X download more often than fans of genre Y, it's that genre Y starts out with a larger base, and applying the percentages results in a larger number of people that will actually buy album Y. The ratio of downloaders:purchasers stays (approximately) the same, it's the size of the pool that varies (or in other words, the Top 20 things are popular for legitimate reasons, and not because the people who like Top 20 music are measurably less computer savvy than the rest of the population).

My own theory for the general crapiness of the music industry is that the industry largely targets the 13-17 year old demographic, as that's where you get a lot of people with disposable income who are also fairly predisposed to following whatever happens to be "trendy" at any given moment. That's just where the easy money is. Couple that with the fact that I've grown out of that demographic, and it's not surprising that most of the new music that comes out is not appealing to me.

Of course, the systematic issues that the recording industry is experiencing with transitioning to a digital distribution model (or more specifically, their complete reluctance to do so, coupled with the large amounts of money they are burning to try to avoid doing so) are not helping things, as the drain on resources probably contributes to a more general kind of stagnation within the industry. But the solution to that isn't to tell everyone "hey, go buy CD's again". The solution is for the industry to stop trying to stand in the way of progress, and adapt to a changing environment.

I think the online subscription services are a step in the right direction here, where for a fixed monthly fee users can download as much music from as many different artists as they please. What they need to do now is strip out the DRM and other restrictions from those systems, and also consolidate across record labels. This is one case where a monopoly/near monopoly (or government-run program) might not be a terrible idea. For example, I would not mind at all if there were a $5 monthly "tax" on Internet access to cover the cost of downloading music (any music in the world that I could find). Then all the cash from all the Internet users could be thrown into a pile, and allocated to artists proportionally with respect to popularity, measured by the number of downloads an artist received in the current month. That way there's no need for pointless DRM technologies, no need to derive elaborate and costly ways to track/stop/punish downloaders, and no artists left starving because everyone downloads their album instead of buying it. I wouldn't mind if the same kind of setup were applied to movies as well. Maybe software too, but that's trickier because the cost of a software application can range from $0 to $5000+ to "it's free but I'll sue you if you use it in a way I don't approve of".

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 28 January 2009 - 09:14 AM

[shakey_snake]

I don't for one second believe that the quality of popular music as a whole is "slipping".

Perhaps what is slipping is "quality" of music pushed by major distribution channels: commercial radio," music video" TV, etc., although I'd even challenge that, considering that those channels have almost always peddled garbage.

What has happened, is that artists don't make as much money as they used to, or if they do, they at least don't flaunt it as much as they may have in the past. Why? Is it because illegal downloading is taking money ouut of their pockets?

I doubt it. It's because there are more of them making money, more hands reaching for the same basket, because the internet has lowered initial startup costs.

This post has been edited by shakey_snake: 28 January 2009 - 11:58 AM

[zootm]

I believe that downloading music that you do not have permission from the artist to use is wrong and you should not do it. However, evidence that it actually harms the artist is thin on the ground at best. And yes, if you do not pay for music, it is a disincentive to the artists in question to continue making it. It's necessarily a bigger problem now than in the past.

The core assertion of your argument, dlink, is that people who buy "mainstream" music are somehow less clued-up regarding downloading, and that they're more likely to pay through some form of ignorance. I don't think this is the case. What I do think is the case is that the music industry and a large number of artists, independent and otherwise are used to a model prior to the internet, and they just fail to understand its dynamics. A band not releasing on a major label doesn't mean they can't get exposure, any more. A band which doesn't release tracks to physical media at all may get away with never signing to a major label.

I'm pretty much in agreement with techsupp0rt here, although I'm less interested in subscription models personally. I think the "slipping" of popular music is largely psychological, though. Pop music always looks terrible compared to what you remember of that which came before it, as a lot of forgettable music is forgotten. There's certainly a lot less covering up of the intent to take money from people, but one needs to remember that the major labels are the ones who are failing to move, here, and as they become increasingly obsolete they're putting out high-profit, low-content items which won't save them in the longer term, and just ensure people associate them with profiteering.

shakey_snake, on Jan 28 2009, 11:58 AM, said:

Perhaps what is slipping is "quality" of music pushed by major distribution channels: commercial radio," music video" TV, etc., although I'd even challenge that, considering that those channels have almost always peddled garbage.

In the UK it's interesting as the advent of digital radio has actually made this situation a lot better. The main commercial radio stations have been terrible for years but now there's an actual choice in alternative channels.

shakey_snake, on Jan 28 2009, 11:58 AM, said:

What has happened, is that artists don't make as much money as they used to, or if they do, they at least don't flaunt it as much as they may have in the past. Why? Is it because illegal downloading is taking money ouut of their pockets?

Honestly I've seen no evidence of there being any less money made by artists. If there is, it's likely to be due to increasingly aggressive major label contracts rather than anything else. But it's much less socially acceptable to flaunt one's wealth in public than it was years ago.

Incidentally, Lawrence Lessig's books "Free Culture" and "Remix" are outstanding studies in this field, and he's a great figure within it in general.

This post has been edited by zootm: 28 January 2009 - 01:30 PM

[aaronsen]

dlink, on Jan 28 2009, 07:14 AM, said:

It is this group who is controlling the market.

...

Bottom line: I, and downloaders like me, are a major contributor to the overall shittyness of the music being produced today.

Yes, they are, and yes, you do. To an extent; see, music made available to commercial radio stations and featuring in the charts is one small section of the industry. I like going to independent record stores and seeing all the bands and artists I've never heard of alongside some of the ones I have. It reminds me there's more to life than commercial radio. People who like cheaply manufactured chart music are welcome to it.

Bottom line: If you like an artist, go to their gig next time they're in town, it's how bands make most of their money anyway. A fan shaking your hand and telling you that you put on a good show tonight is worth a lot more to most than another CD sale in Sweden.

[hestermofet]

shakey_snake, on Jan 28 2009, 06:58 AM, said:

It's because there are more of them making money, more hands reaching for the same basket, because the internet has lowered initial startup costs.

You can probably count on zero hands the number of Top 100 acts that got discovered on the Internet. It's not the Internet, it's the personal computer that has lowered initial startup costs. You can now produce pro quality demo tapes for very cheap. Getting that demo tape out in order to hit mainstream success there still requires old methods; the Internet not being one of them.

[Sandman2012]

hestermofet, on Feb 16 2009, 09:27 PM, said:

You can probably count on zero hands the number of Top 100 acts that got discovered on the Internet. It's not the Internet, it's the personal computer that has lowered initial startup costs. You can now produce pro quality demo tapes for very cheap. Getting that demo tape out in order to hit mainstream success there still requires old methods; the Internet not being one of them.

I agree with you that the PC makes music production much cheaper, but I think you're downplaying the internet in terms of distribution. As you say, you still gotta hustle, but I'm sure the industry A & R guys* are scoping places like Myspace Music for talent the way they did in the old days by going to clubs and such. And it's definitely a lot easier to get your stuff in front of a music rep online than when everything was regional.

Back in the day, you might have had the best band in some small Texas town but if you were serious about getting discovered, you and all your band members would eventually have to move to someplace like LA or New York because that's where companies scoped for talent, and even then your chances were slim. Chances of making it big are still slim, but at least these days you don't have to leave your family and friends behind just to make the attempt. You can record in your home town, and if you get savvy enough about self-promotion on the web, maybe have a chance.

As for people that made it big via the internet, it's my understanding that after having been rejected by a few record labels Lily Allen used Myspace to get her stuff noticed.** I'm sure there are similar stories around.


* do they still call 'em that?

** I read this at Wikipedia, so I don't know if it's true, or just something her publicists managed to sneak in.

This post has been edited by Sandman2012: 17 February 2009 - 05:58 AM