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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | king radio <kingradio@pumpingstation.com> |
| Subject | Re: iTunes iSbogus |
| Date | Wed, 27 Aug 2003 17:52:56 -0400 |
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>Thought this might be of interest:
>
>http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/
not to start this thread rolling again, but how is peer to peer
sharing good for the artist who gets paid zero? apple gets a much
heftier percentage than the artist? So does the retailer of the
commercially available compact disc. What is the difference? There
is no great solution to this argument, but it hardly seems fair to
blast apple for making good music easy to download, while ensuring
those downloads are legal. Why not blame every retailer who makes a
percentage hocking goods for the majors?
What is the real problem? The music industry is no longer able to
maintain blockbuster artists with gigantic promotional budgets and
enormous production expenses. Labels should be looking at ways to
develop and promote a larger variety of music, targeting projects
that can sell 10 to 50 thousand units with production and promotional
budgets of $35,000 or less, with artists getting a larger percentage
of the records profits. They should then figure out how to get music
to stores with a retail price of 7 to 10 dollars.
What would this accomplish?
If record companies were promoting a much larger stable of smaller
artists, the budget available for legalized payola for each artist
would be very small. Radio corporations would be forced to develop
smaller promotional packages. They would then be forced to play a
wider variety of music, helping to develop a more sophisticated
buying public, bringing americans back to music as a form of mass
entertainment.
The most important thing it would do is make the industry profitable.
Any bookie will tell you, putting all your money on one side is a
fool's game. With a large stable of thousands of artists generating
profits of 20,000 and up per record, there is still a lot of money to
be made. When a record fails, it doesn't take the whole record
company with it. With small investments and the possibility of a
record hitting it big, I really feel like the incentive to innovate
and promote exciting and vibrant music would come back to the
industry. Today, when any kid with his parents visa can record a
good sounding compact disc using home recording equipment available
at your nearest Guitar Center, maybe the record companies should be
spending more time figuring out who the next Les Paul or Brian Wilson
is instead of looking for another pretty face who sings a song
exactly like some other pretty face that sold a million records.
Frank.
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