At Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 19:36:18 Frank wrote:

>The idea is for the majors to change to this model, not for a bunch of well 
>meaning startup labels to try to compete with majors in this way.  The 
>point is that if there aren't millions available to promote any bands, then 
>radio will have to change the way it does business, and not out of the 
>goodness of it's heart, but because it is the only place they can derive 
>revenue from at all.

If radio loses the investment dollars of the major labels they will merely 
find another revenue stream -- all oldies, all talk, or sustained 
infomercials just like on television.

>This is predicated on the idea that all the majors are losing money and 
>going out of business. It is a >claim that they continue to make.  Also, my 
>model was not for Canada.  Obviously smaller markets require smaller 
>models.  So the idea is, 35,000 doesn't scratch the surface now, but if 
>that is all there >is to spend, there will be room for it, or radio will 
>die.

Don't be so sure....see my comments above.

>It seems overly utopian, but all it  requires is all of the majors to go 
>bankrupt and restructure themselves with a saner way of doing business.  a 
>fella can dream can't he?

Here's what will happen to the majors...they will eventually eat 
themselves...and the remaining multi-national conglomerates (both of them) 
will battle it out for superiority over who will control, not the music 
business, but ENTERTAINMENT only to find out that no one's buying and will 
splinter into fragmented cogs as the Uber-Corporation downsizes back down to 
its component parts in the hands of mildly bemused business men.

Currently EMI cannot sell its recording division because the other labels 
are too bloated to take them on....it's this way all over. Got a Compact 
Disc/Home Entertainment manufacturing division? Well, sell it off quick 
before people realize that you can't buy the CDs that go in them anymore. As 
a very wise industry observer named Leftsetz recently said -- the major 
labels can't deliver the after-market goods as fast as the consumer can 
consume them...and THIS is the quantifiable reason the music industry is 
dying. When you can download 20,000 titles in a week from a peer-to-peer 
server but the major labels themselves can only crank out 12 new audio 
projects every quarter you start to understand that supply is falling 
horribly short of demand. And that doesn't take into account the quality of 
those major label releases (or the stupid amount of bling-bling needed to 
sustain them).

And this comes back to your theory that more releases, at a cheaper 
production (and ultimately wholesale) cost passed along to the consumer 
might salvage the shipwreck...but that too is unrealistic idealism.

For now, we the underfunded and truly independent are standing on the 
horizon of a Wild West renaissance. The inventive and adaptable companies 
will survive....the major labels will collapse into a heap of anachronistic 
self-importance. But make no mistake about it....the ashes of these 
corporations will spawn greater threats as technology escalates. This past 
decade has seen the second coming of the industrial revolution....and guess 
who won that revolution the first time? Big business did.

Jaimie Vernon,
President,
Bullseye Records of Canada, Inc.
http://www.bullseyecanada.com
"Not Suing Our Customers Since 1985!"

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