The Dying Music Industry

[TaranT]

While the music industry plays with lawyers and politicians, it looks like it will take a computer company to make this work:

Apple Computer says its new digital music service, the iTunes Music Store, sold more than 1 million downloads in its first week, Billboard Bulletin reports. The figure roughly matches the download sales to date by all other digital music services combined, sources say.

More than half of the songs, priced at 99 cents each, were bought from iTunes in album bundles. Also, more than half of the 200,000 songs available via the service were purchased at least once. Top sellers included tracks by U2, Coldplay, Eminem, Norah Jones, Sting, and Sheryl Crow.

"Our internal measure of success was having the iTunes Music Store sell 1 million songs in the first month. To do this in one week is an over-the-top success," Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Doug Morris says in a statement.

Apple is adding another 3,200 tracks to the service today, including music from Jack Johnson, Andrea Bocelli, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Coldplay, and Alanis Morissette. The company is reportedly in negotiations with several major acts who have never made their catalogs available to digital download services.

Apple also reports that 1 million copies of its iTunes 4 music management software have been downloaded in the last week, and that it received orders for 110,000 new third-generation iPods in the same time period. The company says 20,000 iPods were sold in U.S. stores over the weekend.
source

I'm almost - almost! - tempted to get a Macintosh. Or at least an iPod (for PC).

[Hoeya]

The music offerings suck. Plain and simple. None of today's pop, for instance, can touch 80s (New Wave and otherwise) pop, or a lot of the good stuff out of the 90s. It's all dull love or R & B, or shitty "deep" songs. Deep like a kiddie pool. Sure, the time period I mentioned didn't have meaningful lyrics, but THE MUSIC WAS THERE.

No offense, but I always thought that 80's music for the most part blew. Sure, it did see some good music, but for the most part, they did what they are dong now, putting bands and artists with no real potential in the limelight and exessivly marketed them to make albums that had no real value.

The practice sort of ended during the 90's, and picked up near the end of the 90's with boy bands like N'sync and The Backstreet Boys, as well as pop glamour stars like Britney Spears and Christina Agulera, music which was mass produced and easy for mass consuption by millions of teenage fans with little will power, again relying on their sex appeal and marketability just like many of the bands in the 80's did.

Marketability, LARGE immediate profits over tidy ones, and image have replaced artistry and music in the mainstream today. The industry BUILDS "artists" for now, instead of actively seeking out artists that have long term potential. Where's Saliva now? Where's Drowning Pool (disregarding their lead singer's death)? Where will Korn, Linkin Park, or Slipknot be in five or ten years, in their fans heads as well as physically? Probably nowhere....

Agreed, except that Korn was known f for many years prior to the resurgence of crap artists. I'm not sure about the other two.

Besides that, do the figures of CD-Rs mean induvidual CD's sold or units? I'd be more impressed with unit volume, and you have to accunt for minor recording artists use of CD-Rs as well.

[Otohiko]

80's were an interesting time, though I was admittedly horrified at some tendencies there - one being the appearance of cheap, completely computerized, bleeping MIDI horrors! No, it's not MIDI I hate, it's the way some people used it to death in the 80's. Other things were scary...

But if you look deeper, the 80's was a pretty exciting time, since you had a lot of new technology and a good amount of people willing to do something really new and creative with it.

Personally, I still look back to the 70's more. But that's a personal preference.

Now, I wonder if Mac's new initiative will get anywhere... you know, they're not the first to come up with this, but we'll see if they're the first ones to make it work. I won't use it much because I'm not too cool with the thought of tracks separate from albums... but, again, that's my preference.

Another thing which might be hopeful in the industry - there used to be a project by a certain company called Bootleg TV, but it's yet to really surface. But many people hve picked up on the concept - selling audio/video recordings of their live performances. For instance, I hear Phish and Pearl Jam have been known for having an opportunity for the audience members to order an official bootleg of the show as they walked out of the hall... now that's smart. I hope more people discover that.

[kthulhu]

Phish and Pearl Jam have been known for having an opportunity for the audience members to order an official bootleg of the show as they walked out of the hall

Isn't that an oxymoron or something ?

[TekkaRepliroid Zero]

I was going to post the exact same thing, but I figured that's the point anyway :P