Longing for the day ...

Ancients, Aborigines and Africans

In ancient and primitive societies music is a kind of cultural glue that fires up gatherings and rituals and embellishes the characters of myth and legend. It makes people throw their arms around each other and share the lurve – especially along with … inebriating substances.

This remains true in modern societies, where people gather at parties and festivals or as audiences for TV or radio shows. The music they play or hear unifies their experience of shared culture. Everybody knows what’s going on when they hear the Wedding March, their national anthem or Happy Birthday to You.

Australian Aborigines’ songs tell people where to find food and water, and how to treat others. If these songs are not shared, people die in this harsh landscape.

Similarly, modern Western societies use music to remember the alphabet or as “My Very Easy Memory Jingle”, which “Seems Useful Naming Planets”. We all know the pang that inspired Yesterday and feel the injustice of The Hurricane.

Like European societies in the Middle Ages, remote African cultures have wandering minstrels who bring stories, songs and dances from other parts of the world. These storytellers are respected and bring the party to villagers in return for a chow down and some shelter.

Thus, music is just another way to capture and exchange stories and other information. It is not an end in itself – it is meant to be shared freely among the people.

Summary:

Music has always derived its value from being shared. If it is not shared, it loses all value and the culture suffers. Unlike a q-tip or a burger, the more music is shared, the more it is valued.

How NOT to impress music-business decision makers

Just read this blog from my colleague Rick Goetz. Rick advises musos to do three things at music industry conferences:

1. Find like-minded peers
2. Make sure you and your product present well
3. Have a plan

He's spot on, but I'd take his advice even further - this does not apply only at conferences!

These are great rules for getting head in any business at any stage. They come back to the basic ideas that 1) you need to know who you are and what you want if you're asking people for something; and 2) your career-building ability is based entirely on your ability to collect the esteem of other people. These are especially true for musos.

The first idea is crucial. The first thoughts business people have when they meet you are "how are you?" and "What do you want?" If you can't answer these questions, then you are not going to give a good impression.

The second is fundamental. Conferences are there to bring your peers and colleagues together - that's the point. If you want to get ahead it is your job to build relationships with your peers and your colleagues - and being drunk, stoned, hungover, late ... is not a good foundation for a working relationship.

So, while your fans may dig the whole "rock 'n roll" attitude thing, save it for your rock 'n roll performances (more on that later). Give the business people your best business performance every time you are given the opportunity.

Pulling the wool over the sheep's eyes

The quick and easy metaphor that tells this story is to say that the record industry thought they were selling sheep but have been forced to realise that they were really only selling wool on four legs.

The sellers of recorded music simply misunderstood what their customers were really buying and, at the end of the metaphorical Ice Age, now confront a market in which demand for their actual product is declining. Better sources of meat are available.

The music business, from its earliest days and most primitive forms, has always been about using the sexiness of music to sell other things. The music itself has never been sold.

Music is ephemeral – gone as soon as the voices, instruments or machines stop making sound waves – and hot, cool, or lame depending on the listener’s mood.

But humans really dig the feelings only music can inspire and thus combining a musical experience with something else has been used to entice people to buy those other things so people can reconnect with the feelings inspired by the music.

In the case of the record industry, those things have been technologies: paper, plastic, electronic hardware and now bandwidth.

Now that music fans can sing and dance the night away without paying so much for the technology, the market for the technologies has declined and the record industry is experiencing a decline in sales.

Summary:

The record industry is suffering because they assumed they were selling music when they were actually selling technology that was associated with music. They were not interested in developing the technology and now they can’t control it.

July 16, 2010

The problem of recorded music.

At the end of the 20th century, recorded music sales were booming. In 1999, driven by massive global smash hits like the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium and Ricky Martin, total sales volumes of music recordings in the USA peaked at 1160.6 million units, amounting to US$14.58 billion.

But since 2000 US sales have declined both in volumes and in dollar value. Digital sales have made up some of the lost revenue but not enough to compensate overall. That this pattern is repeated in other major music markets the world over has been well documented and discussed. There are some signs that overall recorded music sales may once again be on the increase because digital sales now exceed hardcopy sales. Other evidence suggests the digital market may be maturing.

The decline in CD sales has been variously blamed on piracy, file-swapping, corporate greed, the prevailing economy, inadequacies in the methods of collecting 21st century sales data, and market dilution caused by alternative forms of entertainment. However, putting the politics aside, the causes have proved complex and difficult to map.

What is less well known is that these dramatic recent figures hide a much longer decline. According to one study, US per-person sales of recorded music peaked in 1978 (coinciding with the rise of home computers and video recorders) and US recorded music sales as a fraction of GDP peaked in 1921 (coinciding with the “broadcasting boom” - http://earlyradiohistory.us/ and closely followed by movies with synchronized sound in the late 1920s). The most recent figures from the UK indicate that the per-person trend may be continuing downward in the major markets. This indicates that the decline in the value of recorded music pre-dates any of the commonly espoused explanations and is unrelated to them.

The difficulty still experienced by 21st century musicians trying to earn a living from their recorded music has led to the argument that by making digital files and/or CDs available at no cost to the consumer, musicians are “devaluing” music. According to this argument, giving CDs and MP3s away to potential fans gives the impression that the music is worthless.

However, this argument is contradicted by other aspects of the music industry which, overall, is booming. Instrument and equipment sales are up. Live performance revenues are up. More music is being made and consumed than ever before. It seems silly to argue that music is being devalued by a process that leads directly to greater production, productivity and consumption.

So, how can music sales decline in light of 21st century technologies if more of it is being appreciated than ever before? How is “music” worth less when only one sector of the music industry, recorded music, is suffering from a downturn? Is a sale price the only measure of music’s value to a musician’s business?

What follows in this e-book is an exploration of the nature of musical value. This shows how those parts of the industry that relied on recording music for their income built their empires on a temporary phenomenon but assumed that its foundations were permanent. Understanding this fundamental misconception leads to a realisation of why other aspects of the industry are inversely affected by the decline in recorded music’s fortunes and points the way forward to a 21st century music business model.

Part 1 shows how music has historically been valued in Western cultures and how this has led to a misconception of music’s place in the economy. Part 2 provides a better way to understand the value of music in the marketplace. Part 3 shows how music makers in the 21st century can adapt to this new understanding and adopt the new technologies to further their career goals.

This post has been the introduction to Dr Huge's "How the record industry got it so wrong". To download the whole book in PDF format, click here.

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