jimmygoat

[Chris-Hutchinson]

he speaks sense....and lots of it!!!

 

 

 

Jimmygoat has few thoughts, but in this rare moment he has thought about the music scene...

 

6 years ago mobiles were a luxury and most people said 'I don't think I will need one'. For the last 2 years everybody has got one, 7 year old school kids to 83 year old grandpa who can't understand text messages.

 

4 years ago hardly anybody used the internet for anything, the schools had it and a few clued up people who found it might be handy. Then the AOL free cd era came along, BT tell you about it every 2 weeks and it is available from whsmiths. Now the internet has everybody online, and if you are not online somebody you know is.

 

The same can be said for 2 things that can and most likely will or nearly wipe out the music scene in it's current situation:

1. Cd burners (and of course the cheap cd's which go with them), now as standard on p.c.'s and L50 if it wasnt.

2. Broadband/ fast internet connections. This will develop as the mobile phones have, from the single tone tiny lcd screen to the multi colour personal radio email/fax/internet phones. It is just a natural progression.

 

What does this mean?

 

Faced with the choice of downloading an mp3 for pc or cd use for a maximum cost of 40p (cd 30p, paper wallet 10p or cheaper) or going out and buying a single L3.99 doesnt give most people any 'problem' at all. If you are incapable of doing this yourself, somebody else can do it for you. The people who do care will now make up the music buying public. Broadband is in terms of the country quite uncommon at present, but in the next 3 years it will become standard(?). At that point the non pc minded will have learned how to be and 'sharing' a file from somebody will be very fast and cause less hasstle than now.

 

But they will find a way to stop the piracy! No they won't. Audio, once opened (1 copy!) can be played through an analogue signal and then this can be re-recorded, that is the bottom line. You can watermark it and this can survive a digital to analogue to digital bypass but who cares? You can hear and see that the product was 'paid for', which draws to my next point. Policing. Each law suit against each individual would take far too long etc etc. This is a moral issue but the only people who say that people will still buy the product are in for a shock...

 

The result: Huge loss of money for the music industry, turning it into a very small industry and not what used to be one of the top 5 money spinners of the late 80's.

Record companies that survive this will not be able to promote their artists so hard, and if the trend of 'singles lose money, their just for promoting albums' was true 6 years ago, when this Titanic sticks it's tail in the air those companies will have to stop selling singles.

Vinyl will sadly be doomed. At present we are in a tough climate for vinyl as the unavoidable initial costs of manufacture make break even figueres quite high for small labels compared with cd's. The old arguement of 'you cant scratch it' is over with the new Pioneer scratch cd decks and most of these Dj's are online and young with little disposable income, so their choice is L0.40 for a c.d. or L6 for a vinyl 12" (L7.50 for an import) which they only probably like one side of.

 

Whichever scene we discuss it is a downward slope of uncertain gradient, exponentially bad, the funny thing is what and when will rock bottom be hit?

 

Rock Bottom! The good bit? Loads of software is cheap and so are pc's, the same people that steal their music will steal their software and what used to be done in a studio costing at very least L5000 will now be done on board. So production becomes virtually free. The producers will be paid very little if at all. The record companies will become very small. It may be hard to find good music as there will be many quickly and badly produced tunes without the 'vinyl' barrier.

Current producers may quit. You wont notice them gone as there are so many artists in each scene, they will just fade away.

 

Is it all grim? Maybe not, it gives the music industry a huge shake up and will give the average person the chance to chase a dream (part time) and get up there with the major players. Innovative marketing and a will to stand out from the crowd. A new breed of underground artists as new technology is developed, ripped off and redeveloped. Live performance certainly will be hard to email, so this will become very important. A grim future? Maybe not. Possibly just a different scene that will be seen as normal in 10 years when people will look back to now and think 'what a rip off'!

 

Jimmygoat.

[Bukey]

I really don't believe in the fall of the music industry... Sorry. That's unless they actually want it to fall.

 

Around about 20/25 years ago (forget the exact timing), Clint Eastwood stood up in court to give evidence over the most evil piece of technology to grace this earth. It would see the doom of Holywood and the entire film industry.

 

This evil object? The video cassette recorder.

 

If people could record things straight off the TV, or get illegal copies from studios and then copy them over, and over, and over then they wouldn't go to the cinema. Every man and his dog would copy every single video not only for themselves but also their friends.

 

Holywood lost the case, and the industry had to adapt. DVD and VHS sales of films account for a higher proportion of the industry's revenue than any other part today. They make more off the video and DVD than they could've ever imagined without them.

 

There's no denying that the music industry needs to adapt to new technologies - but the only way they'll die/shrink/collapse is if they continue to moan, throw their toys out the pram and do nothing.