Re: The Internet: All the music in the world and nobody’s buying
Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 6:07 pm
Partly disagree, it didn't break the equation, as it's still there, only there's too much on offer for the demand that exists. Rendering the equation useless for most who want to make a living based on the eqation.Jabbon wrote: Contemporary Technology broke the equation of Offer and Demand, not only in music.
I ask myself who will be the new Maynard Keynes?
And as you say, it's not only in music and it's not only due to people downloading stuff illegaly. It's more of a problem of and for the whole society. Take a look at the manufacturing industry, the people want to get everything cheeper, so the companies move their factories to asia, where labour is cheeper.
Look at the farmers. A few weeks ago there were protests all over europe because the milk farmers ended up paying more to feed their cattle than they earned from selling the milk they got from them.
But while the farmers were selling their milk for something like 7 cents per liter, you still payed around 1€ for the same liter in the stores (leaving 93 cents profit for "the industry") and in the end no one cared except the farmers (that is untill ten thousands went out do demonstrate, blocked the roads the politicians had to take to their meetings, and killed many fish by pouring milk into ponds to show that it was worthless to them).
Now if you lay that over on music buisness...15 years ago you payed 10€ (yes I know there weren't any € 15 years ago) for a CD with 10 songs = 1€/unit, (in the end the artists probably ended up with less than the farmers for 1 sold unit of their product).
Plus the major record companies still havn't given a satisfactory explanation why after the cost for physical media and distribution were taken out of the equation the prices per song are still the same for the consumer - the quality of the production, the price for the hard- & software used and the quality/effectiveness of the promotion deffinatly havn't gone up, if anything, they've gone down.
But with music now it's "the industry" who's been left out of the equation. Suddenly its all over the news, governments are making new laws ignoring civil rights to stop this "unjust behaviour" and in the end many artist are just jumping on the train, not realizing that they're standing up for exactly the same people who've been f*cking them for decades.
Think how much the artists themselves made from selling music 15-20 years ago. If the music downloads were offered for a few cents per song, the number of people willing to pay the artist for their work would deffinatly rise in comparison to today.
I know many people will now say "but the record lable does so much work. mixing, mastering, promotion..." True, but how much is that actually worth on the market?
A good song will be listened to even if it isn't mastered perfectly and a crap song is still crap even if the greatest mastering wizard in the universe does his best work on it. Besides even here on this forum there's several people who, with the technology available now, will do a better job at mastering than any major-lable-wizard could have done a few decades ago, for a price that every 10 year old can pay from his pocketmoney.
The only point that has much weight pro-recordlable is the promotion. But due to the complete oversaturation of free music available on the internet (whether legal or illegal), complete promotion across the globe, in all stores, to all groups of people anywhere and everytime creates costs that simply don't justify the benefit anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying this is good or fair. What I'm saying is that's music in an oversaturated capitalist society and in the end we will do no better than the thousand and thousands of industry workers who lost their job because the company moved to make their products cheeper for the consumer.
The biggest difference is that we (even those of us who's main income comes from it) are doing this because we have fun making music and letting other people enjoy our music!
One last question for those of you who actually bothered to read this far:
Ever notice how often the companies that complain the loudest about how much money they lost due to illegal music downloads, then a few days later proudly anounce how much money they made on their newest video game (sony) or on the cinema tickets for the newest film (universal...) which in the end is the same money the people saved by not spending it on the music they're listening to?
OK I'll shut up for now
