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therejustis

Listed below are comments made by therejustis between Monday, 22nd December 2008 and Monday, 22nd December 2008.

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Copyright - the empire strikes back 4:24pm on 22 Dec 2008 The music industry loves to point the finger at the public and the music pirates for their woes when it comes to record sales and the like, but there are a great many ways in which they cause their own problems.

Music isn't valued the same way as it used to be. It has progressively become more disposable in its nature.

Any new trends that arise, the labels pick up and destroy by overcommertialising

We are force fed a showcase of human musical instruments and a few sob stories for 6 months just to achieve christmas #1,

There is shockingly little risk taking and diversity on radiostations in the mainstream anymore (aside from 6music maybe)

The push of new music devalues everything that any new bands built up in previous years by branding it all as uncool.

There is bound to be more. There is an arguement that only a small handful of acts keep up the profile of many acts that barely or dont break even but if you are so willing to outmarket everything else on just a few of them it is bound to happen.

We are in such a dire state of affairs that even music fans presume a lack of value in the industry. Having been in bands before, even selling CDs available in shops, the public sees more value in spending their £10 on 2 or 3 more beers that will last an evening, than a CD that will potentially last a lifetime. Music has basically been pushed by the labels to being as disposable as toilet paper and the people have little to no faith in it anymore.

Even the rise in festival attendances is misleading as it has taken on more of a social rite of passage/excuse for a party. If there really was such a sudden rise in the love of live music then why have gig attendances been going down so dramatically?

Ultimately this business model has been doomed to fail for a long time, I remember even back in 2002 my lecturers telling me "the music industry is going to collapse in the next few years" and although they have held on longer than expected, it is all far from unsurprising.

If anything, services like myspace (for unsigned artists), the reduced cost of recording equipment and the rise of digital distribution (legally or illegally) is the only thing that gives people with a passion for music the freedom they need. We are a people looking for a vehicle of unlimited access to anything and everything and we want something we are willing to invest in. Not a collection of watered down cover versions and songs with less sophistication then nursery rhymes. Maybe that will end up being a less profitable way of doing things and maybe the money will fall out of the music industry, but dare i say it, maybe that is the way it should be.

Still, I am glad that Leonard Cohen should be seeing a very rightly deserved percentage of all these cover versions this Christmas. Of course old music isnt cool, of course we need to spend 6 months and millions to make it happen. Repeat it like a mantra.

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