DRM Weekly

Many bands have their own websites, and some offer audio clips to full downloads. Theoretically, they could set up their own online store as part of their site. The main problem is getting recognition. (That's the same problem small golf equipment companies have.)

Unknown musicians would benefit from a music download service that does the marketing for them. Then the question is who owns the service, who gets to manage it, and who profits from it? Would it run as a co-op of the musicians themselves? You have to remember that in the "old way of doing things", many of the record labels were started by artists themselves. How would an online version of this be any different?

I saw TBone Burnette and Robert Plant on Charlie Rose not too long ago, and they seemed to feel that the 'New Paradigm' is that the money will now be in live performance, with the recorded music done solely to support the tour.

This is 180 degrees from the way it was done for decades, with tours being done to drive record sales, often at a loss once the accounting was done.

If you think about it, this makes sense: The one thing an artist has almost 100 pct control over is the quantity and quality of their live gigs.

They also noted with a fair amount of amusement that record companies hate this model, and successful performers across genres have been thriving for decades doing tours with mininimal record sales.

Isn't that required if you're her father?

Then again, knowing you, maybe you had just fallen out the door of a spaceship.

My half-baked thought was that the composers, authors and publishers could band together and offer the services and capabilities of a record label.  Not every label is The Top Label In Music -- if there's room for second-tier labels, there's room for an artists' group with the same capabilities as that second-tier group.  The Artists' Group would have to have decent media clout right out of the gate (and certainly generate some free press, just by their creation and membership).  Pool resources and offer studio facilities/mastering/whatnot services directly and at lower cost.  Geez, MFAWG isn't the only one who can advocate communism!

Consume the capabilities of the next actor up the chain, and then offer it yourself.  I learned this strategy from watching Blow.

Well, you peddle either communism or fascism.  I don't have to know what they are to know that about you, right?


Be that as it may ... artistic and creative workingmen of the world, unite!  You have nothing to lose but your labels!

I spent 20 years in the music business, specifically on the distribution side.  The crap that went (and still goes) on is unbelievable.  I had a wine cellar almost filled from "Hootie and the Blowfish".  Did they know about it?  Of course not, the head of the label took me and my wife to Napa for a weekend, loaded up my car (and his) with cases of wine and wrote it off to "marketing expenses" for their CD.  I got millions of stories just like this.  It's one main reason why bands never recoup their advances and see next to nothing.  The only chance you have of making money from a label is to go multi-platinum.  Of the 30-40K releases every year, less than 200 achieve this status, and that total is getting increasingly smaller.  The old guard is trying to protect what they had, they don't give a rat's ass about the artist or the music, sad, but true.

Contrary to popular belief, the labels get nothing from artist's touring and merchandising.  That's really the only source of real income for the band.  That's why you see the new deals being pushed, i.e. Madonna, whereby she will give up a piece of touring and merch for a HUGE cash advance.  It's what the labes are all pushing for right now.  They can't make money selling recordings, so they want a piece of publishing, touring receipts and merchandise sales.  It's why the labels will go the way of the dinosaur.  No band in their right mind will get any benefit from this type of deal.  As others have suggested, they can do it on their own just as easy, with more upside.

Radio (especially terrestrial) is a joke.  Playlists consist of the same 100 songs that are played over and oer and most people don't give a *feces* about the crap that's being played. 

True music fans will find a way to get new music.  Today's youth are much more technolgy oriented than anyone gives them credit for.  It's where the money needs to be spent.  Not in litigation and lawsuits, but giving the consumer what they want.  Why is this so hard to understand.

Had the industry recognized Napster for what it could be, instead of suing them out of existence, they could have created a win-win for everybody.  License the P2P sites.  At the time they first became mainstream they had a chance, but blew it.  Wouldn't most of you have paid a modest fee per month to download and own all the DRM free tracks you wanted, especially if it were legal?  10.00 month times how many millions would have killed the rampant illegal trading that still proliferates and will continue until they all get their head's out of their asses.

Let's make sure we're all on the same page here.  Aerosmith have sucked balls since 1979 or so.  That's what you mean... right?   

Toys in the Attic and Rocks are both in my top-40 album list.