|
Sorry Jay, but you're pretty wide of the mark here.
First of all, the hits have generally not subsidized the lesser-known artists, at least not in recent history. Artists have generally gotten the same royalty rates whether they sold 10 copies or 10 million.
Realistically, fledgling artists have a better chance today because of the multitude of indie labels. The reason all these indie labels exist and are able to keep afloat is because they now have distribution costs on par with the blockbuster labels (i.e. almost zero). 10 years ago, a label could get 10 million CDs pressed for less than a penny each, but rubes like you or I would be paying hundreds of times that much per disc. Now the distribution part is practically free, even for the unwashed masses, and the only expense is in the production and marketing - something that large labels have always been "good" but not "great" at. Most of the record industry was based on that previously-profitable distribution model, which is now hopelessly inefficient; they've officially been outclassed on their core competency.
It's not that people don't want to buy music. And it's not that people expect others to entertain them for free - some may, but that's hardly the point. The problem is that everybody knows the cost equation now. People know what the distribution costs (nothing), and they generally have a good idea what the production costs (very little). The only thing left is the marketing, and people won't tolerate ridiculously high margins to cover the one aspect of the business they hate the most.
One can say that this logic only applies to a commodity product, but music is a commodity product now, and the industry made it that way quite intentionally with its ever-changing top-of-the-pops charts. Of course people have their favourite songs and bands, but that's no different from people preferring, say, a specific kind of computer memory (profit margins in hardware are also razor-thin). Some products/brands are "better" than others (varying by taste of course), but beyond an individual's top 3 or so, everything is interchangeable, especially when there are literally millions of choices. The big three saturated the market because they could, and because no matter which "product" you chose, they still made the same money. Now that saturation is working against them, because they don't exclusively control the distribution.
People will pay for music. iTunes and beatport and so on have proven that. The only thing that has changed is what they will pay, which in practice is just a little bit more than the operating costs, if they know what that is. "All-you-can-eat" flat rates (subscription models) also work, and they're often quite profitable, but the industry botched that horribly by selling crippled music when the public already knew it could get non-crippled versions for free.
To put it another way, people have roughly the same budget for music that they always did, but with broadband connections and plentiful storage space, their appetites (and subsequently, resistance to higher margins) have increased exponentially.
This isn't a moral issue, it's an economic one. Don't blame the market for "stealing". The market has done what the market always does: voted with its collective wallet. People stated several years ago in no uncertain terms what they were willing to pay; Apple took those people at their word, BMG didn't. End of story.
___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here
|
