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A Sad Week For The Music Industry-a note by Nick Warren (pg. 8)
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| Halcyon+On+On |
BURN THE RICH!
/pitchfork |
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| KiNeTiC ENeRgY |
| I'm all for the de-commercializing of music. Farewell to all the ty labels who have done little for the artists except take the majority of profits from them. Bring on the more intimate, smaller venues where people can go to enjoy good tunage...live! Wanna make money? Play it live then. |
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| Progsounds |
| quote: | Originally posted by XaNaX
Right, when you know damn well an artist is getting less than $1 of the $18 you just paid for their CD it is hard to look at that purchase as supporting your favorite artist. You are supporting the A&R guy with his fancy car and trendy clothes who probably ed your favorite artist into a contract along with the rest of the leeches at the record label, you are supporting the distribution company for sure, and also the retail store selling the CD. The artist would be better off if you downloaded a torrent of their album and paypaled them $3 for it. |
Your statement to a point is warranted, although in many ways its an altogether sweeping generalisation of A+R people and label owners. Yes there have been labels that have exploited artists in the past and there will no doubt always be those people who are purely in the music industry to make money, bouncing from one business venture to another and leaving many people owed advances/fees for remixes/royalties etc.
However, there are many people, like Nick Warren as a matter of fact or like Dave Seaman who don't run their labels to make any money or because they have a need to - they run them simply to provide an outlet for the producers they come across on their travels around the world. The fact these producers are practically unknown makes no odds to them as they just want to help these people. Ultimately its the good people of the dance scene that suffer the most for trying to do something beneficial. |
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| MichaelBoogerd! |
| Nice people getting spat on is a social problem, not just EDM's. |
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| Clovis |
I think problems labels like Hope and Bedrock might be having would have more to do with prog not selling anymore than mp3 downloading though.
IMO labels like Crosstown Rebels and Wagon Repair have it right, the records they release are amazing, and the art on the sleeves is usually interesting and unique. Crosstown had a 4 EP stretch of interesting sleeve art that formed a single large square piece when you put them next to each other. That is something people are more likely to buy.
Looking at sleeves in Hope's catalog, everything looks bland and the same, rehashing their logo. Records need to more unique and special if we want people to buy them... |
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| Progsounds |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
I think problems labels like Hope and Bedrock might be having would have more to do with prog not selling anymore than mp3 downloading though.
IMO labels like Crosstown Rebels and Wagon Repair have it right, the records they release are amazing, and the art on the sleeves is usually interesting and unique. Crosstown had a 4 EP stretch of interesting sleeve art that formed a single large square piece when you put them next to each other. That is something people are more likely to buy.
Looking at sleeves in Hope's catalog, everything looks bland and the same, rehashing their logo. Records need to more unique and special if we want people to buy them... |
Bedrock is in many ways in a different league to many of the other "prog labels" as its probably the most established brand and as such it's sales are significantly more than a lot of the others within that particular genre.
I agree that many records released these days lack that tangible you mention of presentation and art and that many labels merely do variations of a very basic template. While its an ideology that worked to an extent for Hooj many moons ago times have long since moved on.
As I probably said earlier in the thread and on the many other forums / sites people have posted this topic or a related one on, there are many many reasons why things are currently the way they are, and certaining at the moment the German market and any labels who's music is distributed or marketable via that territory is currently to a certain extent unaffected aside from those that were distributed by Neuton. |
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| enydo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
I think problems labels like Hope and Bedrock might be having would have more to do with prog not selling anymore than mp3 downloading though.
Records need to more unique and special if we want people to buy them... |
+1
I guess this may sound lame to some people, but labels / releases with interesting artwork that look like it took someone time and effort to design influence me a lot. I still buy releases with much less "appealing" artwork, but great music + great artwork is just that much more special. |
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| kitphillips |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
kitphillips wrote about this in another thread: |
I'm surprised you managed to dig that up mate:p
But yeah, I guess there is the whole issue surrounding quality control on labels... Theres a millions reasons why their sales are going down.
I think the major issue this year for me has been the economy, because of the poor exchange rate, it now costs me 40% more for beatport tracks than it did 6 months ago... That's affecting my ability to buy tracks and I'm sure many others as well:(
That said, I'm definately buying more tracks since I got a credit card to use beatport at the beginning of this year. Before that I bought not even a CD every 2 months probably. So I think that labels should be thanking god for the internet right now. |
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| TranceOwnsLol |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
I think problems labels like Hope and Bedrock might be having would have more to do with prog not selling anymore than mp3 downloading though.
IMO labels like Crosstown Rebels and Wagon Repair have it right, the records they release are amazing, and the art on the sleeves is usually interesting and unique. Crosstown had a 4 EP stretch of interesting sleeve art that formed a single large square piece when you put them next to each other. That is something people are more likely to buy.
Looking at sleeves in Hope's catalog, everything looks bland and the same, rehashing their logo. Records need to more unique and special if we want people to buy them... |
Labels like Oslo and Liebe*Detail release the same colored vinyl every time for their cover art and they're not getting any problems. :p |
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| enydo |
| Not having very varying artwork for releases doesn't necessarily mean the label will do any worse, it's just nice having a cool piece of art to go along with your purchase. Gives it a bit more personality, at least in my opinion it does. :p |
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| TranceOwnsLol |
| I agree with Clovis' obvious point though that you have to make your product 'special' in order for it to be marketable in an ocean of releases. Just like with every other asset today, as we live in an age where everyone can just copy off someone and take ideas easily. |
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| Darkarbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by enydo
Not having very varying artwork for releases doesn't necessarily mean the label will do any worse, it's just nice having a cool piece of art to go along with your purchase. Gives it a bit more personality, at least in my opinion it does. :p |
Indeed.
I don't like buying digital either. I far prefer to have cds with the cool artwork, and concidering my discogs.com wantlist is at about 110 releases yet to be bought, I don't really think I'll be buying anything at all digital any time soon either.
I mean it's not just the artwork, its also that since its on a cd and on an album... then that means that there will likely be flow between the tracks, or if its a compilation similarly there will be flow and similarities between. As well as it simply being physical.
All those things added together make it a fair bit easier to get my head round my music and to appreciate it and love it, hence why I think cd/lossless free releases are the future for music for me.
Also heres a few pluses of piracy
-Less heard of artists get heard, and recomendations are a lot simpler when you can just tell your friend to torrent whatever song or send it to him yourself. This is fairly obvious and likely stated lots
-Consumer confidence... I'm much more likely to buy a cd if I know its good because I've got the torrent of it that and when someone buys a cd they don't like that is probably going to hurt their further music spending a lot, if piracy can remove that... thats an increase in quality, an increase in consumer confidence and a reduction in the importance of marketing. |
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