Record Companies...A Thing Of The Past

____no5

____no5

Free Man
this is from a Geoff Tate (Queensryche) interview ...I found it a very interesting subject for discussion

Classic Rock Revisited: In your career with QUEENSRŸCHE you have gone from EMI to Atlantic to Sanctuary to Rhino. Do you prefer the commercial marketplace power of a major label, or the care and attention you get from a smaller label?

Geoff: Well, I've never really gotten the care and attention of a smaller label, so I guess I'm pretty happy with the majors. (Laughs). I don't subscribe to record companies . . . there seems to be so much emphasis on record companies, and I think record companies are very quickly becoming a thing of the past. In five years you won't have a record company, or the only record company there will be is iTunes. The whole industry is on its ear. It's changed so dramatically in the twenty-seven years we've been doing this, it doesn't even resemble the same thing anymore. The whole selling of records has become sort of a non-issue, really. So much music is being pirated now that record sales are down so much that record company executives are getting excited about selling sixty thousand records. (Laughs). When we started out, sixty thousand records was a failure. (Laughs). So that's how much it's changed, and we're seeing sixty or seventy percent drops in record sales because of pirating and that sort of thing. The industry has changed so much that we have to all re-think how we do things. Right now the only way most bands make a living is by touring and doing live shows, because even though people try to bootleg it, you still can go out and perform live and it's going to be different every night.

http://www.classicrockrevisited.com/Int ... tate07.htm
 
Well, ___no5's point is slightly different, and turns the attention a bit more specific towards the question:

Can bands actually survive without the total existance of record companies?

I say yes, it's already happening:

Example:
http://www.sellaband.com/

How it works:
http://www.sellaband.com/site/how-it-works.html

Short summary (better check the website):
The fans (believers) decide what comes out on CD, not the record companies. The bands and their fans make the money, not the record companies.

I'm a "believer" myself of the band Nemesea. Their album is already released and I have a copy as well !

:)
 
Forostar said:
Well, ___no5's point is slightly different, and turns the attention a bit more specific towards the question:

Can bands actually survive without the total existance of record companies?
Click to expand...

Yes, this is the point, but thanks to Genghis’ link I had the chance to discover the extremely interesting Steve Job’s thread.

Anyway Forostar, thanks for sellagroup link, I took a look, I’m not sure that I got everything but this page is already pinned in my Firefox, for further study.

Sellagroup’s way though, is not the only mean for the groups to continue existing

Big Groups like Rolling Stones, Metallica, Iron Maiden etc they can continue recording albums with their own expenses and after have them for FREE downloading in their webpages….They have enough money to do so. Profits will be made after concerts

Small groups, as always did: demos with their own expenses, FREE downloading via internet, concerts, or Sellagroup type solutions

I mean, for what the hell art exists? What is the purpose? To diffuse a message to the people, or to help groups and companies make money?

About free-downloading (aka piracy)
I have purchased some 2000 vinyl discs in my life and some 100 CDs, and I think that FREE downloading is one of the most wonderful things happened the last 10 years (I wish it could only be possible for books)
In my vinyl era I was not only purchasing vinyl, but also other stuff like music magazines, only to get the 0.001% of the information that today I have for free

About stolen music
When one steals a bike, someone else looses a bike….But when someone ‘steals’ a song, no-one else looses anything, the opposite: there is one more person to whom the message is delivered


...to be continued
 
____no5 said:
(I wish it could only be possible for books)
Click to expand...
If the book is old enough to be in the public domain, then this is possible. For example, HG Wells' War of the Worlds can be downloaded for nothing.

____no5 said:
About stolen music
When one steals a bike, someone else looses a bike….But when someone ‘steals’ a song, no-one else looses anything, the opposite: there is one more person to whom the message is delivered
Click to expand...
Except the artist, the producer, the sound engineer.... - this may be a CD you may have purchased rather than download.

But I do see this point and I know some bands are keen to have their music heard no matter how it is obtained - as Steve Harris said in the interview posted here recently ".....I'd rather someone listen to my music than not" - and some have a complete hissy fit at the site of P2P file sharing.

The main reason I buy CD's is it is a better product all round - but to get shot of the middle man (i.e the record company) and allow the band to produce a CD to be sold to the end-user direct, is not such a bad idea. However - the record company is the main financier (and benefactor) behind getting a CD recorded, distributed and sold - so if that does not exist, could bands do this so readily? Distributed and sold (via the 'net) yes, but to record a whole album can be a very expensive project.
 
Albie said:
However - the record company is the main financier (and benefactor) behind getting a CD recorded, distributed and sold - so if that does not exist, could bands do this so readily? Distributed and sold (via the 'net) yes, but to record a whole album can be a very expensive project.
Click to expand...

It's possible -->

Fragment of: http://www.sellaband.com/site/how-it-works.html -->

...Help your Artists of choice to raise $50,000. You can do this via communities such as MySpace or simply by enthusing your friends. Once an Artist has reached the Goal and has raised $50,000, it is no longer possible to buy Parts from this Artist. Only these 5,000 Partholders will be in business with their chosen Artist. Once your Artist has raised $50,000 SellaBand will assign an experienced A&R-person to this project. Together with a top Producer, your Artist will record a CD in a state-of-the-art Studio. During the process you will get an exclusive sneak preview of this exciting process.....
 
I prefer purchasing DRM free music from the iTunes store, personally.  That way I get the songs I want.  I only do that for songs that I like...1, 2 off the cd.  Otherwise I buy the CD eventually.
 
Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but... I would really hate it if physical records get obsolete to digital music files. Yes, they have a lot of advantages, such as the fact that you can listen to them everywhere you want if you have a playing device, they don't fall victim to physical harm or anything like that... but there'd just be something missing for me if I couldn't flap through record boxes at the store, stopping every once in a while thinking 'hey, this looks good...' or 'hey, I've been looking for that record for AGES'. Not to mention there are just times when I think to myself 'fuck everything, I just want to relax', sit down on the couch and put on my favourite music on the Hi Fi.  Not my favourite playlist, but my favourite record. I know this is a strange thing to many by now, but there are times I just turn off my bloody computer, because when it's on, I don't feel I'm all by myself.
A few days ago, I was listening to some classical music, which at parts was so quiet it actually got drowned out by my computer's running noises.
The point I'm trying to make is, just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to do it. I'm happy about MP3 players and all that, but it wouldn't be the same if I wouldn't have physical records. It could be that I don't trust anything that I can't put my hands on, I don't know.
Sorry if that babble doesn't make any sense.
 
Perun said:
Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but... I would really hate it if physical records get obsolete to digital music files.
Click to expand...
I'm with you on that, the physical product is so much better (and shopping for them is time well spent) - however, there may come a time when the CD will go the way of vinyl (I say may as there still seems to be enough support for the CD).
 
The thing with CDs is that you get both a physical and digital product with them.  You have the artwork, lyrics, etc. of the CD but you can also copy the songs onto your computer and other digital devices.  The only problem with the album is that you can't cherry pick the best songs, but for me that doesn't matter much as I listen to albums usually, not playlists.

So I also hope MP3 doesn't kill the CD.
 
Yes, of course, the physical records are always the best, but let’s see in what world we are living: the 2/ 3 of the earth’s population is living under the limit of poverty….We, that we are supposed to be the rich ones, we get salaries enough just to survive: pay our rents, have two beers by month, one cinema, not a great thing really 

Take a look to the soft wares that you use in your pc….    Are they legal ? All of them ? Well, I don’t think so! Just imagine having to pay for all the new versions every fuckin year: anti-virus updates, fire wall updates, Photoshop, word, windows and all these shit (but so necessary to every one) just imagine this cost, could you pay all these?

The answer is simply: NO
The companies know that –every logical human being knows that, is just NOT POSSIBLE

So why all these shit about ‘stolen’ music? Because they don’t have found yet the alternative way NOT to loose their money (but they will find, don’t worry)

@Albie: No, mate, the artist mainly makes money from the concerts, and the sound engineer and producer they are paid anyway, if we download or not, is the companies that loose money, people that have NOTHING to do with music, they are the people that say to groups to cut their hair, people with MPA studies but nothing to do with art, for them art is a way to make money nothing more nothing less

So, let’s see what we –the listeners- will loose in the case that record companies stop to exist: one thing for sure: we will loose the high tech productions

…and so? Is this a real problem to us? Let me remind you what we will win: Better musicians.

Yes my friends. Since the rise of technology and the studio facilities, the musicians’ abilities have gone worst and worst

Once upon a time i.e. during the 30s the musicians they were performing LIVE in the studio, all together…. Now, we have one channel for each instrument and and… Result: Live performances are gone worst –in fact, there are few groups that they still performing good live

I don’t speak easy words you know… I have wrote some thousands of rimes and recorded some hours of music, and always distributing them for free, to people that I considered it was worthy to be given…. For exchange I made a lot of shity jobs to continue to have my art independent and free

The art is basically one flame that burns you and you want to put it out, to share it, to pass your message, this is what is, not to make money, and for sure not to make shit loads of money

What we will loose from a –alas not so possible-disappearing of record companies will be these perfect sound productions….and so? If is to be better musicians FEWER musicians, believers in what we do and not merchants, I prefer it 

One last thing about the physical product … Record companies in their panic not to loose a dime they do some unforgiving mistakes…. Let’s take the example of Dance of Death CD…. I purchased it –as many of you I imagine- but as it was equipped with anti-piracy software, I had to DOWNLOAD it to have it in my PC, and to can make my compilations and stuff like that… Now what about that?

...to be continued ...I think
 
Record companies are too scared of becoming obsolete to the Information Age that they are shitting themselves bricks here.  Creating and distributing an album has become too easy, and I do believe they are becoming dinosaurs who need to wake up and stop alienating their customers.

I will never buy a CD I don't want.  I am far more likely to get the one or two songs off of the iTunes Store and carry on with my life.  I especially don't want to buy music from bands like Metallica, who are suing their fans for downloading music.  Artists are making plenty of cash, and I'll buy a quality product.  I'll download the other stuff, if I don't like it, I won't listen to it.
 
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