Replies

You make some good points in your post. There are so many issues at play here. One really IS that when you have an industry like the one we have had for the last few decades, a lot of crap really DOES rise to the top for one simple reason: It's different than what peaople heard yesterday.

Modern pop is "throw away" music. It is also what is being affected by this downloading stuff. My daughter downloads classical music that she is playing in her high school orchestra, so she can better understand what it sounds like. She would never shell out the money if she had to buy it. I do the same for music I am going to cover. Again, I would not purchase it, or I already have it on a CD or vinyl.

I can legally record off the radio or sattelite. What's so special about MP3? Actually, we all know the answer: It's convenient. That convenience is going to kill the POP music industry as we know it. Most others will not be nearly as affected.

One thing's for sure, prices are going to drop like a dress at prom night! Fact is, we may not have the quantity of music we have now, but I will expect higher quality because the motivation behind the music will be MORE from the right place.

Music is just too easy to make today anyway. In a world where I can produce professional quality recordings with my computer, a few hundred dollars worth of software and hardware and a 300 dollar mike - and burn cd's from the same computer. Why sign with a major label. All they produce nowadays is one hit wonders anyway. And they end up owing the company money when the popularity fades. Who the heck wins in that situation?

It's like the clothing industry in reverse. That is, people stopped making their own clothes because it is now cheaper to buy than to make your own.

With music, the opposite is true. It is now cheaper to make your own than to buy it. Maybe if RCA allowed me to download any song for ten cents, I'd buy more music than I do now. I haven't bought a CD in years, but I only started using Kazaa Lite a few months ago, my first downloading experience ever.

Downloading music is not the problem many would have you believe. People download stuff they would not buy. They download out of curiosity. They download because they haven't heard a song in decades. They download what they already have on vinyl and it's easier than recording their record to wav. Heck they download a ton of stuff and never even listen to it.

The REAL problem with this whole thing is that people don't respect what they don't have to pay for. I have noticed a trend. That is, recorded music is treated like all the othere free stuff in the world today. Free forks, free napkins, free samples at costco, free carrying case, free tote bag with every order. The "gen X" and younger croud does not understand the concept of a tv without a remote, or paying for the plastic bag at the grocery store. And they will very soon not understand the concept of paying for recorded music any more than we expect to pay to listen to it in the elevator.

Music has gone full circle. The recording-and-selling phase of the late 20th century was interesting and made a lot of people filthy rich, but it's gone full circle.

Recorded music, like a Saddam statue, has been pulled from it's pedestal and we're dancing on it's grave. It's time to get back to basics.

I'm a musician.

most of the music most of us heard in the 50s and 60s and 70s was free. It was on radio. If you really liked it you bought it. MP3s are like cheap art prints. you look for a while, then throw away. If you want something good you pay for it.

Perhaps live performance is the only way to make a lot of money in the future. Such a shame.

"Recorded music, like a Saddam statue, has been pulled from it's pedestal and we're dancing on it's grave. It's time to get back to basics."

By "back to basics," do you mean artists putting less emphasis on CDs as a revenue source and more emphasis on live performance and merchandise as revenue sources?

I'm a recording artist trying to make my hobby into a profitable career. It seems I've picked some turbulent times in the music biz in which to do it.