Comments on: The Low Down

By: To Whom It May ConcernDrink To The Dead | Drink To The Dead

To Whom It May ConcernDrink To The Dead | Drink To The Dead — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:24:01 +0000

[...] minds and a grand ambition to pass ourselves off as responsible journalists, we asked ourselves how much of the record industry’s woes can really be attributed to piracy. We got a few answers, and the most credible and well-researched one came from researchers at [...]

By: To Whom It May Concern @ Antiquiet

To Whom It May Concern @ Antiquiet — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:31:32 +0000

By: Tania

Tania — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:57:23 +0000

Thank you for the article, great read and research!! I don’t know about downloading disappearing in the near future but I do know the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups scare tactics are NOT in the best interest of music; or musicians for that matter. I leave you with what I think is a very edifying and still valid article from @demonbaby http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

By: Rock 'N Roll Is Not Dead @ Antiquiet

Rock 'N Roll Is Not Dead @ Antiquiet — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:13:55 +0000

[...] The internet isn’t killing record labels, it just gave everybody a place to collectively call bullshit, as well as to celebrate a flash-phenomenon during its short shelf life (like Pants on the Ground). Who says file sharing is the problem anyway? That’s bullshit. We’ve covered this already. [...]

By: Radiohead Endorses Bandwidth Throttling? @ Antiquiet

Radiohead Endorses Bandwidth Throttling? @ Antiquiet — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:47:38 +0000

[...] of all, Lily Allen is parroting talking points fed to her by an industry that funded its own most damning counter-argument. We now know that many in the industry know that file sharing is better than just good for [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:22:26 +0000

Awesome article. Spot on.

Just want to reiterate what you mentioned…

The sad irony here is that as the radio stations have become more homogenized due to corporate control and greed, true music fans have gone “underground” to get their music by tapping into the P2P networks. If the radio stations played music or AT LEAST had the freedom to play music like they used to (i.e. stream whole albums, play independent music, etc.), I’m sure we’d see a more balanced and reasonable usage of P2P.

Furthermore, had radio remained a reliable source of music, it would be interesting to think how this would have or could have better evolved WITH P2P network technology. In other words, radio stations offering free streams/downloads of the songs in their rotation or select singles, etc.

The amount of control from record companies that has dominated the radio airwaves for the past two decades has not merely encouraged but forced consumers to hit the web and track down what they like.

I also can appreciate the argument you present as music addiction. That’s exactly what it is. Very few of the people I’ve ever known who have downloaded music did it because they were consciously thinking: I could buy this, but I’ll download it instead. Now, I’m sure that happens to an extent, but everybody I know who has ever downloaded did so because they finally found what they were looking for (a band’s brand new song) after weeks of anticipation and hours spent trolling through forums and news sites just for a tracklist or a song title.

So with radio now a complete joke and with MTV totally in the toilet (and hardly Lars’ golden throne, at that) where the hell are true music lovers supposed to go to find their music? And god forbid we actually do want TO BUY and PAY FOR music, where do we go for that? Best Buy? Target? Walmart? Oh ya, because that’s what I want, to search for a piece of art and hope to be inspired when I’ve got soccer moms pushing strollers with whiny kids and bags of gerber or corporate types trying to find a replacement ink cartridge or some geezer trying to figure out which refrigerator to buy.

One last note now that I’ve begun this rant: the last 50-60 years has been interesting because for the first time in history we’ve got mass produced art marketed and sold like a consumer good. Nothing was ever really like that before: you didn’t see big posters and commercials for books. But music (and movies, too) are a sort of strange phenomenon. For example, I believe the most expensive painting the world is Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 sold by David Geffen for around $150 million. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Nirvana’s Nevermind (also owned by Geffen) is a piece of art tantamount in its integrity and statement to this painting. Unfortunately, what this means in the mind of a record company executive (see Jimmy Iovine’s post above) is that this album must sell 10 million copies in order to give it the value that the industry imagines that it has. So the pressure is on the artist as well as the art itself to sell, not to create. Pollock was dead for years before his painting was ever “worth” this much… but Cobain ultimately took his life (in part) because of the pressure to be a best-selling commodity.

It’s bizarre what has happened to the idea of the artist. Their role in and responsibility to society has been beaten, gagged, and raped and what’s left is not art at all… but a product that now sits to the left of toys and video games on a shelf.

By: Jimmy Iovine

Jimmy Iovine — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:58:32 +0000

Oh f*ck me these guys are good… These guys are really good.

By: Skwerl

Skwerl — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:06:38 +0000

i just realized i cut out a paragraph in which i introduced mike, who came up with most of the research. i know i thanked him at the end, but really, i can’t thank him enough. he came up with the studies, without which this would have been nothing more than another blog rant.

By: fmuff

fmuff — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:11:46 +0000

You know I used to download a ton and then buy the albums I liked from a used CD store to minimize costs and wasted money (on shit music). But I honestly got scared by a lot of the RIAA’s suing and threats, so I slowed my music downloading a bunch. Almost to nothing. And you know what, I’ve pretty much stopped buying CDs too. When I do buy a CD it’s either a) from a band I love to the bone and have no fear on purchasing or b) music I’ve been looking for from the days I was downloading that I am just now coming across used.

And it’s not just CDs. Maybe it’s that I am getting older too, but I don’t go to shows (or buy other merch) as much any more either.

Take from that what you will, but I HATE that my love of music has actually been dialed down thanks to the RIAA and their tactics. But I guess I can cling to my current CD collection and enjoy the hell out of it for the near future.

By: Rory

Rory — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:06:36 +0000

I enjoyed what you had to say about the radio formats. But I believe that is a huge problem on it’s own. Radio stations are driving people to download because they can never hear what they want to hear on the radio.
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If the rock stations don’t play Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Green Day every 2 hours they lose advertising revenue. But there are a great deal of people, myself included, who have been steered to P2P because radio sucks and because I can’t buy the records I like at most chain record stores.
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I always hear about how the music industry has become a group of niche markets where only a few new groups are succeeding. P2P is an easy target, but maybe just maybe, the reason people aren’t investing in albums is because they all suck. If labels are going to exist 15 years from now, they need to expose the niche artists and pressure radio stations to get air play (not payola).
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The 360 deals seemed like a good plan…but the labels haven’t been taking advantage like Live Nation has up to this point. I don’t see Live Nation complaining about money problems. Love or loathe them (and their association with the evil monocle wearing Ticketmaster guys that are passing Go and collecting $15.00 with every ticket purchase), at least LN is creating new business model’s to compete in the changing market.
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The labels killed themselves because they have over saturated the market, because they promote the shit out of acts long past their prime, and because they continually look to business models created in the 50’s and hope they will still succeed today.
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They day the labels and terrestrial radio die off will be a glorious day for music. We’re just on the verge of hitting stage 2 of the Music Industry…the stage where the internet is embraced rather than feared.
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Plenty of people understand that now, but not enough.