Musical singlehood

[For a nice musical accompaniment, play one of the Basia Bulat songs at the bottom of the entry!]

One possible contribution to the decline of music industry revenue is that with iTunes type stores you can download singles instead of albums. Several people blame the music companies themselves, because with CDs they basically got rid of the single, which was the younger person's gateway into buying music.

I didn't buy a lot of EPs--preferring instead to buy cheap LPs of less popular music, like old Pointer Sisters or Yvonne Fair--but I remember clearly the ones I bought. And the rest we taped off the radio! Remember those days? Old school! I always had a blank tape handy in case I needed to throw it in the stereo and tape a song off the radio.

Anyway, we all know there is plenty of music in this world that only deserves single-hood, so I agree with those who think the shallow-pop artists were the ones who benefited most from this period of single-less record stores, and who are possibly losing the most now.

I consciously try to buy albums sometimes, because I know that some of my favourites were albums I didn't love when I first bought them, but that grew on me. But we're talking about artists like Prince and Kate Bush. There are other albums I never bothered to re-buy on CD, because the tapes didn't stand the test of time.

I still get occasionally burned by buyer's regret. So I have a new system--I buy one or two singles that catch my attention. If they stick with me for awhile, and I yearn for more like them, then I buy another song or two from the album. And if I love those too, then I eventually commit to the "complete my album" option (as I just did with the artist below.)

But I do have to wonder how much free downloading and single-purchasing can actually explain the loss of sales in the music ind.

* Study: Piracy Does Not Deter the Production of Music, Films, Books
* Harvard Paper on P2P Flawed But Worth Reading

And for myself, I spend waaaaaay more money on music than I used to. I remember the days when a spending spree at HMV meant 3-4 albums, $100. I felt guilty and it kept my going for months, maybe even the year (depending on my income.)

But the instant gratification of immediate purchase has made me spend more and more money over the years, until I've settled into my current pace. I rip some library albums (time honoured tradition), and I free-download some pop singles (the ones I worry I won't like for longer than 6 months), but I only have a couple album-freebies in my collection. I can't download an artist's entire catalog for free, I get way too much guilt from that. Maybe one day when I'm strapped for cash.

So the question is, how many people are like me? How many people spend more money on music because of stores like iTunes? Je ne sais pas.

Those crazies in the musiz biz. Crazy!!

In the article about Rick Rubin (who's a very pro-artist producer, now employed to help Columbia get on its feet) and apparently he and a lot of other music-ee guys (Jimmy Iovine, David Geffen) think a subscription system is the ONLY way to go. And if the music companies don't do it, then Microsoft will wait until the record companies are crashing and cheap, buy em up, and do it themselves.

Meanwhile Rubin's partner--the more businessee guy--is worried about all the problems with the subscription system (with reason). But his solution is... take a cut from the artists' touring and merchandise sales! What the--!!! So the record industry, who have been fucking over artists for decades, who survived for a decade by riding the CD wave (people buying albums they've bought before, and charging $22 per album when it cost pennies to make), now want to save their asses by taking a cut from the one area where artists make their living?? Oh come ON. Eeeeaaaaaase!

It doesn't even fix the problem, which is -- how can artists afford to record albums if their music is mostly downloaded? You have to fix the problem of how to pay for content creation. Not find a new way to bilk the content creators. Jeeze Louize!

One opinion I'm coming across with increasing frequency is the that digi-downloads is only ONE reason why the music industry has been losing money this past decade, and it's just masking a whole bunch of other reasons that the companies are themselves to blame for. Such as not concentrating enough on finding good content. The companies were the gatekeepers to the few avenues where people discovered new music, so if they had someone mediocre or shitty to sell, they could still sell them--get their videos out, get them airplay, etc. And it was (in part) because kids were looking for actual music they LIKED that the online avenue took off the way it did.

And I read of another set of authors who argue that all the media conglomerating that's been going on hasn't been good for the companies in question: "the authors point out the difference between judging a company by how many times it's CEO is seen in Sun Valley and by whether it generates consistently superior profitability." Sounds a bit like Icahn's comments.