erin8u4l: Making Easy Money

The Music Industry and the Web – Time to kiss and make up?

I was reading about the making of Brian Eno’s “Another Green World” earlier I found myself wondering whether it would be possible to record and release such an ambitious album in these times, where record labels are acting like frightened animals, cautiously guarding their IP and making easy moves – no doubt fearful of any further financial hemorrhaging.

Another Green World was made in 1975 in a top London studio that Eno, following a stint in Roxy Music and two well received solo albums, had booked – along with a group of the top musicians of time – without actually having planned much out first. This kind of thing went on a lot in the seventies, where after two decades of lucrative rock ‘n’ roll the money was there to make anything possible and confidence in artists (and not just their managers) was at a peak.

It’s a widely held view that we’re living in a kind of polar opposite to this these days and that the web, with its core principles of openness providing an easy sea for music pirates to sail on, is somehow to blame for this. It doesn’t stop there either – social media advocates that have tried to introduce the need for interaction with audiences to musicians, managers and labels have recently been met with waves of negativity and a sad yearning for “the good old days” when all that was needed to sell thousands of records was a few interviews and some decent radio coverage.

As you’d expect from massive corporate entities, major labels themselves have always been slow to embrace technology and therefore often highly suspicious of it – for instance the delays that have beset the launch of Spotify in the US have apparently been caused by a lack of confidence in potential revenues for the service. This is despite its success in Europe and the fact that these labels own forays into selling music via the web have been massive failures – not to mention the current alternative of continuing to release music only for it to be sold once and then endlessly pirated.

This might be a good time then, if they want to actually be around in ten years time, for labels to begin investing in emerging music technology themselves – rather than be at the mercy of smarter, web-savvy companies that will control their future interaction with audiences, and perhaps even one day seek to usurp them. A wise place to start would be to look into future formats, since MP3 is unlikely to be around forever and has proven to be a medium which suits audiences far, far more than it does the labels. Also, with licensing and IP issues no doubt being a major headache for them in terms of time and resources, perhaps harnessing technology as a means of dealing with these would be wise – although I can see a few people in the legal system resisting this one.

A forward thinking view with regards to the data around their music and artists would benefit them too. You only have to look at LastFm, whose API provides artist and song data to range of popular sites or The Echo Nest, which has recently struck deals around their music data services with two broadcasting giants in the form of BBC and MTV to see that this has a real value in terms of the kind of mobile apps and web services they can provide their audiences in the future.This is certainly something worth thinking about if these begin to replace traditional formats like singles and albums as a means of experiencing music, something that some are starting to believe is very likely. Bearing in mind that this new type of media might allow labels the chance to once again exert some control over the way audiences purchase and interact with music it would be unwise to ignore this trend in the way they ignored the rise of the mp3 fifteen years ago.

As much as I can see that record labels have been overly defensive and almost comically foolish when it comes to the Internet, few things would bring me greater pleasure than to see them recover the confidence to allow them to start investing in artists again and I honestly believe that it’s technology that holds the key to this. Let’s hope we start to see this in the coming years – who knows, maybe one day soon we might get to hear a musical endeavor as glorious as “Another Green World”.

Matt Schneider wrote “As intelligently noted at Hot Air, defaulting on one’s debts is not exactly “fiscally conservative,” not to mention the wisdom of following this advice is doubtful given that a Republican-induced economic collapse…”

A few questions for Matt: can you please elaborate on how not extending the debt ceiling is “defaulting on one’s debts?” More specifically, on what partifular debts will be be unable to *avoid default* if the debt ceiling is not raised? For example, if we commence bringing the troops home right now and close a bunch of overseas bases, will that save enough money such that we don’t need to increase the debt ceiling in April (I believe that is when it is expected to be reached). How about if we abolish the Departments of Education, Energy, HUD, etc.? If we make drastic cuts to such government entities, are we STILL going to default on anything? Or is the threat of default simply a concept to hide behind for those who want to continue unsustainable spending?

Take a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

Using 2010 as a baseline, we brought in 200 billion more in revenue than what is described here as “mandatory” spending. That suggests after mandatory spending, we could use the remaining 200 billion to operate the Federal Government. Further, I bet a bunch of what is listed as Mandatory Spending in the Wikipedia link is not really that. There’s about 600 billion of unspecified “other mandatory spending” in there, much of which is probably hooey. And commencing the restructuring of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid would similarly provide more headroom. So, the Dept of Education disappears? So what? The Dept of Ed we have totday didn’t exist before 1979. Did the country collapse without it? No. (In fact, Education was both better and cheaper.) Same with the Dept of Energy. Will the country collapse without the Dept of Energy? No. They don’t produce any energy. Same goes for 90% of our bloated government. We need courts. We need defense. (Though we’d be fine with a fraction of what we spend on defense now.)

Hard cuts are just that. HARD. Does not mean they don’t need to be made.

If the approach to a “debt ceiling” is to raise it every time it is reached, it’s not a debt ceiling at all. It’s a fat guy who gets fatter every day, with a legal commitment in writing to start a diet tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

What is more evil? Making hard cuts while we (perhaps) still can? Or kicking the can down the road to GUARANTEED PAINFUL, GUARANTEED COLLAPSE?

When two laws conflict, how are they reconciled? If we have a law that obligates us to spend, and a law that says we can’t spend any more, why is your default resolution that the “don’t spend any more” law is the one that must yield?

Curious to hear what you think.

Regards,

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Making Easy Money

The Music Industry and the Web – Time to kiss and make up?

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