Yeah, there is still some good music out there, but if one listen's to mainstream radio or streaming stations, it's a sad state
Mainstream radio was always crap, though. I listen to two local stations that play 90% good music. Some retro and some current. I still have to listen to lame dh's and ad's however, so I listen to a lot of talk radio in addition to my own collection. I look forward to Beats becoming available
Now you know why Taylor Swift pulled her entire catalog off of Pandora.
Yep. I guess the $64 million she made in 2014 just isn't good enough. Song/album releases have just become advertisements for the concerts where the real money is made.
The income graphic above is the perfect example of why streaming isn't just a horrible business model, but just plain stupid. The artists are getting totally fk'd... The music industry is shooting itself in the head and can't possibly thrive in any qualitative way when artists can't survive.
It's a change. Like others have mentioned it is more like a return to radio. I like to compare the music industry to the motion picture industry which tends to adapt faster and better. You go into a Best Buy you aren't going to see an older movie for the same price as a new movie. Yet this is what the music industry expects. If Taylor Swift has a new album they will want $16.99 for it at Best Buy. (Really?) What if you are a new fan and want her older music.... still $12-15 per album. If I want the latest Jim Carrey movie it is probably $15. However I can buy several of his older movies together in collections for $10-20 total for 4-5 movies. Older movies are often $2-3 each. Older albums... not so much. The music industry continues to shoot themselves in the foot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MagMan1979
Quote:
Originally Posted by paxman
Did I say that? There is plenty good new music out there but it is hard to find. Let me correct that - it is hard to find the TIME to discover it. And perhaps equally hard to find the motivation. My mother used to be of the same opinion as you re new music. She just didn't get it. I don't know how old you are but I suspect you are over 40, if not 50. (Am I right? don't get me wrong, there is plenty of crap music out there but as I remember it it was always so.
I wish I was in the 40-50's range, that means less time on this hell hole LOL! I'm in my mid-30's right now, on my way to mid-life crisis! WOO HOO!
Yeah, there is still some good music out there, but if one listen's to mainstream radio or streaming stations, it's a sad state
Find some time to find the music and stop sounding so old.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MagMan1979
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
The three presets for image upload size are the stupidest thing about Huddler.
You can force it to be the right size, though. Upload as normal, get it in your post, and then hit “Source” in the top left. You’ll see:
They go along because while they can make more per CD on their own, the lack of exposure leads to a lack of sales. 100% of a pie of 10-100 customers isn't much vs 20% of a pie of millions of customers. Streaming customers don't own the music. At some point they might want to and they will buy who they listen to versus who they don't.
Holy freaking crap, I knew artists didn't get much out of an album or individual track sale on the likes of iTunes, but seeing the figures for streaming, iTunes is a gold mine compared to the scrap metal you get with streaming!
Why in the hell would artists go along with this???
They get exposure. Anything with a paywall gets limited exposure, which is why so many apps are free now so they can go viral more easily and then cash in with IAPs. Music streaming doesn't have an IAP though so once they have enough exposure like Taylor Swift, they're better off just taking the music away from the streaming sites.
The benefit to both artist and listener is discoverability so Beats streaming with recommended tracks should help that process. It's not a money-maker on its own though, it has to convert to purchases at some point. Apple has the advantage here because they can put streamed tracks right into user's libraries at the click of a button or fingerprint verification.
What they have to be careful of is not to let their own streaming take away their iTunes revenue because artists will pull their music from iTunes too if it's not generating enough sales.
More than anything, I'd like to see a Genius recommendation feature that can be enabled. Look at the library, what gets played most and every day pad the library with new artists and tracks to check out. It's not invading privacy when it's an anonymous playlist, it's just linking track, genre and artists titles to let people find similar music to the music they listen to every day. By deleting those tracks, it would also learn what people don't like. Attach buy buttons to each track in the library to keep it. If they don't buy within a given period e.g 14 days (it would have a countdown), remove the tracks from the library. That pushes people to buy music they like.
Good thoughts and as you note Beats has a good chance of making this happen. I still think it is a great buy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadarTheKat
Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeRange
The income graphic above is the perfect example of why streaming isn't just a horrible business model, but just plain stupid. The artists are getting totally fk'd... The music industry is shooting itself in the head and can't possibly thrive in any qualitative way when artists can't survive.
The whole problem of the music industry, and the prospects of artists, or really anyone, making money in streaming might just boil down to the economics that are now able to imposie themselves upon the creation and distribution of music:
1. High fidelity music is no longer incredibly expensive to create and produce. Except that those who create it and perform it expect to be paid like, well, like rock stars.
2. Many (most?) artists create for the sake of the art; it defines who they are as a person and as an artist. Musicians, singers and song writers are generally passionate about music and engage in the art long before they are paid to do so. and most will remain engaged if they are never paid.
3. There are a great many individuals in every society around the world who have both the passion and talent to make and perform music. What percentage of kids would love to be up on stage in front of throngs of adoring fans, even if not getting paid huge sums? In other words, there is ample supply of talent available to step in to the shoes of anyone who demands more compensation than the market will bear.
4. Technology to create, share, and communicate about music has exploded and is available for nearly zero cost to the vast majority of those who wish to engage in the creation and performance of music.
What does all of this imply? There will be, and has been, a transformation of the music industry. Among many significant changes will be the way writers, musicians, and performers get paid and how much they get paid. Where else, other than on the baseball fields of America, Cuba, Japan, etc, is there a larger pool of aspiring talent yearning for their time in the sun? Already artists are getting the short end of the stick in terms of profit sharing. And now the corporates are suffering too. As the pool of talent producing music grows at a faster rate than the market in terms of total dollars spent consuming music through all channels, there will simply be smaller returns for each person participating in the creation and performance of music. The transformation is underway and will not be easily turned back.
Yes someone else gets it. Now add to this competition for eyeballs for Let's Play videos, or videogame tournaments, or self-made YouTube personalities and more and the amount of energy competing for eyeballs is insane. The dollars aren't growing at the same rate so the product value itself becomes cheaper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoetmb
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadarTheKat
It's been my contention since we heard about the Beats deal and it's still my contention that Apple didnt buy Beats so much as a way to get deeper into the world of streaming as it did to add another high-margin hardware product line.
Not for the price they paid for Beats, which came with a very high goodwill increment as well as the increment to get Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Apple paid $3 billion for Beats. It would have taken far less money for Apple to have developed their own quality headphone line or to buy one of the other competitors like Ultrasone, Bowers & Wilkins, Grado or possibly even Sennhesier (and there are others). Some of those companies could probably have been acquired for under $200 million. Even if they made $100 gross margin per headphone, they'd have to sell 30 million Beats units to pay for the acquisition.
And I really have to ask what Iovine and Dre have done for Apple so far? I don't see that they've accomplished anything.
While Billboard tried to put a good face on those industry stats, they're actually a disaster. Overall revenue for the industry continues to decline and if you include inflation, the industry is at about 35% of its 1999-2000 peak. Streaming is making the situation worse, not better. Why the labels decided to essentially give away their product is beyond me. I think we're going to see more of the bigger artists holding back their new releases from streaming at least until the initial sales period is over.
And the substantial percentage increase in LP sales is meaningless because the base is so small. There have been single albums that have sold over 9 million units - now it's the entire U.S. vinyl industry.
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I will never do streaming. I prefer listening to higher quality sound. Streaming just doesn't do it for me. The majority of my music collection is AIFF. Another reason I don't like streaming is I prefer owning the music I listen to. With streaming, you basically are just renting the music.
Perhaps I'm old-school when it comes to music, but I refuse to have anything to do with streaming... I want to OWN the music I have, and have complete control over my library.
I've purchased quite a bit of content from iTunes, the rest I've ripped into iTunes from my CD library, and subscribed to iTunes Match so I can enjoy the benefits of on-demand if needed on my iOS devices, and it has worked out very well for me.
I keep backups of all my purchased iTunes content (which is all DRM-free), so even if it disappears from iTunes, I'll always retain my copy. The quality of the AAC files is sufficient for my needs / taste.
These people using on-demand streaming services are part of a growing trend (IMHO) of the "I want it now, I refuse to wait for, or work towards, anything" generation that needs instant gratification in all things, and it's quite disheartening...
This is the exact reason I hate to read comments. 14 I's and my's in three paragraphs, then a complete straw man argument about "these people" streaming music when that's not what the article was about. Your opinion adds nothing and this world wish's you didn't. See what radarthekat wrote for a good example of a quality comment. Your attitude is disheartening...
Musicians making a "lot" of money is just a recent development compared to the rest of human history. wages are reverting back to the mean and most musicians have a linear income potential.
Heck even at the heyday, only perhaps 1% of musicians made it "big".
In the grand scheme of things ... Nothing has really changed.
It wouldn't surprise me if we reached the point of crowdsourcing in order to support an artist. It will be the benefactor model essentially. Even then only a few will get rich.
Youtube and other mediums will ultimately take more and more % cut just like the labels do now.
Mainstream radio was always crap, though. I listen to two local stations that play 90% good music. Some retro and some current. I still have to listen to lame dh's and ad's however, so I listen to a lot of talk radio in addition to my own collection. I look forward to Beats becoming available
I recommend KCRW and KPCC (both available as streaming services over the web, in addition to being nice radio stations).
Sales of vinyl have gone up for the first time since 1997. However, if you look at the entire pie, the sales were only some million+ or so, making it just a blip on the radar.
Vinyl is still a niche medium. If you look at the top 10 sellers for 2014, 5 of them are old albums (2 by Oasis, 1 by Led Zep, 1 by The Stone Roses and 1 by Floyd) and one is a new album by an old band (Floyd).
So it is more of a novelty than something that will rescue the music industry.
Hopefully this will tell the music industry to stop giving us produced EDM/hybrid music. If we wanted EDM, we'd buy it. The new pop music (country-pop and mainstream pop) is getting unbearable to listen to. The people that are interested in buying albums are the people who grew up listening to an entire album at a time. Those people are getting older. This new generation that listens to radio singles only is what's dragging the industry down. However, iTunes still is my go-to store to get content that I can't purchase elsewhere, such as Country-alternative / singer songwriter artists that do not have a major label, and play music in small cafe's like The Bluebird in Nashville.
As for radio stations, I can't say I've listened to the radio in a decade. Still, I do somehow hear the latest hit songs.
Swizzle.
Good. We have different taste in music. Wouldn't be fun if we were all the same. We're unique, just like everybody else. Okay, I'll stop now. Have a great day sir.
Hopefully this will tell the music industry to stop giving us produced EDM/hybrid music. If we wanted EDM, we'd buy it. The new pop music (country-pop and mainstream pop) is getting unbearable to listen to. The people that are interested in buying albums are the people who grew up listening to an entire album at a time. Those people are getting older. This new generation that listens to radio singles only is what's dragging the industry down. However, iTunes still is my go-to store to get content that I can't purchase elsewhere, such as Country-alternative / singer songwriter artists that do not have a major label, and play music in small cafe's like The Bluebird in Nashville.
The kids these days.....
If only they could hum a good Scott Joplin tune instead of listening to that crappy Swing music.
Hopefully this will tell the music industry to stop giving us produced EDM/hybrid music. If we wanted EDM, we'd buy it. The new pop music (country-pop and mainstream pop) is getting unbearable to listen to. The people that are interested in buying albums are the people who grew up listening to an entire album at a time. Those people are getting older. This new generation that listens to radio singles only is what's dragging the industry down. However, iTunes still is my go-to store to get content that I can't purchase elsewhere, such as Country-alternative / singer songwriter artists that do not have a major label, and play music in small cafe's like The Bluebird in Nashville.
Nothing has changed for the music industry. Some people listen to whole albums and others don't. Before internet streaming, we had analog radio streaming...
Many whole albums are not good or are good. Some are theme albums, others are not. Some have one good single or one single song. Some are full of great songs.
Has music ever changed? Only physical formats of media. People haven't changed.
Thought I'd drop this here. Some fun analysis of the techniques of those horrible pop songs and how other songs past, present and perhaps even classical use said techniques as well.
Thought I'd drop this here. Some fun analysis of the techniques of those horrible pop songs and how other songs past, present and perhaps even classical use said techniques as well.
That's a terrific video. You a songwriter or musician?
Comments
Yeah, there is still some good music out there, but if one listen's to mainstream radio or streaming stations, it's a sad state
Mainstream radio was always crap, though. I listen to two local stations that play 90% good music. Some retro and some current. I still have to listen to lame dh's and ad's however, so I listen to a lot of talk radio in addition to my own collection. I look forward to Beats becoming available
Now you know why Taylor Swift pulled her entire catalog off of Pandora.
Yep. I guess the $64 million she made in 2014 just isn't good enough. Song/album releases have just become advertisements for the concerts where the real money is made.
The income graphic above is the perfect example of why streaming isn't just a horrible business model, but just plain stupid. The artists are getting totally fk'd... The music industry is shooting itself in the head and can't possibly thrive in any qualitative way when artists can't survive.
It's a change. Like others have mentioned it is more like a return to radio. I like to compare the music industry to the motion picture industry which tends to adapt faster and better. You go into a Best Buy you aren't going to see an older movie for the same price as a new movie. Yet this is what the music industry expects. If Taylor Swift has a new album they will want $16.99 for it at Best Buy. (Really?) What if you are a new fan and want her older music.... still $12-15 per album. If I want the latest Jim Carrey movie it is probably $15. However I can buy several of his older movies together in collections for $10-20 total for 4-5 movies. Older movies are often $2-3 each. Older albums... not so much. The music industry continues to shoot themselves in the foot.
Did I say that? There is plenty good new music out there but it is hard to find. Let me correct that - it is hard to find the TIME to discover it. And perhaps equally hard to find the motivation. My mother used to be of the same opinion as you re new music. She just didn't get it. I don't know how old you are but I suspect you are over 40, if not 50. (Am I right?
I wish I was in the 40-50's range, that means less time on this hell hole LOL! I'm in my mid-30's right now, on my way to mid-life crisis! WOO HOO!
Yeah, there is still some good music out there, but if one listen's to mainstream radio or streaming stations, it's a sad state
Find some time to find the music and stop sounding so old.
The three presets for image upload size are the stupidest thing about Huddler.
You can force it to be the right size, though. Upload as normal, get it in your post, and then hit “Source” in the top left. You’ll see:
Change the numbers to be what you want.
Example:
Holy freaking crap, I knew artists didn't get much out of an album or individual track sale on the likes of iTunes, but seeing the figures for streaming, iTunes is a gold mine compared to the scrap metal you get with streaming!
Why in the hell would artists go along with this???
They go along because while they can make more per CD on their own, the lack of exposure leads to a lack of sales. 100% of a pie of 10-100 customers isn't much vs 20% of a pie of millions of customers. Streaming customers don't own the music. At some point they might want to and they will buy who they listen to versus who they don't.
Holy freaking crap, I knew artists didn't get much out of an album or individual track sale on the likes of iTunes, but seeing the figures for streaming, iTunes is a gold mine compared to the scrap metal you get with streaming!
Why in the hell would artists go along with this???
They get exposure. Anything with a paywall gets limited exposure, which is why so many apps are free now so they can go viral more easily and then cash in with IAPs. Music streaming doesn't have an IAP though so once they have enough exposure like Taylor Swift, they're better off just taking the music away from the streaming sites.
The benefit to both artist and listener is discoverability so Beats streaming with recommended tracks should help that process. It's not a money-maker on its own though, it has to convert to purchases at some point. Apple has the advantage here because they can put streamed tracks right into user's libraries at the click of a button or fingerprint verification.
What they have to be careful of is not to let their own streaming take away their iTunes revenue because artists will pull their music from iTunes too if it's not generating enough sales.
More than anything, I'd like to see a Genius recommendation feature that can be enabled. Look at the library, what gets played most and every day pad the library with new artists and tracks to check out. It's not invading privacy when it's an anonymous playlist, it's just linking track, genre and artists titles to let people find similar music to the music they listen to every day. By deleting those tracks, it would also learn what people don't like. Attach buy buttons to each track in the library to keep it. If they don't buy within a given period e.g 14 days (it would have a countdown), remove the tracks from the library. That pushes people to buy music they like.
Good thoughts and as you note Beats has a good chance of making this happen. I still think it is a great buy!
The income graphic above is the perfect example of why streaming isn't just a horrible business model, but just plain stupid. The artists are getting totally fk'd... The music industry is shooting itself in the head and can't possibly thrive in any qualitative way when artists can't survive.
The whole problem of the music industry, and the prospects of artists, or really anyone, making money in streaming might just boil down to the economics that are now able to imposie themselves upon the creation and distribution of music:
1. High fidelity music is no longer incredibly expensive to create and produce. Except that those who create it and perform it expect to be paid like, well, like rock stars.
2. Many (most?) artists create for the sake of the art; it defines who they are as a person and as an artist. Musicians, singers and song writers are generally passionate about music and engage in the art long before they are paid to do so. and most will remain engaged if they are never paid.
3. There are a great many individuals in every society around the world who have both the passion and talent to make and perform music. What percentage of kids would love to be up on stage in front of throngs of adoring fans, even if not getting paid huge sums? In other words, there is ample supply of talent available to step in to the shoes of anyone who demands more compensation than the market will bear.
4. Technology to create, share, and communicate about music has exploded and is available for nearly zero cost to the vast majority of those who wish to engage in the creation and performance of music.
What does all of this imply? There will be, and has been, a transformation of the music industry. Among many significant changes will be the way writers, musicians, and performers get paid and how much they get paid. Where else, other than on the baseball fields of America, Cuba, Japan, etc, is there a larger pool of aspiring talent yearning for their time in the sun? Already artists are getting the short end of the stick in terms of profit sharing. And now the corporates are suffering too. As the pool of talent producing music grows at a faster rate than the market in terms of total dollars spent consuming music through all channels, there will simply be smaller returns for each person participating in the creation and performance of music. The transformation is underway and will not be easily turned back.
Yes someone else gets it. Now add to this competition for eyeballs for Let's Play videos, or videogame tournaments, or self-made YouTube personalities and more and the amount of energy competing for eyeballs is insane. The dollars aren't growing at the same rate so the product value itself becomes cheaper.
It's been my contention since we heard about the Beats deal and it's still my contention that Apple didnt buy Beats so much as a way to get deeper into the world of streaming as it did to add another high-margin hardware product line.
Not for the price they paid for Beats, which came with a very high goodwill increment as well as the increment to get Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Apple paid $3 billion for Beats. It would have taken far less money for Apple to have developed their own quality headphone line or to buy one of the other competitors like Ultrasone, Bowers & Wilkins, Grado or possibly even Sennhesier (and there are others). Some of those companies could probably have been acquired for under $200 million. Even if they made $100 gross margin per headphone, they'd have to sell 30 million Beats units to pay for the acquisition.
And I really have to ask what Iovine and Dre have done for Apple so far? I don't see that they've accomplished anything.
While Billboard tried to put a good face on those industry stats, they're actually a disaster. Overall revenue for the industry continues to decline and if you include inflation, the industry is at about 35% of its 1999-2000 peak. Streaming is making the situation worse, not better. Why the labels decided to essentially give away their product is beyond me. I think we're going to see more of the bigger artists holding back their new releases from streaming at least until the initial sales period is over.
And the substantial percentage increase in LP sales is meaningless because the base is so small. There have been single albums that have sold over 9 million units - now it's the entire U.S. vinyl industry.
Beats has taken an industry discussed in articles like this one here and made the average teen care more about it.
Wow, five steps above the usual level of an AI thread. I think every point (and counterpoint) to any I was thinking of has already been made.
Good job, y'all....
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I will never do streaming. I prefer listening to higher quality sound. Streaming just doesn't do it for me. The majority of my music collection is AIFF. Another reason I don't like streaming is I prefer owning the music I listen to. With streaming, you basically are just renting the music.
I've purchased quite a bit of content from iTunes, the rest I've ripped into iTunes from my CD library, and subscribed to iTunes Match so I can enjoy the benefits of on-demand if needed on my iOS devices, and it has worked out very well for me.
I keep backups of all my purchased iTunes content (which is all DRM-free), so even if it disappears from iTunes, I'll always retain my copy. The quality of the AAC files is sufficient for my needs / taste.
These people using on-demand streaming services are part of a growing trend (IMHO) of the "I want it now, I refuse to wait for, or work towards, anything" generation that needs instant gratification in all things, and it's quite disheartening...
This is the exact reason I hate to read comments. 14 I's and my's in three paragraphs, then a complete straw man argument about "these people" streaming music when that's not what the article was about. Your opinion adds nothing and this world wish's you didn't. See what radarthekat wrote for a good example of a quality comment. Your attitude is disheartening...
Heck even at the heyday, only perhaps 1% of musicians made it "big".
In the grand scheme of things ... Nothing has really changed.
It wouldn't surprise me if we reached the point of crowdsourcing in order to support an artist. It will be the benefactor model essentially. Even then only a few will get rich.
Youtube and other mediums will ultimately take more and more % cut just like the labels do now.
I recommend KCRW and KPCC (both available as streaming services over the web, in addition to being nice radio stations).
Sales of vinyl have gone up for the first time since 1997. However, if you look at the entire pie, the sales were only some million+ or so, making it just a blip on the radar.
Vinyl is still a niche medium. If you look at the top 10 sellers for 2014, 5 of them are old albums (2 by Oasis, 1 by Led Zep, 1 by The Stone Roses and 1 by Floyd) and one is a new album by an old band (Floyd).
So it is more of a novelty than something that will rescue the music industry.
Hopefully this will tell the music industry to stop giving us produced EDM/hybrid music. If we wanted EDM, we'd buy it. The new pop music (country-pop and mainstream pop) is getting unbearable to listen to. The people that are interested in buying albums are the people who grew up listening to an entire album at a time. Those people are getting older. This new generation that listens to radio singles only is what's dragging the industry down. However, iTunes still is my go-to store to get content that I can't purchase elsewhere, such as Country-alternative / singer songwriter artists that do not have a major label, and play music in small cafe's like The Bluebird in Nashville.
I think you should shake it off…
[VIDEO]
We are being programmed by radio stations, whether we like it or not. How come I'm truly annoyed by this song? Think I'll just shake my moneymaker...
I love T. Swizzle.
As for radio stations, I can't say I've listened to the radio in a decade. Still, I do somehow hear the latest hit songs.
Swizzle.
Good. We have different taste in music. Wouldn't be fun if we were all the same. We're unique, just like everybody else. Okay, I'll stop now. Have a great day sir.
I think they should enhance the music videos section of iTunes, out YouTube YouTube. Make the videos all HD and ad-supported, and redo the interface.
Hopefully this will tell the music industry to stop giving us produced EDM/hybrid music. If we wanted EDM, we'd buy it. The new pop music (country-pop and mainstream pop) is getting unbearable to listen to. The people that are interested in buying albums are the people who grew up listening to an entire album at a time. Those people are getting older. This new generation that listens to radio singles only is what's dragging the industry down. However, iTunes still is my go-to store to get content that I can't purchase elsewhere, such as Country-alternative / singer songwriter artists that do not have a major label, and play music in small cafe's like The Bluebird in Nashville.
The kids these days.....
If only they could hum a good Scott Joplin tune instead of listening to that crappy Swing music.
Oh wait... what again?
Call them the iTunes generation.
Call them the iTunes generation.
Nothing has changed for the music industry. Some people listen to whole albums and others don't. Before internet streaming, we had analog radio streaming...
Many whole albums are not good or are good. Some are theme albums, others are not. Some have one good single or one single song. Some are full of great songs.
Has music ever changed? Only physical formats of media. People haven't changed.
Thought I'd drop this here. Some fun analysis of the techniques of those horrible pop songs and how other songs past, present and perhaps even classical use said techniques as well.
That's a terrific video. You a songwriter or musician?