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music formats
I just read an article about how the CD is dying thanx to digital downloads, and it was also going on about how vinyl is making a comeback. Ostensibly this is on account of vinyl's
Speaking as one who grew up on vinyl and remembers its scratches and crackles and skips... as one who was there when the CD came in, and we compared vinyl and CD versions side by side and were blown away by the CD's vastly superior sound quality [e.g., Queensrÿche's Operation:mindcrime -- listen to the vinyl and CD back to back, no comparison!]... I gotta say WTF??!!??
superior sound quality.
Speaking as one who grew up on vinyl and remembers its scratches and crackles and skips... as one who was there when the CD came in, and we compared vinyl and CD versions side by side and were blown away by the CD's vastly superior sound quality [e.g., Queensrÿche's Operation:mindcrime -- listen to the vinyl and CD back to back, no comparison!]... I gotta say WTF??!!??
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Me, I'll carry on with CDs right through their own specialty music shop phase and I drop...
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...assuming you have The Perfect Pressing on Invulnerable Vinyl that will never wear, or collect dust, or undergo any physical damage or degradation whatsoever. Again, those of us who grew up on vinyl know how that one works out [he said, looking at his first copy of Kiss Alive! that literally went from glossy black to matte gray due to pure wear...]
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I have many records that I currently have no way of playing, because my 15+ year old stereo bit the dust a few years ago. I should've transferred them to CD, but couldn't afford the necessary hardware at the time. I guess I need to buy a new record player...or new to me, anyway...
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And, in some cases, the degradation has occurred before you even slit open the shrinkwrap.
In the 60s and 70s, at least, there were labels notorious for the crappy quality [sic] of their pressings -- it was nearly impossible to buy an album on that label that wouldn't skip or have built-in Rice Krispies or whatever. (And far fewer labels with a reputation for releasing smooth, immaculate pressings.)
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I think it would be a bit more forward-thinking to say the music business is dying thanks to piracy; I am actually surprised it has lasted this long.
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I think I'm just used to the overwhelming majority opinion, such as you find here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345442,00.asp
To wit,
Don't try to fight technological revolutions with clumsy, antiquated legal actions. Harassing customers, threatening Web sites, and standing in the way of progress are doomed to fail. These tactics discourage industries from innovating, developing creative business models, and offering customers better solutions. If the executives of the music industry would only spend as much time and money taking advantage of digital technologies as they do fighting them, maybe they could build the next iTunes. Or Boxee. Or BitTorrent.
That strikes me as extremely naive.
The Apple music store, for instance, is not believed to be profitable and exists only to encourage people to buy Apple's iPods, which is where all Apple's music-industry money comes from. And it's not like Apple ever owned, or created, any of the content it sells; for Apple there was never any business risk, only potential upside.
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Umm, yeah.
Speaking of which, your link mentions as a possible , charging for bandwidth. Even if that were to succeed, can someone explain to me exactly how that would put any money in the creator's pocket? All the industry seems to care about is protecting the middleman [label, publisher, etc.]. Where is the content supposed to come from? Midnight elves??
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Here you hit the crux of the problem, which I would rephrase as:
Creators have no suitable, cost-efficient way to market and sell their stuff. They simply cannot (very easily) put it in front of the people who want it enough to pay for it.
Guys like Neil Gaiman claim the Net has changed all that -- that now, creators only need to make something good and stick it on the Web. He evidently believes consumers on the Net will then automatically find such content, promote it, and thus create de facto careers for the creators...
...although I note that Mr. Gaiman himself has no use whatsoever for that business model, even though he has a strong enough brand to make it work. He continues to work through traditional publishers and retail outlets instead.
It's the same tale in music, I think. You can do that sort of thing -- direct over the Net -- if you are Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails, because you already built your brand and got your following via the traditional model. But for new bands, that is absurdly unlikely to work and I can think of no example in which it ever has.
So the middlemen continue to be the focus on this topic, as you correctly point out.
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...whereupon, those who find it and want it, download it -- and share it.
And the money for the creator comes in... where, Mr. Gaiman?
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http://www.neilgaiman.com/feedback/?to=neil
Here is the quote I'm talking about:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/2008/11/neil-gaiman-on-piracy-vs-obscurity.html
"Now, there is no gatekeeper. There really isn't. You can get your writing in front of the world by posting it. All you have to be now is incredibly good and interesting and readable, which is a different challenge."
Now, what exactly he means by this is unclear.
Possibly he means "you can develop a following, receive no money thereby, but leverage the following to get credibility with conventional middlemen such as record labels and publishers, and from them, you can eventually obtain a career involving money."
His own solution, in the eighties when he was unknown, was much simpler and more conventional: He cozied up to successful people such as Douglas Adams and Alan Moore to get connections, and then he leveraged those connections.
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Sounds like a feasible explanation -- maybe the only feasible one.
I doubt that Eclipse would've published their one issue of Dishman had I submitted it to them cold. They came to me once I had established a following on my own... same general principle of credibility with conventional middlemen?
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Consider an example from your field: XKCD. Can't think of a more successful Web-based comic strip. Huge audience. And... it has not gotten its creator a lick of respect from the syndicates and certainly they don't represent it. No, the creator continue to do his own thing on his own platform.
How about money? Well, I don't know, of course, but I would be surprised if it generates even 5% of the annual take of, say, Cathy. That's just sad.
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I can believe that the syndicates feel that their audience for hardcopy newspaper strips and the audience for XKCD don't overlap much. They could be mistaken, but I can see them seeing it that way. XKCD never struck me as old-school mainstream humour.
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http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/11/xkcd
That's a hell of a niche, my friend. I am reminded of how all the syndicates, but one, looked at Dilbert and said "Nah, too technical and specialized" and stamped it REJECT.