fair music weblog

At a speech he gave last week  he had been asked: What’s going to happen to the music industry?, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of the book The Long Tail, writes in his blog:
“To which I answered ‘Which music industry?’ You don’t mean just the one that sells CDs, do you? Because it’s a big mistake to equate the major labels and their plastic disc business with the industry as a whole.”

When you stand back and look at all of music, things don’t look so bad at all, concludes Anderson. It appears that every single part of the music industry is up, only CDs are down (-18%). They’re around 60% of the industry, but just around 25% if you include MP3 players. Anderson: “So the problem with the music labels is not that music is an industry in decline, but that they have a too-narrow view of what business they’re in.”

Everything in the music industry is up! (except those plastic discs) - The Long Tail

After it emerged that the british rock band Radiohead is selling its latest album online and lets fans decide how much they want to pay, Guy Hands, whose private equity house Terra Firma purchased EMI two months ago, has urged the staff of the label, according to the Telegraph, in a confidential e-mail to embrace the digital age. “Mr Hands said the dramatic move by Radiohead was ‘a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy’.”, writes the online Telegraph.
Hands is further quoted that the music industry “has for too long been dependent on how many CDs can be sold” and “rather than embracing digitalisation (…) the industry has stuck its head in the sand”.

The article: EMI warning on internet music - Telegraph.co.uk

Ian Rogers who’s working for Yahoo! Music just gave a brief presentation to some friends in the music industry about why it’s time to pay closer attention to consumer needs when it comes to digital music. He now shares his presentation with the public on his blog fistfulayen. The long comments that followed his post show that he triggered an interesting discussion about music listening, sharing and offering in the digital age.

The announcement of british band Radiohead to release their new album as download first and letting the fans decide how much they want to pay caused a lot of blog entries and comments. People are discussing if this was a good idea or not, whether it will be an example for other bands or kill the business all along. Bob Lefsetz, authority in music analysis, says very directly what he thinks about this news.

First he wonders in his The Lefsetz Letter if this news could be true, then thinks about the reasons and comes to the conclusion that Radiohead are playing by a different rule book “that says the money flows from the music, that people have to believe in you, that you’ve got to treat them right.”

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After many long months of work, the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit kicked off this morning. FMC Executive Director Jenny Toomey and New Orleans crooner Al “Carnival Time” Johnson got things started. Jenny gave a short intro speech and Al, who lost his home to Katrina, played his powerful lament to the hurricane “Lower Ninth Ward Blues.”

The first panel a “State of the Union” on the music industry, featured musician Bob Mould, entertainment attorney Rosemary Carroll, Nonesuch senior VP David Bither, Superchunk member and co-owner of Merge Records Mac McCaughan, and Chairman and Founder of the Mobile Entertainment Forum of the Americas Ralph Simon. (weiterlesen…)

Mute Records is a record label formed in 1978 by Daniel Miller primarily to release his own single “Warm Leatherette”. Mute Records made a name for itself as the label that was willing to sign post-punk artists like Fad Gadget (Frank Tovey’s pseudonym), Einstürzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle, and Cabaret Voltaire. Once electronic music hit the British charts from 1981 onwards, Mute signed artists like Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb, Yazoo and Erasure that utilised new technology which would eventually redefine the sound of the dancefloor in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

(weiterlesen…)