the week the music (biz ) died

Some of those labels may only be a notch or two above vanity imprints but the money still had to come from somewhere.

What does this mean?
(I'm quite hungover and brain is bad atm)

http://pitchforkmedia.com/page/best_new_music/current

All I'm saying is that you go through this list, almost all of the bands are on a "real" label. Many of them are on large to huge indie labels (Merge, Sub-Pop, Drag City, etc.) that are approaching the clout of majors. I see little evidence so far of a revolution involving self-produced/recored/backed artists challenging the industry.

What does this mean?

Vanity label = self-produced but with a nominal label

Lindstrom was the one artist I noticed who seems to be the only one on his own label, but he still might be backed by a larger label/distributor.

Riiight. I guess my question should be: Are peefork accepting money for putting these artists in their "best new music" section?

I doubt it, but I also doubt they're just listening to everything they get with open ears.

And also the labels buy ads on Pitchfork. I'm not saying that influences coverage, but I'm not saying it doesn't.

I doubt it, but I also doubt they're just listening to everything they get with open ears.

ahhh. Now the penny drops..

It could partly just be a matter of wanting to cover bands that seem on their way to establishing themselves. It looks kind of silly to give the Johnny Fuckhead self-released album a 9.3 when you can't buy it most places and he won't be coming to your town anytime soon.

The larger point just being that it still takes financial backing to make it in music and labels are still a reliable source for that.

Well, financial backing and clout, I should say.

Am I the only one who thinks music is less and less important for newer generations?
I work in a record store, and our average client is currently more than 35-40 years old.
They're the only ones still buying records.

Also, I'm pretty sure that for many people free music basically means worthless music.

Surely buying records is becoming less and less important rather than music per se. If "newer generations" consider music "less and less important" then we might as well pull the plug on the human race now and have done with it.

I was at a marketing conference last week Marco and a guy working in youth research (i.e. someone with zero financial interest in the 'biz') said that if you ask teenagers in the UK what their main hobby or interest is the overwhelming winner is music - three times as many votes as sports at #2. This hugely surprised me but as I say he had no reason to lie. What seems to be happening is that music is working like a decryption code to a load of other aspects of culture - clothes, sex, drugs, movies, who you admire, what you do when you hang out, the common element to them all is the kind of music yr into. (Of course it always has worked like this, so whether it's a matter of degree I don't know)

Marcello you're right about buring records I don't think music is becoming less & less important to young people. I base this on close observation of an 11 y.o. who's as obsessed w/music as we ever were. What's really different is this sort of pragmatic attitude toward the way music is consumed, like for him hearing a song on the radio or as the soundtrack to a music video or TV commercial all = the same thing.

buring records = buying records. burying records?

If you bury vinyl carefully over a million years it can be petroleum again! How thoughtful of us!

Music is shorthand, you're right Tom, and shorthand for lots of things, one of the leats important of which is actually music itself, judging by my girlfriend's little brothers. (One of whom is into music=grafitti, and the other is into music-nobbing-catholic-schoolgirls-over-park-benches.)

"i work in a haberdasher and the only people i see buying homburgs are old men - i think it's pretty obvious that young people and women are no longer interested in clothes"

The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor



By JEFF LEEDS
Published: March 26, 2007

LOS ANGELES, March 25 — Now that the three young women in Candy Hill, a glossy rap and R&B trio, have signed a record contract, they are hoping for stardom. On the schedule: shooting a music video and visiting radio stations to talk up their music.



But the women do not have a CD to promote. Universal/Republic Records, their label, signed Candy Hill to record two songs, not a complete album.

“If we get two songs out, we get a shot,” said Vatana Shaw, 20, who formed the trio four years ago, “Only true fans are buying full albums. Most people don’t really do that anymore.”

To the regret of music labels everywhere, she is right: fans are buying fewer and fewer full albums. In the shift from CDs to digital music, buyers can now pick the individual songs they like without having to pay upward of $10 for an album.

Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.

Because of this shift in listener preferences — a trend reflected everywhere from blogs posting select MP3s to reviews of singles in Rolling Stone — record labels are coming to grips with the loss of the album as their main product and chief moneymaker.

In response, labels are re-examining everything from their marketing practices to their contracts. One result is that offers are cropping up for artists like Candy Hill to record only ring tones or a clutch of singles, according to talent managers and lawyers.

At the same time, the industry is straining to shore up the album as long as possible, in part by prodding listeners who buy one song to purchase the rest of a collection. Apple, in consultation with several labels, has been planning to offer iTunes users credit for songs they have already purchased if they then choose to buy the associated album in a certain period of time, according to people involved in the negotiations. (Under Apple’s current practice, customers who buy a song and then the related album effectively pay for the song twice).

But some analysts say they doubt that such promotions can reverse the trend.

“I think the album is going to die,” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at Radar Research, a media consulting firm based in Los Angeles. “Consumers are listening to play lists,” or mixes of single songs from an assortment of different artists. “Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that.”

All this comes as the industry’s long sales slide has been accelerating. Sales of albums, in either disc or digital form, have dropped more than 16 percent so far this year, a slide that executives attribute to an unusually weak release schedule and shrinking retail floor space for music. Even though sales of individual songs — sold principally through iTunes — are rising, it has not been nearly enough to compensate.

Many music executives dispute the idea that the album will disappear. In particular, they say, fans of jazz, classical, opera and certain rock (bands like Radiohead and Tool) will demand album-length listening experiences for many years to come. But for other genres — including some strains of pop music, rap, R&B and much of country — where sales success is seen as closely tied to radio air play of singles, the album may be entering its twilight.

“For some genres and some artists, having an album-centric plan will be a thing of the past,” said Jeff Kempler, chief operating officer of EMI’s Capitol Music Group. While the traditional album provides value to fans, he said, “perpetuating a business model that fixates on a particular packaged product configuration is inimical to what the Internet enables, and it’s inimical to what many consumers have clearly voted for.”

Another solution being debated in the industry would transform record labels into de facto fan clubs. Companies including the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group have been considering a system in which fans would pay a fee, perhaps monthly, to “subscribe” to their favorite artists and receive a series of recordings, videos and other products spaced over time.

Executives maintain that they must establish more lasting connections with fans who may well lose interest if forced to wait two years or more before their favorite artist releases new music.

A decade ago, the music industry had all but stopped selling music in individual units. But now, four years after Apple introduced its iTunes service — selling singles for 99 cents apiece and full albums typically for $9.99 — individual songs account for roughly two-thirds of all music sales volume in the United States. And that does not count purchases of music in other, bite-size forms like ring tones, which have sold more than 54 million units so far this year, according to Nielsen data.

One of the biggest reasons for the shift, analysts say, is that consumers — empowered to cherry-pick — are forgoing album purchases after years of paying for complete CD’s with too few songs they like. There are still cases where full albums succeed — the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ double-CD “Stadium Arcadium,” with a weighty 28 tracks, has sold almost two million copies. But the overall pie is shrinking.

In some ways, the current climate recalls the 1950s and to some extent, the 60s, when many popular acts sold more singles than albums. It took greatly influential works like The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” to turn the album into pop music’s medium of choice.

But the music industry’s cost structure is far higher than it was when Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar. Today’s costs — from television ads and music videos to hefty executive salaries — are still built on blockbuster albums.

Hence the emergence of scaled-back deals with acts like Candy Hill. Labels have signed new performers to singles deals before, typically to release what they viewed as ephemeral or novelty hits. Now, executives at Universal say, such arrangements will become more common for even quality acts because the single itself is the end product.

With Candy Hill, Universal paid a relatively small advance — described as being in “five figures” — to cover recording expenses. Ms. Shaw, who formed the group with Casha Darjean and Ociris Gomez, said the members had kept their day jobs working at an insurance company and doing other vocal work to be able to pay the rent at the house where they live together.

If one of their songs turns into a big hit, they hope to release a full album, and to tap other income sources, like touring and merchandise sales.

But turning a song into a hit does not appear to be getting any easier.

Ron Shapiro, an artist manager and former president of Atlantic Records, asked, “What are the Las Vegas odds of constantly having a ‘Bad Day?’ ” — referring to a tune by the singer Daniel Powter that sold more than two million copies after it was used on “American Idol.”

While music labels labor to build careers for artists that are suited for albums, he added, “You have to create an almost hysterical pace to find hits to sell as digital downloads and ring tones that everybody’s going to want. It’s scary.”

if music ceases to be "owned" and stored in little plastic coffins i will be very happy; i don't have the collector mentality, though, and others may be sadder about this.

But for other genres — including some strains of pop music, rap, R&B and much of country — where sales success is seen as closely tied to radio air play of singles, the album may be entering its twilight.

After digging into old country for the past couple months, I realized just how singles-oriented the genre was up until the outlaw movement (which was influenced by rock). I mean, even those classic Haggard records from the mid to late 60s feel like a hit single surrounded by a smattering of odd recordings (someof which are awesome and some are forgettable). I suspect R&B/soul went through a similar transformation during that same time. So maybe internet could help create an "new" industry that's not totally unlike what the music industry was before 60s rock music made the LP the heavyweight.

if music ceases to be "owned" and stored in little plastic coffins i will be very happy

How dare you speak that way about my computer.

if music ceases to be "owned" and stored in little plastic coffins i will be very happy

Even by your standards that's a particularly stupid and crass comment.

you're acting as if recordings have some inevitable destiny to remain commodities, or that if they aren't, people will stop making music.

i think it's far more likely that certain types of fans will no longer love music if they are no longer able to purchase it as an object. which i'm not denigrating, i can see why it would be so.

I don't understand that at all.

for myself i think the only long-term financial arrangement for musicians, labels and fans that has any chance of working at all is a yearly fee paid to an international ASCAP-style body that divvies up money amongst the different bands and labels etc. and then everybody can download as much as they like, from wherever they like. it would be complicated, tracking that stuff, but no less than ASCAP is already.

and if you didn't pay the fee - BAM with the detector van

I don't see why people who don't download should be obliged to pay any fee - and in order for this to work it would have to be applied across the board or not at all.

What about the 'digital divide' and poor folks without high-speed internet?

In addition the income from the fees would, if historical precedent is anything to go by, be far more likely to be divvied up amongst the ASCAP-type body rather than artists and labels, and even if it were the labels would get most of it and the artists relatively little, as per the current state of the publishing industry where the author is routinely treated as the least essential cog in the mechanism.

or - if you'd rather let the market lead the way, every speaker/tannoy sold in any device - i.e. telephones, headphones, stereo speakers etc - anything capable of producing audible soundwaves suitable for music - would carry an automatic $5 (or whatever) surcharge, which would then be divvied up likewise to compensate artists and their commercial partners for producing and distributing the music.

record companies can still make money on physical product but since that product has remained essentially unchanged since the days of edison - and can be duplicated by processes which cost nothing - they need to get more radical with it. create multitrack albums whose sound mixes listeners can alter at whim. (etc?)

marcello those are good points

The thought of "compensating" Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney makes me puke and chortle.

What about the 'digital divide' and poor folks without high-speed internet?

They are clearly bad, evil and wrong, and God is punishing them for their sins.

Don't forget - you would also have to compensate Momus.

Meanwhile, thanks to new releases by Arcade Fire, Air, Amy Winehouse, Modest Mouse, LCD Soundsystem, etc. the (independent) store where I work is having one of its best months ever. This year's new release schedule has been perfect for our customer base. Granted, 2006 was a shitty year no matter how you look at it, and there's been a dramatic change in sales since I started there in 2004. But things are actually looking up for us, for now at least.

"If "newer generations" consider music "less and less important" then we might as well pull the plug on the human race now and have done with it"

Unfortunately, thats exactly my impression: I can be completely wrong and surely it is based on Italy, a country where rock and pop music never had a particular cultural importance and sales have always been kind of poor.

"What's really different is this sort of pragmatic attitude toward the way music is consumed, like for him hearing a song on the radio or as the soundtrack to a music video or TV commercial all = the same thing"

Actually, I think this is totally true. Still I don't find particularly appealing this undiffentiated approach to music.

The LCD Soundsystem and Air albums have flopped badly in the UK - peak chart positions of 28 and 49 respectively.

Pop has eaten itself.

I really don't think any of these articles about "the death of the album" are making a convincing argument. Singles have always driven music sales at a mainstream level, and maybe singles will become more important, but there are 2 important factors here: I think most artists are still going to want to create whole albums, and fans of those artists are still going to want to hear whole albums from them. And this goes more or less across genre lines, not just artsy rock bands like Radiohead and Tool. Fans of pop and R&B and hip hop and dance music like albums too! Even if artists move to some weird cycle like releasing a new song every month or two, people are still gonna start compiling those songs as full-length CDs, whether the labels do it or fans make them on their own.

The radio/TV commercial soundtrack thing though has been in situ for at least 20 years, ever since the Levi's campaign. Look at how Jackie Wilson posthumously got a Christmas number one in 1986 which was essentially sold as a kiddie novelty song with wacky puppet video.

Hasn't the Telecommunication Act of 1986 that allowed Clear Channel to monopolize much of commercial radio in America hurt the sales of music? Despite i-pods and satellite and web radio, lots of folks still stick on commerical radio in their cars and elsewhere. Arcade Fire were on Saturday Night Live but how many commercial radio stations were/are they on? For them to sell numbers like that Modest Mouse album with "Float On," they'll need to reach the masses who still listen to commerical radio.

Or, commercial radio may have to be forced to bend to the will of the increasing demographic (if there be one) and alter their approach accordingly. No organisation, however anxious its shareholders, can survive on "Your Song" forever.

I think pandering to perceived demographics is part of the problem.

Singles have always driven music sales at a mainstream level

They have? So why there so few gold singles in the eighties? It wasn't until the introduction of the cassette single and RIAA lowered its standard for gold singles that we started to see serious single sales.

"Or, commercial radio may have to be forced to bend to the will of the increasing demographic (if there be one) and alter their approach accordingly. No organisation, however anxious its shareholders, can survive on "Your Song" forever"

Hopefully!

In Britain, the last real boom year for singles (as in 45) sales was 1984, where seven singles passed the million mark. From 1985 there's a marked tailing off, which may at least in part explain the altered emphasis in the singles chart thereafter from actual sales to reflections of record company promotional activity.

Singles have always driven music sales at a mainstream level

They have? So why there so few gold singles in the eighties? It wasn't until the introduction of the cassette single and RIAA lowered its standard for gold singles that we started to see serious single sales.

Sorry, I should've been more clear there. What I meant was that album sales, at least for big multi-platinum sellers, are generally driven by big hit singles that you hear on the radio and see on MTV. Famous artists are known for their singles, not for their albums. Albums aren't sold as albums, they're sold as CDs that feature this single and that single and so on.

The business will always trade in the chance of selling a million singles for the certainty of selling 10,000