Tamizdat

This post has been crawling around in the back of my mind for some time now, but I procrastinated in writing it until I was recently asked about why artists should consider Creative Commons licensing. That response led me to expound on my thoughts regarding the music industry’s decline. Since I wrote most of what I’ve been thinking, I decided to share those thoughts here.

The mainstream music industry, it’s pundits such as U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness, and even a few folks in the independent music world would like you to believe that oh so evil file-sharing is at the bottom of the steep decline in sales that the music industry is facing. As the great Chuck D once said, DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. A few things played a part in devaluing music as a commercial product and file-sharing is only a minor player.

No kids, file-sharing didn’t kill the music industry. Quite frankly there’s been a lot said about file-sharing and it’s negative impact on the music industry. Sure, file-sharing has played a role in getting some people to stop buying music. It has also empowered music fans to first decide if an album is worth buying. (Personally, I can’t tell you how often in the first half of the 90s that I felt burned by purchasing albums with only 1 or 2 decent tracks on them. Now I never get burned. I DO buy every album that I feel is worthy of my hard-earned income. Takeaway lesson for the music industry: Make less formulaic music.)

The real truth regarding the decline of music sales is far from being anything new. It’s quite simply supply and demand. There was a time, before the internet, when the mainstream music industry controlled the entire global musical output. It controlled where artists were played and heard. It was quite a rarity for artists to get airplay in markets that they weren’t allowed to be played in. Growing up, for the most part, I didn’t hear music from other countries — for example Quebec, France or Germany. The US didn’t hear about Celine Dion until she was packaged for American markets. As well, there were only a limited number of sources to discover new music — tv, radio, music stores, friends. Unless you had friends bringing music from different regions in the US, it took months for some music to make it’s way to your ears — hip-hop.

Then came the internet and the mp3 format. As soon as Napster was created, it did a couple things:

a) It showed people that music could be distributed online.

b) It broke the distribution monopoly that the music industry had created.

Sure people could download music freely, but that was minor compared to what else it did. It also allowed music lovers to bypass the approved artists for their market and hear music from markets all over the world. Suddenly, worldwide music via many, many avenues are competing for the same listeners’ ears. This is key. Remember, supply and demand dictates that a product is only as valuable as it’s demand. The minute a literal world of music opened up to music fans, music as a product declined in value. The supply now far outweighs the demand.

This is only part of the issue. Another part is the explosion of new media markets — home video (DVD, Bluray) and gaming. People only have a limited amount of liquid income for entertainment. As new entertainment markets are created, they vie for the same entertainment dollars that the existing markets did. That means a smaller fraction may be available for the markets that existed before — music.

Lastly, the quality of mainstream music has declined, becoming increasingly formulaic leading to a decline in sales there.

Combine those three factors together and what you have is a situation where music as a product in general is less-valued and competing with more markets than ever before.

So mainstream music folks, please understand, there’s literally no way for the days of old to return, even if you somehow banish file-sharing and take control of the internet in every nation around the globe.

Peace
Mike Gregoire
Founder/Curator blocSonic.com