Lot of great detail here, the bottom line being not just the accelerating decline of physical media sales, but the death of the album - with examples given such as Drake's 25-track album where 3 songs account for over 60% of all streams from the album, 19 others a combined 18%!
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-album-is-in-deep-trouble-and-the-music-business-probably-cant-save-it-753795/
Convergence continues...
With Facebook recently tieing up rights deals with multiple labels their subsidiary Instagram has announced an add music option for their Daily Story feature ... and a Lip Sync Live feature is rumoured for a Facebook launch soon
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/instagram-stories-music/
I've blogged on this before, predicting the digital download would all but disappear in as little as 2-3 years ... and here we go.
The market-dominating iTunes will cease to offer downloads to 'own' (the legal status is controversial, but ownership is clearly restricted compared to physical media) from 2019, as streaming surfs to the top of Apple's, and the wider music industry's, strategy.
The dominant mode of distribution not so long ago is rapidly disappearing, though I'm sure some smaller sites will continue to offer DL options. How many major artists will bother offering this? Could still be quite a few - many digipak and vinyl sets come with DL codes for MP3 or even FLAC files.
https://www.baeblemusic.com/musicblog/4-13-2018/itunes-announces-all-music-downloads-will-be-shut-down-and-its-not-a-black-mirror-episode.html
Useful industry context here for your digipak, which is almost certain to be a best of. The point is NOT to abandon that format but rather to show awareness of the declining commercial prospects of it, and why this is.
For every convention there are always exceptions, and here we can see re-recorded Best Ofs thriving, with the Elvis collection, freshly cut with a new orchestral backing track, the top-selling such comp in 2017, a trick Kylie has also used in the past, and one hit wonder Sophie Ellis-Baxter is set to in 2018.
The death of the best of: why Rihanna will never get her greatest hits https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/12/playlist-curation-killing-off-greatest-hits-album-rihanna?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger
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| This is how Sainsbury's announced the launch |
Just how far have revenues fallen then? The actual figures are quite shocking - from a global $40bn industry to just $14bn in 15 years as digital piracy took off from 1999.
We’re in an industry where over 90% of releases never recoup the money spent on them,” he says. “The industry underwrites failure as a necessary part of its operation and looks to the supercharged successes of a very small number of artists to cover the losses. That’s pretty dysfunctional. The number one challenge facing a new artist is a financial one: become profitable or cease to exist in the medium to long term.”
Wale believes that by thinking on a more realistic scale, and with advances in technology, it is still possible to make an income from music. “I think now, more so than ever, it’s very possible – especially for a solo artist – to make a cottage-industry scale success without any outside help whatsoever. Obviously this has been facilitated greatly by the internet and the emergence of online networks, fan-supported releases and a number of great discovery platforms. All the tools are really there for someone to go out and do it themselves.”
IN BRIEF:There have been a spate of major names in the music biz recently speaking out about what they perceive as the inequities of the record industry, specifically the new streaming services (particularly Spotify), arguing that their revenue isn't reaching artists. Here's an excerpt from a lengthy diatribe/considered attack (which do you think?) from Talking Heads' David Byrne, an artist well known for experimenting with digital technologies:
A series of high profile artists have expressed strong views on the business model of streaming sites such as Spotify: some (Thom Yorke, David Byrne) argue its grossly unfair to artists, who receive very, very little even for huge international hits; others (Dave Stewart, Dave Allen) argue they offer promotion and that we should accept this is what the market and today's consumers, who prefer 'renting' to purchasing, want, and that the music business as it currently is is no more 'worthy' than others like the travel industry which have been 'disrupted' and transformed by new media.
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| Many article comments disagreed with Byrne |
The amounts these services pay per stream is miniscule – their idea being that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will pile up. Domination and ubiquity are therefore to be encouraged. We should readjust our values because in the web-based world we are told that monopoly is good for us. The major record labels usually siphon off most of this income, and then they dribble about 15-20% of what's left down to their artists. Indie labels are often a lot fairer – sometimes sharing the income 50/50. Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) has published abysmal data on payouts from Pandora and Spotify for his song "Tugboat" and Lowery even wrote a piece entitled "My Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make from a Single T-shirt Sale!" For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk's song of the summer, "Get Lucky", reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That won't pay their bills if it's their principal source of income. And what happens to the bands who don't have massive international summer hits?
ACT: The Pixies
Much retweeted: notice of tour, vid + free MP3 download TRACK: BagboyYEAR: 2013DIRECTOR: LAMAR+NIKGENRE: Alt rockMAIN AUDIENCE: 25-44 (recent/original fans), but clearly targeting new 15-24 + possibly younger teens/tweens; M-oriented vid?
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| Money is recouped by gathering email addresses |
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| LAMAR+NIK often feature non-CGI sculpture-as-title. Reminds me of films like Napoleon Dynamite |
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| Users are encouraged to tweet/FB post |
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| Screenshot taken 4 days after this was uploaded. Note the FREE DOWNLOAD link, + director's site URL |
Earlier this month the Entertainment Retailers Association reported that downloads of music, TV shows, films and video games topped £1bn in the UK for the first time in 2012. Digital music sales grew but revenue from physical singles fell by 44% year on year and albums dropped 11%.The cinema industry and CD sales remain strong but, like newspapers, which are also seeing circulation declining rapidly as more people access their news online, may not have a bright future. The record set by Skyfall, 2012's Bond movie, may never be beaten: it became the first movie to take in over £100m at the UK box office by the last week in December 2012 (it was already the biggest ever UK cinema hit, and topped $1bn worldwide).
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| The 1st album-app: see links list at end of this post |
There are also multiple additional links at the end of this post.You need to be blogging on, and thinking about digitisation and how this imapcted the music industry - a relevant factor when thinking about audience targeting/feedback/publicity, design, the rising significance of back catalogue sales (often stimulated by reissue/remastered editions, with previously unreleased demos and alternative versions added to the album or as a 2nd CD also common, as is 'best of' collections with a small number of new/unreleased tracks). As the long tail theory becomes an accepted part of contemporary economics (Amazon is the perfect example of a company making fortunes by selling few copies of many back catalogue items), new videos for archive tracks is a major growth area for media producers within the creative industries (as an economic sector, second only to the financial sector in scale and share of GDP) ... such as yourselves.
Music apps are the new albums. Or the new concert DVDs. Or...
David Gilmour, Lady Gaga, The xx and Calvin Harris app strategies show music industry experimentation
Every so often, the music industry gets sucked into a debate about whether the traditional album is dead, even if the murderer has varied down the years, from iTunes downloads to Spotify playlists.
[17.9.12: added further quotes from David Byrne (Talking Heads) article at the bottom, which raise the pyschological impact of music consumption and fandom]This is a lengthy excerpt from a 2012 interview - NB: including some crude language - but one that's well worth perservering with. You should be able to find some great quotes that will help you to discuss the impact and effects of digitisation, and how the music biz has been transformed, with the album-centred financial model replaced by a mix of online (from Spotify, YouTube etc micropayments to pay-what-you-want offers to the increasingly central role of concert tickets and merchandise) and concert/merchandise revenue.
JP: And I’m wondering, what drove that decision? I certainly have my own opinions, but I’m no artist, you are. You make culture, and the rest of us are the ones that are lucky enough to hear it and make it mean something to us, so: Why did you choose to leave the infrastructure and the machine that allowed you to get to the point that you’re at where you could do the things that you’re doing?
TR: Well [pauses], that time would’ve been about two thousand…eight-ish, somewhere in that neighborhood, and, the true reality of that situation was: the record deal that we had signed years and years before had escalating advances based on the current state of the industry when that was negotiated. Meanwhile, the industry has collapsed,
Anthony Horowitz: Do we still need publishers?
At an event hosted by children's booksellers The Book People last week, the author gave a talk questioning the role of the publisher in today's literary world. This is an edited version
The title of this talk is, "Do We Need Publishers Any More?". I was going to call it "Thank Christ We Don't Need Bloody Publishers Any More" – but I felt that sounded too partisan.
Relationships between writers and publishers are of course very strange and change all the time, rather like a see-saw.
I remember my first meeting at Walker Books. The first question they asked me – and I swear this is true – was what mug would I like my tea in: the one with the teddy bear, the tennis racket or the pink one with the flower? And when I left the building, they asked me if I'd be OK taking the tube on my own. I was 33. I was married with a child. But they clearly saw me as some sort of demented child myself.
Cut forward 20 years: I've grown up, and they're nervous of me. There's Alex Rider. I've created a brand. Walker also resent me ever so slightly because now I'm the one with the SMA powder and the changing table. To a certain extent, they need me and that's probably tricky for a publisher who might find life so much easier without writers.
Meanwhile, across the river, I have my adult publisher, Orion – and they also have problems with me. Relations between us have been strained ever since they published my Sherlock Holmes novel, The Mouse of Slick, with no fewer than 35 proof-reading errors. Their proof-reader tried to kill herself. She shot herself with a gnu. Even so, we're doing another book together … a story of murder, suspicion and revenge.
But the truth is, I have other options.
READ MORE: SEE http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/15/online-piracy-legislation-murdoch-obamaThere are micro-sites at the Guardian on this (SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act, currently being debtated in the US).
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| a pirate asks 'Why its always glass half empty for the British music industry?' |
Most of us have a mate who has a tendency to the glass half empty view of life. For every silver lining there is a cloud. When one door closes, so does another. That mate for bands and songwriters is music industry body, the British Phonographic Industry, affectionately known as the BPI. They never seem to miss an opportunity to rush in with an arm flailing press release wailing: “The pirates are coming! We’re doooomed! Doooomed I tell you!” Or to be fair, currently it’s “If it weren’t for the lovely, yet tax averse Adele, we’d be dooooomed!”
