"The mighty music business is in free fall," so Sony tries focusing on quality. | Hacker News Reader

"The mighty music business is in free fall," so Sony tries focusing on quality.

nytimes.com

26 pointskkim22 comments

>"The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I -- and Rick -- already knew," DiDia told me afterward. "The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."

Ouch! So they're confirming what we've all suspected for a while: social nets are fads and people outgrow them just like they outgrow pop bands.

Just to be a bit pedantic here-- social networks aren't fads, though the sites taking advantage of them may be. (I know that's what you meant, but I think it's important to differentiate network effects vs. "social networking" sites)

Odd that his self-professed technical inability extends to mixing boards and the like...standard tools of producers. Maybe that's a good thing. Take someone with a decent ear, mix it with no real capacity for muddying things up (Phil Specter-like) and I could see him "producing" quality material.

Neil Diamond...? "Hey, Neil, why don't you record songs the same way you did back before sucked so hard?" ...I could have told him that.

The Black Crows told a story about how Rubin wanted them to call themselves "Krawford Kounty Krows"...KKK LOL. Good one, Rube. He isn't universally popular.

I seriously hope that record companies aren't feeling too down on themselves. Music blows anymore, and blows hard. I don't know if it's the long-predicted exhaustion of good melodies, or just the distraction of new media, or what. The fact that so many people listen to "rap" suggests lead in the water as much as anything else, so what can you say?

Here follow a few albums from 1969. It's hard to imagine a time when so much great material is being produced. When I hear a decent song these days, I'm absolutely shocked.

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Blood Sweat & Tears - Blood, Sweat & Tears

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash

Green River, Bayou Country, Willy and the Poor Boys - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin

Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones

Tommy - The Who

If I only listen to the music I like from 1967 to 1995, 2 things will happen: 1. I won't have to buy any more music. 2. I won't run out until 2058.

What are your sources for dicsovering new music? I certainly know good music from after 69, but in recent years I have been slacking in my research. I don't think it would be fair to judge current music just by the stuff you get to hear on MTV or radio.

I usually discover new music by 'accident'. For example, on radioblogclub.com you can search for artists or songs you know and you end up with a playlist you can listen to online. After you've listened to what you were looking for, you can keep listening the playlist and discover similar stuff.

Web radios are great, too. A favorite of mine is www.scenemusic.net (old-school demoscene music).

The best creative leaders are always specifically opinionated and decisive. It tends to build a mystique around them, but it's what people want, even need, to hear. If you asked for a critique from a creative leader you respect, you want to hear specific, decisive feedback. Artists of all kinds are dying for that kind of interaction. Remember the "More Cowbell" skit?

When the system works, leaders improve the works they're responsible for through expert criticism. When it goes wrong, critics who are not responsible or responsible parties who have bad taste fill the creative leadership vacuum with disastrous results.

I think this article shows how desperately large creative enterprises need outsize creative leaders. Not managers, and not business guys who "let the artist do their thing." Artists can do their thing on their own, but if an artist is a part of a large company, that needs to work for them and help improve their work.

http://zachbaker.com/articles/2007/09/03/exploring-creative-...

i've been thinking about this issue for a long time, because some people are going to get rich from this. whenever an old industry is in decline, a new one is about to spring up in its place. ibm's downfall was microsoft's windfall.

so, let's see who's made a dent so far. the original napster, which brought the contours of the new era into sharp focus. too bad their "business model" was based on cold-blooded straight-up theivery. mp3.com was an interesting player for awhile; a bunch of artists made a good living just from being popular on that site. itunes of course, but apple is having a tough time of it because the dinosaur label execs won't get the hell out of the way.

what's next? small boutique "record labels" that distribute their artists' records online for little or no money, and expect the bands to make money through touring and t-shirts? i wish i could see the future more clearly on this.

MySpace. MySpace got popular largely through small independent bands that used it to stay in close touch with their fans. It's still one of the best places to go if you're a struggling artist with a small but devoted fanbase.

Good article. Seems like a good guy. But I think their problems are so deep and fundamental (as in their entire business model is broken) that his magic ears won't really help.

I really liked that article, and it really got me thinking about the software industry as well.

If you liked this article, there are a couple of good articles you might want to read (just use google, easy to find them).

1. "The way the music died" - this was a PBS show about the decline of the music industry. One theory advanced is that as lawyers and accountants (without much real interest in music) took over the studios, the product suffered. It took a while, but eventually, that caught up with the industry.

2. A salon.com article titled: "the greatest week in rock in history" - about a week that a truly remarkable line-up of top-selling albums. It's amazing that this much talent was compressed into the same moment in history.

Anyway, the reason I dig reading about this is that it is a cautionary tale for the technology industry. It's very tempting to put suits in charge of software, but in the end, it tends to fail.

The main difference: the music industry had such a good catalog of existing product (a led zeppelin album is still good to listen to today) that they could limp along without innovating for quite some time. Whereas most software companies that stop innovating will be dead quickly. Yeah, monopoly positions can hold reality at bay for a while, but reality always wins in the end.

Last FM (http://www.last.fm/) Has a great search tool where you can enter a band you like and it will suggest other new artists that you may enjoy listening to. Its pretty spot on and I've found a few new groups from the several times i've tried it. Its user driven so its virtual word of mouth.

I particularly like the "neighbors" feature, which shows you people who have similar tastes as you. You can then see what they're listening to that you aren't. Also PureVolume (http://purevolume.com) is excellent for listening to independent music.

What would be great would be to have a kind of meta store for MP3s, so that small startups could create online music shops without all the legal problems.

Sort of like this? http://www.snocap.com/

I am not sure, it sounds more like a solution to sell your own music? Unless you can become a retailer somehow? What I mean is something that allows you to create an alternative to iTunes and sell popular music.

Their lawyers can't stop the business model from dying completely. I guess artists will have to make money off touring, which is much more profitable today than it was before. It used to be that artists toured at a loss to promote their album sales; now they won't make any money distributing their music in order to profit off concerts.

How come Rhapsody isn't the solution to all their problems? The price is low enough that it isn't worth it for most people to go to the trouble of stealing the music. Portability is an issue, but maybe that's solvable or has been addressed already.

it seems like an option for casual music listeners, at best. once you stop paying, your music is gone. i don't want to have that kind of relationship with any company, because sooner or later, their interests and mine will not be aligned anymore.

personally i own over 700 cds and 300 vinyl lps. i'm not letting anybody else be in charge of my music collection. but then i'm an oddball, so i can't be called representative.

But, with Rhapsody, you don't have an equity interest in the music to begin with. The whole investment is the intellectual one in your playlist, which you can keep. At worst, if you discontinue Rhapsody, you could go and buy the music to replicate your playlist if you feel the need to own it.

I would be more concerned about the potential obsolescence of my investment in music in a physical medium or a particular file format.

Pretentious prima donna (Rubin) swoops in to save the day so rich assholes whose idea of business model improvement is fucking over artists further (50% of touring revenues?!) can keep on being blind morons. Yawn.

Rick Rubin is a musical mastermind; that's clear. But no indications yet about whether this strategy's going to work out for the music industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com