09/09/09 - The Day the Record Industry Died | Hacker News Reader

09/09/09 - The Day the Record Industry Died

dashes.com

9 pointspeter12311 comments

When did people ever get excited about a press release from a major recording studio that wasn't related to a specific artist? How does "Artists and Apple can generate marketing buzz" mean that the record industry is dead? When did the record industry ever generate marketing buzz?

He's just using the Apple event to launch into the same "new media" nonsense that goes around the blogosphere. There's no doubt word of mouth plays a part but it always has. Just because people are talking on twitter rather than gathering around the jukebox in a soda shop doesn't mean promotion is now irrelevant.

Record companies had to ensure that magazines wrote about their artists, music was played on the radios and recordings would be available to purchase in stores. The average person on the street could only take their word of mouth so far. Now, the equivalent person on the street could write a blog post with an international reach while also uploading and sharing an MP3, which is basically what the record company was doing in old timey times.

Record companies had to do that work to publicize their artists and drive sales. The overwhelming majority of all music plays still go to a small number of major-label artists. The crowd-based blog-sourced promotion model hasn't made a dent.

Record labels are in decline for reasons that have nothing to do with individual empowerment.

Right. I don't think we're disagreeing. Just pointing out that the stuff that individuals do is essentially the stuff that only record labels could do once upon a time. I was responding to the idea that record companies didn't do anything.

I'm not saying that record labels do nothing, but the article is arguing that because The Beatles and Apple generated some marketing buzz that it's a death knell for the Recording studios. My point is that the recording studios never generated any buzz that wasn't artist specific. No one ever got excited about a press release from Universal Music or BMI... unless it was related to an artist.

Using Apple (Computers) and The Beatles as examples of 'new media' is either woefully ignorant or intentionally misleading. The Beatles are the most famous 'rock' band (love them or hate them) in modern times (because there were more popular rock bands in the Dark Ages, but the records were lost). To declare that the recording industry is dead because artists can generate their own buzz, and then use The Beatles as a prime example? It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem. You can practically generate buzz on command when you get famous enough, but you need to use buzz to become that famous... and not every band can become that famous.

This is the same as when Radiohead released In Rainbows with the 'pay what you want' model for online distribution -- which Trent Reznor claims to have paid like $5k for to support the idea. The only reason that Radiohead can do something like that is because they are already famous. Some no name garageband can't do that. Everyone would 'set their own price' at $0.

Based on empirical evidence I find it hard to believe that labels really do nothing. Most big-selling major-label music is strictly inferior to what even Last.fm manages to find for me almost at random.

They are clearly doing something to hypnotize people into buying Feist.

Radio airtime and purposefully catchy tunes that stick in your head. I've found that the more you hear a song over and over again on the radio the more you end up liking it, even if you hated it at first. That's what hypnotizes people.

You're basically reiterating the same arguments that we've heard over and over again. What is 'new' now? Did I miss something about Apple's press conference/keynote that brings something new to this argument?

I get very confused by reading "Beatles", "Record label" and "Apple" in the same sentence, with Apple not referring to the record label.

I also get confused because I thought the Michael Jackson owned the Beatles' copyrights. Does Jackson's estate own Apple Records?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com