# The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry…



## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

This article is from September. I hadn't seen it previously so if it has been posted, a big 'oops' from me to you.

I found this interesting. I remember many people saying "Good. Now quality will prevail and people who are good will still get noticed on the big stage". I didn't really agree and it made me think about how it really wasn't a great thing when the record companies all started to fail. Sure it was an injustice that record companies would make squillions and if artists had 'bad deals' they would not be fairly compensated for their work but hey, that's what entertainment lawyers are for.

Anyway, I often think about the good things about the old days and I think the music 'Industry' was better before all of this. I also think of this sort of thing when it comes to the advances in home recording. Many people wouldn't get a tape recorder out and record themselves but everyone seems to want to get home recording going now that the technology allows them to do so much with so little. My problem with it? I think I hear 100 times more bad music than I used to because people who can barely string 3 chords together want to put a recording up on the www.

Thought provoking article regardless:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/09/25/lies


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

Link won't seem to open for me.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

*Lie #1: Great music will naturally find its audience.*

​*The Lie*: The greatest music and artists will eventually connect with their audiences, naturally, thanks to a perfectly-lubricated, social, and borderless internet.
_“Our kids are going to watch exactly what they want to watch, not necessarily what’s marketed to them,” then Topspin CEO Ian Rogers said as recently as 2010, while constantly underscoring that “quality is hyperefficient.”_
*The Truth*: Just like the analog old days, most great music gets left behind and wallows in obscurity if not substantially backed or otherwise supported financially. In fact, the biggest songs on the planet are often those blasted the loudest on the biggest platforms – and oftentimes, the most money from major labels (ie, Katy Perry, Pitbull, Flo Rida, etc.)
*Lie #2: Artists will thrive off of ‘Long Tail,’ niche content.*
​ *The Lie*: The music landscape would be increasingly dominated by smaller and smaller artists, with smaller (but stronger) audiences. And, they can make more money through direct fan relationships.
_“Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts,” Chris Anderson famously wrote in his ‘groundbreaking’ Wired article that started a misguided revolution. ”The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.”_
*The Truth*: Instead of unleashing a torrent of successful niches, the internet has actually made blockbusters bigger than before. All while starving artists down the tail.
_“So, while the tail is very interesting, the vast majority of revenue remains in the head,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt brutally revised just a few years later. ”And this is a lesson that businesses have to learn. While you can have a Long Tail strategy, you better have a head, because that’s where all the revenue is.”_
*Lie #3: The death of the major label will make it easier for artists to succeed.*
​ *The Lie*: No more major labels to choke the supply! No one to hold the artist back!
*The Truth*: Sadly, the avalanche of unfettered, unwashed content was never quite filtered by the music fan. Instead, it was all mostly tuned out, except by a small number of trusted curators. Which means, most artists are deluged in all that stuff, and have a hard time gaining traction.
_“We’ve had 10-11 years of American Idol, so you’ve had 100 or 110 top ten people, and you can count on your hand the number of careers that have sustained off of that,” Irving Azoff said late last year. ”So that just tells you that even with the massive exposure of network TV, how hard it is to make it in the music business.” _
*Lie #4: There will be a death of the major label.*
​ *The Lie*: Major labels will die out completely, while unleashing a utopia of contract-free, liberated artists.
*The Truth*: Majors are weaked but far from dead. But more importantly, they are still controlling popular music and its consumption, and building and maintaining artist careers. It’s the reason why Jay-Z is still signed with a major, and why Macklemore did a deal with Warner Music Group.
_It’s also the dirty little secret behind Amanda Palmer’s current name brand (you’re welcome, Roadrunner)._
*Lie #5: Digital formats will produce far greater revenues than physical.*
​ *The Lie*: The absence of major manufacturing overhead, shipping, and brick-n-mortar retailers will drastically reduce costs and pave the way for greater revenues and income.
*The Truth*: Digital sales volumes are not only lower, but an era of singles eviscerated marked-up, album bundles. And the current era of ‘digital dimes’ means that per-track, per-stream, or per-whatever payouts are far lower.
These days, artists that can actually sell physical (like vinyl and CDs) make more money. The same is true for nations: Japan is now the largest recorded music market in the world, thanks largely to strong CD and physical sales.
*Lie #6: “The real money’s in touring”*
​ *The Lie*: If artists just give away their music for free, and let it be social and free-flowing, they’ll make it up on the road.
*The Truth*: Fabulously true for artists like Pretty Lights and plenty of EDM artists, but _not most other artists_. In fact, most artists are struggling to survive on the road, and even established names have been forced to can tours because the money just doesn’t make sense.
*Lie #7: There’s an emerging middle class artist.*
​ *The Lie*: Internet-powered disintermediation would create a burgeoning ‘middle class’ of artists. Not the limousine, Bono-style outrageous superstars, but good musicians that could support families and pay their bills.
*The Truth*: There is no musician middle class. Instead, the music industry has devolved into a third world country, with a wide gulf between the rich and struggling/starving poor.
And, those ambitious middle-class artists that try to make ends meet by spending 350 days on the road are probably not raising very good families.
*Lie #8: Kickstarter can and will build careers.*
​ *The Lie*: Superfans will come out in droves to support their favorite artist projects, and power their awesome careers.
*The Truth*: So far, it’s happened for Amanda Palmer, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Murder by Death, and a few other artists. Which is great for those artists, but most irrelevant for the broader artist community.
*Lie #9: Spotify is your friend.*
​ *The Lie*: Streaming on Spotify will make artists money, if they just wait long enough.
*The Truth*: Spotify will make Spotify and Wall Street tons of money, if they’re really lucky. And they’ve already made tons of money for major labels, not artists.
And even superfans rarely stream enough to equal the nice, upfront, transparent royalty offered by an iTunes Store download.
*Lie #10: Google and YouTube are your friends.*
​ *The Lie*: Google and YouTube have anything but their own profit-maximization goals in mind.
*The Truth*: This is business, not altruism, not matter how it gets spun. And, the interests of Google and rights owners are diabolically opposed and will continue to be so. Which also means that anything that is DMCA-compliant is ultimately great for Google, and fantastially bad for content owners.
So if you want exposure, go to YouTube. If you want a paycheck, find it somewhere else.
*Lie #11: If Pandora could just lower royalties, they could then survive, and really help all the artists out there.*
​ *The Lie*: Sadly, Tim Westergren’s bubble is making him one of the biggest boogeymen of the modern-day music industry. In an impassioned (but largely deceiving) letter to artists, Westergren asked asked to sign a Congressional petition asking for lower royalty rates for internet radio.
*The Truth*: What Westergren forgot to mention was that by signing the petition, artists were also supporting their own rate cut, which led to high-profile protests from groups like Pink Floyd. Meanwhile, Westergren – whose Pandora cashouts now surpass $1 million a month – has devoted endless amounts of time towards both publishing and recording royalties in the courts and Capitol Hill.
*Lie #12: T-Shirts!*
​ *The Lie*: Not only is the money in touring, but artists will make a killing off of merch table sales and t-shirts.
*The Truth*: Very, very few artists are (a) supporting themselves through touring, and (b) if they are, making tons of money from merch. Sadly, the greatest merch tables sales came from CDs, that is, up until the early 2000s or so. It supported tours then, it doesn’t support anything now.
*Lie #13: ‘Streaming is the future…’*
​*
The Lie*: Access will trump everything, and lead to a better, richer music industry for everyone.
*The Truth*: Let’s see what this green pasture ultimately looks like. Spotify is hundreds of millions deep in financing without a profit; Rhapsody is laying people off; YouTube has been subsidizing free music access for years.
*

So here’s your future: YouTube, which has driven the price of recorded music most aggressively towards $0, will be around tomorrow. Spotify, Rhapsody, Deezer, Rdio, and Pandora may not be so lucky.*


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## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

I hope it's not all true, if it is independent artists are worse off in the internet age than they were before it.


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## djmarcelca (Aug 2, 2012)

It's always been Money - Or Payola if you want to call it.

The marketing makes the hit, very rarely does Talent force everyone to stand up and listen.
Of course the age old Catch22 is:
You've got to have talent to get the marketing and marketing to get the talent.


SOmething like: You've got to have Experience to get the job but have the job to get Experience.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

Lie #6: “The real money’s in touring”
The Lie: If artists just give away their music for free, and let it be social and free-flowing, they’ll make it up on the road.
The Truth: Fabulously true for artists like Pretty Lights and plenty of EDM artists, but not most other artists. In fact, most artists are struggling to survive on the road, and even established names have been forced to can tours because the money just doesn’t make sense.


the reason so many artists struggle on tours is because they allow promoters and ticket resellers to scalp the best tix for ridiculous prices, and so many ticket resellers out there artificially inflate the market by buying up all the tix, and selling them at 3 or more times the cost. i saw judas priest for $35 at the top of their game touring screaming for vengance. try seeing a cool rock act now at a big stadium. all the best seats are owned by promoters, they keep the best for friends and sell the rest at retarded prices. the band sees none of the upsale money, and it drives away people who have the sense not to pay those prices, further reducing the draw. so until they find a way to kill the corporate scalper, that part aint gonna change


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## JCJ (Jan 3, 2008)

I think many of us who have been in the trenches trying to make a living understand these points completely. In 30 years I have not experienced a more challenging time to be a professional. Much of the result has to do with what is written about in the article, and the trickle-down affect. The "middle-class" in the business is truly gone, and while I accept that's just the way things are, it pisses me off to have been sold this bill of goods. The majority of records made by indie artists are well below a decent level of production (IMO), because we are paying for it ourselves. Record companies may have been predatory in some cases, but albums were never released without the best possible sounds/recording techniques available. My cd's sound like demo's. As Pete Townshend once wrote: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…"

Oh, and the social media experiment is a wash. Some artists benefit from it, but most don't. It's all noise.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

mrmatt1972 said:


> I hope it's not all true, if it is independent artists are worse off in the internet age than they were before it.


I think it is all true. Independent artists now have less venues to play in and those venues are paying less too. This is not to say that there aren't many cover bands and so on that have good gigs, but most of those bands do it on a part-time basis and if they were to go out full-time, most gigs wouldn't match up with their sweet gigs & they would lose their shirts (generally speaking of course). For those who are playing original music...I can't imagine how depressing it must be to try to be heard. Even the open mic craze of 15 years ago was at least an outlet...now there aren't near as many around and if you drop into one you might end up playing for the host and a handfull of other people. That's fine too if it is what you enjoy but I can enjoy my songs better in a room at home live and have no travel time, and no dirty pub.



cheezyridr said:


> the reason so many artists struggle on tours is because they allow promoters and ticket resellers to scalp the best tix for ridiculous prices, and so many ticket resellers out there artificially inflate the market by buying up all the tix, and selling them at 3 or more times the cost. i saw judas priest for $35 at the top of their game touring screaming for vengance. try seeing a cool rock act now at a big stadium. all the best seats are owned by promoters, they keep the best for friends and sell the rest at retarded prices. the band sees none of the upsale money, and it drives away people who have the sense not to pay those prices, further reducing the draw. so until they find a way to kill the corporate scalper, that part aint gonna change


The ones who have reached a certain level don't have to worry about ticket resellers and promoters. *The real money is in touring* applies to the big artists...it just doesn't apply to you if you aren't famous with a huge fan base. So, while your points are valid, they don't really affect the ones like The Eagles and Madonna etc where the real money is in touring. I bet there are a lot of people who hit the road and expect to make it on cd sales and t-shirts though while they try to get enough from venues to cover most of their expenses.


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## Option1 (May 26, 2012)

Great article summarizing to me what seemed to be obvious, ill-conceived lies (or put in the very best light, idealistic hopes with very little thought given to the realistic basis for such statements) from the get go.

Neil


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

In some ways it is a case of "The more things change, the more they stay the same"
Bands are just ripped off in different ways.

But certainly there are things that have changed, and perhaps left different victims than before.

In some ways it makes me glad I never really went anywhere with a music career.

But if I could make a living playing music--I would.

But I realized how unlikely that was a long time ago--and now it seems less likely.

I'm certainly not flavour of the month.


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