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Grex > Music3 > #41: The Crash in the Music Business |  |
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| 22 new of 71 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 50 of 71:
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Oct 19 04:45 UTC 2001 |
A long time ago, in the days of primarily singles, my father pointed out that
less than half of the songs of even a top artist were hits: the B side was
almost always a write-off.
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polygon
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response 51 of 71:
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Oct 19 20:04 UTC 2001 |
Re 50. Or *designed* to be a write-off. Does anyone remember "You Know My
Name, Look Up The Number"? I have heard it twice ever, once in high school,
and again on a very peculiar radio show, which described it as "one of the
more *obscure* songs by the Beatles."
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mcnally
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response 52 of 71:
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Oct 19 20:57 UTC 2001 |
Yes, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" (available on one of the
"Past Masters" singles CDs, though I can't recall which one) is pretty
bizarre and atypical for a Beatles song, though it's not the only oddity
they ever produced just to fulfill the need to have a song to put on
a B-side or fulfill some contractual requirement. In fact, they even
wrote a song just about this phenomenon and released it (along with a
couple of other distinctly second-rate efforts) on the "Yellow Submarine"
soundtrack. It's called "Only a Northern Song" and Harrison's lyrics
are pretty blunt about the subject:
If you're listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they're not..
We just wrote it like that.
It doesn't really matter what chords I play
What words I say
Or time of day it is
As it's only a Northern song
It doesn't really matter what clothes I wear
Or how I fare
Or if my hair is brown..
When it's only a Northern song.
When you're listening late at night
You may think the band are not quite right
But they are, they just play it like that
It doesn't really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
As it's only a Northern song.
It doesn't really matter what clothes I wear
Or how I fare
Or if my hair is brown..
When it's only a Northern song.
If you think the harmony
Is a little dark and out of key
You're correct, there's nobody there.
It doesn't really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
And I told you there's no one there.
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mcnally
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response 53 of 71:
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Oct 19 21:07 UTC 2001 |
But I digress.. Getting back to the subject at hand, how is it that
the big-five record companies can make umpteen-million dollar mistakes
time and time again, pass the costs along to their consumers, and still
not get dismembered by their competition. Is there any sensible way to
account for this without concluding that some pretty serious anti-
competitive collusion is keeping new players from threatening the
entrenched powers?
Even with only five major players (and a small army of smaller labels
that are essentially vassals of whichever large conglomerate controls
their distribution) doesn't it seem like a company which sinks $80-100M
into a "sure thing" like Mariah Carey and then can't get it back should
really be hurting compared to a company willing to invest that same $80M+
into developing and promoting 50 relative unknowns in the expectation
that maybe one or two of them can be developed into Mariah-level sellers?
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scott
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response 54 of 71:
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Oct 19 22:37 UTC 2001 |
What, me? No, I'm not going to dispute that, Mike. It sure seems like there
ought to be competition eating their lunch.
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krj
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response 55 of 71:
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Oct 21 19:16 UTC 2001 |
Sunday's New York Times has a large piece on the
difficulties facing the classical music CD business. The article
starts with Tower Records' decision in May to stop ordering from the
major independent classical distributors -- the article does say
that Tower and the distributors have recently come to an agreement.
But with Tower failing in its traditional role as the leading
retailer of serious classical music, and with the major labels abandoning
the field, the article is skeptical about the survival of the business
of manufacturing and distributing physical discs. One person quoted
in the article brings up the point that David Bratman and I had made
earlier: browsing for classical music doesn't work in the online
CD stores like Amazon.com, and most of the serious classical collectors
seem to be dedicated browsers.
The article suggests that, like it or not, the classical music business
will rapidly be forced to pure digital distribution, and everybody
better get the bigger bandwidth needed to download larger works at
higher fidelity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/arts/music/21TOMM.html
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krj
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response 56 of 71:
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Oct 22 16:48 UTC 2001 |
The classical CD sales crash again, this one from an online magazine:
http://www.classicstoday.com/features/f2_1001.asp
"The Death of Deep Catalog"
The argument is that the small classical labels have poured out vastly
more CDs than the retailers or the market could absorb. The retailers
have mostly responded by dropping classical music. The article says
that even Amazon has backed away from trying to stock a comprehensive
catalog.
Quote:
> As the flood of new releases and reissues continues
> unabated, labels and distributors seem
> unwilling to acknowledge that the death of the
> deep catalog store, largely a product of their
> own stupidity in flooding the market with rafts
> of discs that no one wants, has thrust onto them
> a new responsibility: that of dealing with the public
> directly in place of retailers who can't or
> won't any longer. The ability of chain stores to
> suck up new releases and let them sit around in
> the bins practically forever has, up to now,
> insulated producers and distributors from the
> uncomfortable reality that the audience for their
> productions might be vanishing, small, or even
> nonexistent...
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dbratman
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response 57 of 71:
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Oct 22 22:01 UTC 2001 |
The reason the majors can pour out millions for overpriced artists and
not get eaten by the competition is that it's a good short-term
strategy, and all the competition in the same league is doing the same
thing.
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scott
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response 58 of 71:
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Oct 23 00:24 UTC 2001 |
I'm trying to remember if those megadeals actually count a lot of money
earmarked for promotion and such. Would certainly make more sense that way,
as a business decision.
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mcnally
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response 59 of 71:
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Oct 23 01:00 UTC 2001 |
I'm sure that whatever counting scheme they use would be unrecognizable
to most of us, but it's still got to be impossible to make some of those
deals pay no matter what sort of accounting tricks you engage in..
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krj
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response 60 of 71:
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Oct 25 04:34 UTC 2001 |
Still more classical bad news. This is from http://www.gramophone.co.uk,
which appears to be only operational with MSIE.
Nimbus Records, a leading British classical label and UK distributor,
has gone into receivership. In the article, they say that they had
been struggling for a while, but the collapse of business in the US
after September 11 made it impossible to continue.
The article says that another British classical distributor has closed
recently, and yet another closure is imminent.
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goose
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response 61 of 71:
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Oct 26 15:05 UTC 2001 |
I wonder if they're connected with Nimbus the CD manufacturer and mastering
house?
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krj
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response 62 of 71:
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Nov 2 00:43 UTC 2001 |
Usenet reports indicated that the Nimbus record label sold off
the CD manufacturing operation some time earlier.
Copied from resp:music3,4,56 ::
The venerable Canadian firm Sam the Record Man, once the largest
music retailer in Canada, has filed for bankruptcy.
My obituary for the store is in the Music conference, in
the CD Store Obituary item -- I mean, the Music Retail item. :(
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krj
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response 63 of 71:
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Dec 20 02:26 UTC 2001 |
Matt Drudge pointed to this item from the Sacramento Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/1348770p-1418333c.html
A number of big-time musicians are organizing a series of concerts
to raise money for a legal battle over their claim that the
record companies systematically underpay royalties and generally
cheat the artists. Participating musicians include
Elton John, No Doubt, the Eagles, Billy Joel, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks,
Offspring, and Weezer, plus unnamed R&B and country performers.
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krj
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response 64 of 71:
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Dec 27 05:27 UTC 2001 |
LA Times story: the record biz is reeling from big dollar contracts
given to big name stars whose sales have plummeted. Our sample
artists are Mariah Carey, REM and Macy Gray.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000102156dec26.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines
%2Dbusiness%2Dmanual
(sorry about the wrap)
"Labels Singing The Blues Over Expensive Failures"
quote:
> The Carey deal has turned out so badly that EMI music chief
> Alain Levy, hired after the album was released, has initiated an
> unusual attempt to cut the company's losses. Representatives for
> EMI and Carey declined to comment. But several sources close to the
> talks say EMI is pushing for a settlement with Carey under which
> the singer would receive a multimillion-dollar lump sum in exchange
> for agreeing to exit EMI's Virgin Records label.
>
> "The cost of doing business is out of control," said one label chief
> who spoke on condition of anonymity. ...
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flem
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response 65 of 71:
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Dec 27 21:15 UTC 2001 |
Yeah, those elected officials can get pretty expensive...
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gull
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response 66 of 71:
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Dec 28 14:52 UTC 2001 |
They just don't have the morals they used to. Used to be when you
bought a senator, they stayed bought. Now you have to keep paying out
over and over...
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krj
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response 67 of 71:
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Jan 23 19:16 UTC 2002 |
resp:43, resp:64 :: It was quite entertaining watching EMI deny the
story leaked by the LA Times on 12/27, that EMI was looking for a way
out of its $100 million contract with Mariah Carey.
About an hour ago the news hit the wires: it's everywhere so I won't
bother with a link. EMI is paying Mariah $28 million to go away.
Ms. Carey collects a total of $49 million dollars for her one album
GLITTER which sold 2 million copies. In the Reuters story at the NYTimes,
some analysts think EMI was too quick to bail out on Mariah, who
was the top-selling female singer of the 1990s, after one disappointing
album. (2 million sales is disappointing!!!!!!) Factors contributing
to poor sales of the album were a September 11 release date, and
Ms. Carey's physical and emotional health problems which prevented
her from supporting the release with public appearances.
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krj
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response 68 of 71:
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Jan 23 19:25 UTC 2002 |
vh1.com has different sales numbers for the GLITTER album, though
I suspect VH1 used USA sales and Reuters used world sales.
From VH1.COM:
> The news comes on the heels of much industry speculation
> that the singer would be axed from the label, since her first
> Virgin album, Glitter, is considered to be one of the biggest
> commercial disappointments in recent years. The LP has sold
> just over 500,000 copies since its release September 11,
> according to a paltry figure compared to some
> of Carey's previous albums for former label Columbia. By
> comparison, 1999's Rainbow sold more than 2.9 million copies,
> 1997's Butterfly sold more than 3.6 million and 1995's
> Daydream sold nearly 7.5 million.
Geez, what did the execs at EMI think when they looked at her sales
trend for the late 1990s? No wonder former EMI head Ken Berry got sacked.
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mcnally
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response 69 of 71:
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Jan 23 21:41 UTC 2002 |
Wow.. Even using the higher sales figures (2 million copies)
that's still $24.50 she's receiving per CD she actually sold.
To put it another way, if EMI sells half a billion records this
year, they'll essentially have to slap a ten cent Mariah Carey
tax on every one of them.
Better get shopping kids, the record companies are in trouble
and they need your help!
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tpryan
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response 70 of 71:
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Jan 23 23:07 UTC 2002 |
Selling 500,000 copies of an LP is rather astounding these
days. Now selling 500,000 copies of a CD might be considered nice.
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krj
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response 71 of 71:
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Feb 22 23:40 UTC 2002 |
Distribution North America (DNA), which I believe to have been the
leading distributor of indie rock CDs, has gone bankrupt.
Ugh. When the leading indie distributors went *boom* ten years ago,
some stuff went out of print, and some labels went away because they
couldn't absorb the loss of income they were due from the distributor.
Here's a story from the MSU State News:
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=8889
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