File-sharing is the best thing since sliced bread for most non-major record labels. Seriously.
Major labels have always held a monopoly interest when it comes to means of exposure, be it radio, tv, the media or advertising; and the most important status quo that's been breached because of the Internet is that there's now a fifth means of exposure that has quickly taken over the other 4. While major record labels notice their revenues slipping as they can't control this latest new medium (as people actually have more of a
choice of what they are listening to), many indie bands have now hit the jackpot exposure-wise - bands that used to get three-line reviews in hardly sold magazines now suddenly have an outlet to get people to hear their music world-wide within months of a mere domestic release (often based on only a single positive review on sites like Pitchforkmedia), thereby also severly increasing the number of records sold.
It's no wonder the major labels are far from pleased with this development - they have no control over the media anymore, and mostly cling onto what little they have (like the billboard charts) by disallowing any independent releases or records sold through non-major franchise record stores/many online stores to be counted, which is also all part of RIAA's scare tactics to make things look a lot worse than they are. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA conveniently forgot to mention this in their apocalyptic calculations (39 billion to 32 billion! OMG!), especially as many legal record sales simply *aren't* counted in any way.
And to illustrate the above with completely anecdotal evidence (
), I've literally got hundreds of CDs in my collection (400-ish), a majority of which by artists I would never even have known if it wasn't for the Internet. I'm sure that I'm being frowned upon as a crook by some for downloading a lot of music (which I freely admit), and that they have a point legally, but I hardly feel any moral objections whatsoever to my way of dealing with it. I'm pretty sure my cd-collection would only be a small fraction of what it is right now if it wasn't for the Internet, so bring it on.
And sure, I will believe that especially 12-18 year olds are guilty of downloading a lot of music, and that the sale of cd-singles is hurt by their new-found "rebellish" attitude, but that's also a result of the major labels putting pretty much all of their eggs in one basket in the years
before the Internet Boom, as they have literally been milking young buyers' potential (which severly increased in the 90s), saturating the market with pre-fab crap; while slowly phasing out focus on older buyers, as these don't let themselves be influenced and tricked into buying crappy gimmick or extremely formulaic (boybands!) records that easily.
But teenagers' appeal has simply shifted in recent years - cd sales and comics have been on the decline for a lot longer than that they've been illegally available on the Internet on a wide-spread level, while there's been a substantial swift of teenagers' limited resources towards consoles, computer games, clothing (and other means to increase their status/appeal in an increasingly materialistic society), dvds, etc. It would simply be naive of the music industry to think that teenagers would just keep on buying the same amount of music for decades on end; and while the Internet may be a catalyst that has sped up the process, it was bound to happen eventually. Sure, teenagers can be moulded/tricked into buying about anything if the advertising approach is lewd enough to create a social pressure to peruse the items, but only a few other factors (new technological developments, different fashion stigmas) are needed to shift their attention from one status symbol to the other.
[ 12-24-2004, 05:14 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]