Quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Actually radio and television are the easiest ways to reach out to large numbers of people.
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Yorick, over the past year alone, I've bought over 150 (!) CD's; 90% of it music by artists who've hardly had any exposure or none at all on radio and tv, and which I've only bought or even knew its existence of because I was able to hear samples and familiarize myself with the sound of said music on the Internet beforehand... There are no radiostations or music channels in my country I actually enjoy anymore, as while my taste became more "adventurous", the airplay lists on these stations and channels unfortunately didn't, quite the opposite actually. I've literally limited myself to listening to music from CD's and the occasional mp3 of bands I'd like to check out. While many of my mp3s are legal, in a way that I've downloaded them from certain sites where the artists themselves have given permission for their music to be placed, there is still a lot of music which I have obtained through the regular p2p-channels, not knowing the position of the artists on file-sharing, mostly with the purpose of satisfying my curiosity and to decide whether to buy the official CD or not... Sometimes the "illegal Internet circuit" is the only way for me to even
hear certain artists' music, and I personally treat it more as a substitute for radio and tv, since I've lost patience and interest with those years ago.
While I agree that in the end it's the artists' call whether they want their music to be shared or not (the most vocal anti-mp3 artists are mostly major label acts like Metallica, Dr. Dre and Eminem, whose music I couldn't care less about, btw
), I don't think the sales of most artists are really that much worse off than in the pre-Napsterperiod; except perhaps for the (major label) artists who used to have the monopoly (yes, the monopoly) on reaching people through the media, as more people are now looking beyond the music spoonfed to them on MTV and the likes, and are more eager to develop a taste not based on expensive videoclips or massive airplay nowadays. The variety of music offered nowadays is bigger than ever, also partly thanks to the Internet; and consumers have become a lot more exclusive with their tastes, more difficult for the major record labels to fathom and play in...
And what these major record companies did as their answer to the file-swapping and decline in sales was buy even more airplay (or at least that was the case here in the Netherlands, as all even remotely "adventurous" (indie)music was bullied off the airwaves, in favour of more boring uniformity), litterally stuffing their artists (like Anastacia, for instance) in the faces of their target audience. But if a song is played once an hour on all major radiostations for months and months in a row, they shouldn't be surprised when it loses its appeal, and people refrain from buying the CD... With this overexposure, they're literally treating even some of their best and sincerest artists as mere disposables, making songs lose their exclusiveness and getting the exact opposite effect of what they wanted. Because when music loses too much of its exclusiveness, I think the target audience will be more eager to download rather than buying that music; I can see why especially the major record companies are not all too happy about p2p-filesharing programs.
And I actually think the aversion towards "popular" music is bigger than it ever was; not necessarily because it's that much worse than in previous decades, but because of that very same overexposure and the existence of easier acquirable alternatives which sound more exclusive and fresher.
And maybe it's mostly based on personal observations (I occasionally lurk at the Matador messageboard and other independent record labels' sites), but I believe most of the indie labels who didn't have any of the media exposure in the pre-mp3 period don't really seem to mind file-swapping that much; as for them it only means that while their artists mostly had to rely on mouth-to-mouth-recommendations, people nowadays actually have a chance to listen to their artists' music as well, making it a worthy substitute for the lack of radio/tv airplay which the major record companies always seemed to control. Publicity-wise, file-swapping has helped these artists getting heard by more people than could ever have been the case in a world without mp3s; and as the nature of their music is a lot more exclusive than those being crammed down people's throats on radio and tv (even if only because of the difference in exposure), people who like artists of both categories equally much are also more eager to buy a CD of the lesser known artist than pay up to $24 dollars-ish (that's the current new-price for most major record label CD's in my country nowadays in the "major" record stores, about 21-23 Euro
) for a CD of the latter. Heck, let's forget about the difference in exclusivity and quality for a minute and look at the difference in prices; I've ordered a lot of my CD's from US based indielabels, and even taking the 6-8 dollars for shipping into account, even
then I'm most of the time cheaper off than buying major artists' music here in a Dutch store; you may think CD prices are high in your country, but in The Netherlands, in many stores they're
insane.
But anyways... Taking into account I'm an active user of p2p-programs and also taking into account how I deal with those obtained mp3s (namely use them as samples to decide whether to buy the CD or not, a tactic which ended up in me buying more than 150 CD's in less than a year's time), am I a thief as well by your definition?
Because personally, I'd rather blame p2p-software for making me buy
more CD's than for the opposite.
[ 04-14-2003, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]