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Unsung Forum » NIN on line sales |
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zphage 3378 posts |
Edited Mar 25, 2008, 19:34
Mar 25, 2008, 19:32
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Ghosts did $1.62 million in direct online sales in its first week, with five versions offered, including free. For established acts on line seems like the way to go. Record labels will have to be more artist friendly to established artists. However, new acts may find clauses to prevent or to take proceeds from them should they leave, after a record company has built them up. Walmart is trying to squeeze the labels to lower their list prices. The labels are crying it hurts their margins, and ability to nuture new acts. Walmart has been able to wield their power in other categories. Vlasic pickles was bankrupted three times trying to meet Walmart's demands. Labels need to be run by smaller and tighter. Labels as we know them may have their greatest value as distributors.
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vince 1628 posts |
Mar 25, 2008, 23:59
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zphage wrote: Labels need to be run by smaller and tighter. Labels as we know them may have their greatest value as distributors. I think many of us have seen it that way for some time. Particularly since RTD crashed way back when. Seems to me that the only purposes of major labels these days are 1. to leech the artists that actually sell from the indepependant sector 2. to nuture teen-friendly chart fodder that is not intended to have a shelf life beyond 2 years. No change really then? Mercifully, as the majors begin to crash and burn, the independant sector will always find a way. I can see millions of self-owned musical cottage industries setting up across the globe...sigh...some of us have been hoping for such a scenario for 3 decades. Vive la revolution!
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zphage 3378 posts |
Mar 26, 2008, 00:11
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The scale of the US market does not lend itself easily to labels just being distributors. There are already distributors and 'one stops' that do this job. They are middle men who have their own vested interest in remaining in the game. The labels would have to put them out of business or buy them. Labels are big business. They are lazy. They do not do the footwork. They do not visit stores anymore. They do not know what the buzz is until late. They do not innovate, they buy. They buy small labels. They poach bands off smaller labels. They do not groom for the long term. They think of now. Too many bands get their career back when their moment is over and no one cares.
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redbarchetta 335 posts |
Mar 27, 2008, 05:30
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What is interesting is how difficult it must be for labels to promote their products to a wider, non-specialist audience. Sure, radio remains important but how do you reach the 30 something rock fan who's grown bored with mainstream music radio (cos it remains shit), irritated by Q and Mojo cos they're reduced to repeating the same old stuff, and doesn't have the time for social networking sites? I'm finding out about a lot of new music through recommendations on the various music forums I belong to, notably Unsung and the Cardiacs chat-list. When my missus worked for Radio 1, you couldn't move in the reception at Yalding House for pluggers. But how do they now reach such an atomised, niche-driven market place ? Are they now just salaried, cross-media spammers? The internet has been an absolutely transformative experience for die-hard music obsesives and communities such as this one have been a revelation for me but it makes me wonder if there's been any pluggers using the Unsung forum to virally market their wares? And if so, is that neccessarily a bad thing? The recent takeover of EMI by a private equity firm, and the way the label's business model is now being given a corporate enema, is pretty interesting stuff. One thing's for sure - the party is now over for the mainstream record industry.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Mar 27, 2008, 09:51
Mar 27, 2008, 09:36
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zphage wrote: Ghosts did $1.62 million in direct online sales in its first week, with five versions offered, including free.. I love the idea of Wal Mart (especially Wal Mart) and the other major retailers getting it in the ass but it is still early days. I have a much bigger gripe with the stores than with the major labels. Retail has become less about selling music than selling the space and positioning on their shop floors to the labels. Their margin is all in the add-ons that the labels pay through the nose for. It is a supermarket mentality that has done as much, if not more, than P2P to instill this idea that $10 / £10 is the "right" price for an album. How is it that people who pay for £8 for a paperback they will read once, £10 for three drinks in a pub that are gone in ten minutes or £6 for a packet of fags yet those same people will bitch and moan about paying £12 or £15 for a record they will get hours and hours of pleasure from? 40 Silk Cut or "1969 Live" you decide where the value is in £12! Since 1998 ish you've had families who might be spending £250 a month on internet connections, mobiles, cable tv and a trip to a Premiership game or whatever. Some of that is money they used to spend on music. And where's the margin in a £10 cd when the store wants a 50% mark-up and all the other costs - manufacturing, marketing and mechanical royalties etc - remain more or less static? The label margin is decimated, the artist with a % based deal gets screwed (as always) and everyone else gets paid as if nothing has changed. That's Titanic thinking and the rich always have the best lifeboats. As for NIN. $1.63m looks like a lot of money on paper but if that's a worldwide figure then it's not so brilliant given that Year Zero sold 190,000 and With Teeth sold 280,000 in the US alone in their first week of release. It'll be a while before we can measure the effectiveness of this with any accuracy. From here it looks like they are shortening the supply chain and getting the last big scrape from a near empty barrel rather than creating a new paradigm or whatever claims are being made for them. This release is NIN launching their lifeboat not the Santa Maria of the music industry. As for the labels they have always put out lots of crap. Even in the so-called golden age of 67 to 77 they released loads and loads of really bad albums by mediocre acts. It's just that the more marginal acts the majors would have signed in the 70s are now all on indies or self-releasing. What we will see a lot more of is bands and artist being sponsored to make records by corporations who want to be seen as caring and sharing and by companies who want a sexy add-on to their own product. "The new Lighthouse Family album brought to you by Innocent Smoothies" and such like with tour sponsorship thrown into the deal. Has to happen because the wider public really have been manipulated into not giving a flying fuck about the idea of buying recorded music any more.
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vince 1628 posts |
Mar 27, 2008, 20:54
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IanB wrote: [quote="zphage"] with tour sponsorship thrown into the deal. Has to happen because the wider public really have been manipulated into not giving a flying fuck about the idea of buying recorded music any more. Tour sponsorship has been around for ever. It's the difference between breaking even and losing money. I've been sponsored by swatch, rizla, ricard...you name it. I'll happily take it up the corporate ass if it means I don't have to pay to play my music.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Mar 28, 2008, 17:50
Mar 28, 2008, 17:46
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vince wrote: IanB wrote: [quote="zphage"] with tour sponsorship thrown into the deal. Has to happen because the wider public really have been manipulated into not giving a flying fuck about the idea of buying recorded music any more. Tour sponsorship has been around for ever. It's the difference between breaking even and losing money. I've been sponsored by swatch, rizla, ricard...you name it. I'll happily take it up the corporate ass if it means I don't have to pay to play my music. Of course tour sponsorship has been around for a good old while (I can remember wrangling money out of Levis back in 1989) but not when combined with the same companies actually paying for albums to be recorded. I have no problem with tour costs being under written by some benefactor with a product to push but do we really want records to get made that way? Waaaay too intrusive for me.
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Dog 3000 4611 posts |
Mar 28, 2008, 18:03
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zphage wrote: Labels need to be run by smaller and tighter. Labels as we know them may have their greatest value as distributors. I thought "distributors" is basically what labels are now. I think their only future role is "marketing and advertising", since music can be distributed at such a low cost on the internet (you pay for overhead & web traffic, but the "unit cost" of albums approaches zero, since there is nothing to "manufacture.") And since marketing is the last service they can make money on, I expect Ian's right about sponsorship deals being a future trend (all the sports stadiums are already named after corporations, right?) But this is all about scraping the last dollar from the barrel, it will probably be an issue for the Britneys and Justins, but I can't imagine "real music" would actually move that many smoothies or cell phones. And I still say this is part of a larger overall cultural trend -- mass media is changing, "records" just don't have the cache they used to in decades past. I don't think there is a business model that will work based on "selling bits of plastic", so from a money standpoint labels will need to focus on "selling the sizzle instead of the steak" (associating popular artists with products for advertising purposes.) But that's all a "business" problem, who knows how this will effect the "artistic" situation. Music will never die even if record labels do!
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