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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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