Maybe better new music can solve this issue. Personally, I purchase more movies, TV shows, and books instead of music.
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Digital Music Sales Decline for First Time Since Opening of iTunes Music Store
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Strange comment since the number one selling album in 2013 is a solo album from a guy whose group (not band) surely had a number one selling album 10-20 years ago too. There is crappy music that sells well every decade and there is good music every decade.
HDTracks has been known to sell less than high fidelity actually.
I really wish Super Audio CDs(SACD) would make a comeback. I have a bunch and nothing beats that sound quality.
You are right otherwise, the physical copy has so much more to offer than the digital version.
I have no interest in music streaming services.
I want to have my personal collection that provides high quality audio, is not tied to some service and is available freely on my devices without Internet connection.
I want to have my personal collection that provides high quality audio, is not tied to some service and is available freely on my devices without Internet connection.
Unless your looking at something like a 64bit MP3, medium has absolutely nothing at all to do with production quality. The Vinyl sounds better thing is a myth. There are crappy Vinyl productions and crappy CD productions. Unless you dropped 5 grand on that turntable, the CD version of anything you try will sound better (assuming it was mastered at the same time by the same person).
Billboard only cares about mainstream. The point is, the industry cannot claim cannibalism by streaming services when they have no evidence of it. I for one never buy music, but started using spotify. Does that mean I am cannibalizing? No, it doesn't. It makes me a new consumer of music when I wasn't one before.
The point is the industry should be looking at offering a better product vs last year. Consumers have decided that they don't. This is regardless of whether you think the music is good or not.
The point is the industry is being dishonest. Lower sales do not mean lower profits. In fact, I'm willing to bet that profits are up due to higher revenue from streaming vs lower profit from sales.
The point is this is propaganda. Stop analyzing it. It is all spin.
Awesome. We can do this all day long. Such a silly argument he was trying to make. Song writing is no better or worse today than it was 10, 25, 50, 100, or more years ago.
Not surprising. Many people are realizing that the quality on CDs is better, plus vinyl is making a comeback. My digital purchases have decreased in the past year.
1. Just a reminder that anything over 16bit/44.1 kHz (CD quality) is the best you can hear/reproduce (although for actual recording there is some benefit for up to 24 bit). Here's the science behind this http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
2. Vinyl has been dead for 20 years. The brick and mortar retail music business collapsed 10 years ago.
3. Albums don't matter anymore. They are an anachronistic metaphor created by limits of physical media. Albums exist now as marketing gimmicks. (They were an interesting format especially with album art, liner notes, etc, but that wasn't appreciated when record industry/retailers went to the crappy jewelbox).
4. Mainstream music is pretty terrible these days, as the top genres have become so stagnant and boring.. We can only hope we've seen peak hip-hop, a genre that's been stuck for at least a decade and arguably longer). Contemporary country and Pop aren't much more original (if any).
5. Streaming is top 40 radio without the DJ. The only consolation is that video streaming has renewed interest in the all but dead music video art form. We're still a long way from the 80s, but a nice comeback thanks to YouTube.
Same here. Got a turntable for Christmas, spinning Exile On Main Street right now. Sounds so good.
What wovel pointed out is exactly my point. You cant keep on harking back to some mythical golden age of music as if it exists. There was as much good AND bad music 30 to 40 years ago as there is now. And you cant completely dismiss what is popular now as being objectively better than what was popular 40 years ago. Tastes change, so this whole "today's music is much worse than music XXX years ago" argument is pointless.
If vinyl is dead, why are record companies still releasing new music on vinyl?
http://www.amazon.com/Vinyl-Records-Albums-LPs-Eps/b?ie=UTF8&node=372989011
And music sales declined in every format in 2013, except vinyl.
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thats just a way of life, you are just getting older. I am sure my grandmother hated my mothers music and my mother hates my music and my children will hate my music and their children will hate their parents music
I may be old but most of my life i hated top 40 charts music.... Let's face it most of pop music is the equivalent of fast food. There always have been great artists around as are today. You just have to look.
Did Nicki Minaj write that or did someone else?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_(Nicki_Minaj_song)
A lot of the points most of us are trying to say, these so called "artists" don't write any of their own stuff. They are performers and that's it.
Sunk cost, meaning it costs them nearly nothing. And vinyl is still dead. They'd need to move an order of magnitude (or two) greater to be anything but a niche. But, regardless of how dead the format is, I still appreciate how much has been lost with the demise of the record store, record collections, album art, etc. Music has been stripped down to its bones and what's marketed to the masses is soulless and boring. It's not all bad though, it's easier than ever to hear more bands and find good acts, too bad they have almost no impact on anything.
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In terms of the whole music market vinyl sales are just background noise. I like vinyl and it should stay, but we should not suddenly think that there is a revolution or a large scale revival taking place here.
I watch more music these days (UTube…classic rock videos) than I just listen to. And my MP3 collection is so vast I just put it on shuffle and it goes for weeks.
And, there is NOBODY out there (that I am aware of) that I care for and I am not inclined to "dig" for new music to buy. Sadly, because I know there are probably great artists (i.e. young white males doing rock) out there but guys like that are not "PC" right now in the music industry. This is the era of talentless tarts (Taylor Swift is an exception) and gangsta noise.
And, there is NOBODY out there (that I am aware of) that I care for and I am not inclined to "dig" for new music to buy. Sadly, because I know there are probably great artists (i.e. young white males doing rock) out there but guys like that are not "PC" right now in the music industry. This is the era of talentless tarts (Taylor Swift is an exception) and gangsta noise.
Nicki Minaj wrote that song in collaboration with a few other writers. Same was true of a lot of Led Zeppelin songs, some of which were written by others, written by others in collaboration with the band's members or basically stolen from other artists.
Regardless, I'm not sure that I agree with you that a musician should write her songs in order to be called an artist. Is Elvis Presley an artist? What about Luciano Pavarotti? All of those musicians perform songs that were written by others but I doubt that many would not call them significant and important artists of their generation.
But it continues to get worse. Yes, old people will never understand what young people like, but that's not all that's going on today. Music has been stripped down so much. No need for a group, no need for any message (in fact that's bad since someone may protest), no album art, for many acts no videos, no context of an album.
Today we have the pop song. The pop star is still important to some degree, but they come and go faster than ever.
Today it's not a stretch to say Eminem is pretty conceptually deep for mainstream music. There's your art. And, of course, there have long been popular brainless pop-songs, but it's really bland and dumbed down now.
The music industry has turning into a Michael Bay movie. You have what sells, and that's all that matters.
Most musicians on labels aren't really musicians, they are celebrities that sing a little etc
I suspect that iTunes etc are going to begin to lead the push for non labeled artists way more than before. At least I hope so. That was one of my beefs about Ping. It had great potential but then Apple stopped at just including labeled artists and never picked up Lala's feature set. All those little guys and girls that could use some grassroots never got to play.