will find ways to continue to make money with music.
But I'm fearing it'll become even more difficult for small label to survive.

half the kids in America NEVER buy albums from record stores, anymore. Saving grace is that iTunes sales are up.

oR's amazing tips on saving the music industry: Fuck U2 and Britney Spears. But for indie artists methinks you should buy the whole album (or download) not just the one song you like. I think DiSers do that mostly, but most kids are into the singles bit. One look at the most downloaded stuff on iTunes confirms this.

I'd never pay more than a tenner for an album, or more than £3 for a 7". People will always download, and no doubt it's massively exploited, but if it was more affordable more people would buy it.

getting punished IMHO. There are bands that would never be known outside of their locality, but now they can pretty much tour the world, and have some fans already there waiting to see them. These people will bring their friends, who will buy a ticket, maybe a t-shirt, maybe a CD, and the next time around those friends will tell their friends... <repeat>

I think the labels are the ones that are suffering, but a lot of artists I listen to are bringing their own stuff out, or are a group of artists who come together to put out their own records.

That being said, the small labels are still getting people buying their stuff, and in some cases I would imagine that they are getting more sales nowadays than they were in the past. I can't imagine a few labels selling to more than people in their area, but now they are having to set up paypal accounts to meet the interest overseas.

I think it's the mid size and large record companies that are feeling the pinch more than the little ones.

Just my opinion though!

the shit practises of the big labels are. hooray!

from a hit based industry to one based on a smaller number of sales for each artist/release based over a longer time period and across a larger spectrum as people have immediate access to a much wider choice these days. There's a really interesting book on it called The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

I think it's a good thing. It's levelled the playing the field somewhat but this certainly isn't the death of the majors, which are morphing into 'Entertainment' empires instead - notice they all have ties with movie studios, etc. There's always gonna be music and there's always going to be a music industry from which money can and will be made.

As for people who get all their music for free illegally - fair play, they can listen to it, but you don't 'own' anything. There'll always be a large number of music fans who actually want to build a tangible collection so physical releases aren't going to die completely anytime soon. These people that download for free might go to a gig and/or buy a t-shirt if they like it and as a consequence the live scene's healthier than ever - look at the enormous amount of festivals around, for example.

more money has been spent on singles in the last year than ever before and the digital music business accounts for more trade than traditional stores.
Its a revolution not a death.
Just give it a change to work all the niggles of piracy out and we'll be laughing in 5 years time.

ive always though buisnesses had to adapt to changes in the world

we need to change copyright law, and that's that. Apart from the obvious problems of people claiming "I sung that!", a musician genearlly can only benefit from people hearing their music, whereas a record label is destined to lose out on currently unlawful downloads (not illegal unless you start selling them on your dodgy little market stall etc) because their business is all about a specific product, i.e a record/cd- a hard copy. Digital formats have changed everything because all of a sudden, you don't need that middle man to provide the music. Record labels are still stuck on their original concept of selling a thing however, and as such we have iTunes et al using the old out-dated tactics of the record industry to sell downloads.

Music will become even more polarised between:

a) huge acts (robbie Williams) who will be on such record labels as survive because merchandising, tickets for huge venues etc etc will still make them fincially viable even if absolutely no-one 'buys' their albums.

and

b) the indie community who will make music as amateurs (or most as semi-professionals who live of (normally tiny) gig receipts.

I think the days of bands who occupy the middle ground could be over. DiScuss.

home taping is killing music!

its not.... it never did and it never will. it does however impede a small handful of suits from generating that extra car in the garage.

shame.... :o(

here - http://newmusicstrategies.com/

The guy is a music lecturer and the aim of his 'blog' site is to help people get their heads round what's going on in the industry, good stuff.

I wouldn't have to steal them.

get pirated a hell of a lot and still sell extremely well. the last shins album, the last tv on the radio album, the last two modest mouse albums and sufjan's illnois all got leaked months in advance and still sold very well (the shins and modest mouse especially). and, at the risk of stereotyping, the people who buy these records are generally the kind of people who are the most likely to be downloading entire albums (smart, "hip" 16-35 year olds)

(this is really in response to the earlier post suggesting a polarized huge band/tiny band future, im just posting it at the bottom because it's more likely to get read that way)

ALOT about buying music when I first got to uni. I remember falling out with some people because they used to download illegally. I would argue with them about why its wrong but no one gave a shit.

Then, as I've gone through uni, inevitably I've found myself with only just enough money for food and drink. In second year, because of my morals, I ended up hearing very few new albums.

This started to piss me off, and so here I am in third year. Fewer morals but more albums and more passion for music.

Pretty standard student excuse me thinks. I deffo will buy albums/vinyls etc when I have a job.

The End.

that's where bands have always made more money anyway. Isn't Madonna's new "label" more of a touring company than a record label? She has the right idea.

is the sheer fanaticism of a large proportion of 'music fans' about downloading the latest leak. Some of the threads on here are a pretty good example of that - it becomes less about the music and more about the sheer greedy thrill of collecting leaked albums regardless of who it's by. I'd be suprised if many of these translated into sales or tickets sold at all.