The Death of The Music Industry

Its downright arrogant when you think of it. The way Infinity, Clear Channel and a few others have hijacked radio and turned it into pap thinking we would all just blindly follow along and listen to that watered down junk they broadcast in lock step with each other. You have to wonder if they thought they could shut down the free market and shut down any creative expression.

Well just like corporate publishing got a rude awakening when the internet came along and stole the audience away, the same thing is happening to corporate radio. Its bad news for them but good news for us. The internet and new technologies like Ipods and podcasting and the empowering of the music loving world to basically create “do it yourself” radio is our way of basically “taking our ball and going home.”

No wonder they cry and moan about how the internet had crashed their profits. Here’s a clue corporate radio, start serving the real needs of the music loving public and maybe we will come back. Maybe, but probably not. Because now that we have all the marbles, we might not want to play with you anymore.

You recognize my little quote from the Ramone’s song. Funny how they put that song out so long ago, back when there really was some fun, interesting and creative things happening in radio. In the last seventies and the eighties, radio was the conduit of a virtual tidal wave of exciting music. Looking back is both nostalgic and a bit sad.

Maybe that’s why in the current landscape of radio, nostalgia radio seems to be one of the few formats still holding on. Sure, its not hard to find a radio station that plays ZZ Top, ACDC and Led Zeppelin. And none of us deny the power and genius of that music. Btu when that music first broke, it was the new and the exciting stuff coming from the creative community. All we are asking is to have some venues that give us what is new and exciting today, not just what was avant guard in 1970, 1980 or 1990.

The good news is that there are venues that do provide access to what is new and exciting, right now, not decades ago. Not only is it exciting to turn from the old fashioned venues of radio and seek out the new access points to great music, it is crucial if we are to be able to use those venues to get our music out too.

So what started to trigger the death of the huge studios? Many people would just say the Internet but it’s more specific than that.
Napster and the rise of Peer 2 Peer file sharing into the mainstream audience would set the wheels of change to start turning. Music distribution couldn’t keep up with the speed and ease of the Internet.

Napster’s user base peaked at about 26.4 million users during Feburary of 2001. It was shut down by the ninth circuit court shortly after that but the damage had already been done to the industry. People knew that there was a better, faster way to find music and receive music and all the lawsuits in the world couldn’t keep that a secret.
Napster was just a single use tool though. It lacked the ability for people to discover new music, they had to know what to search for to be able to find it.

Stay tuned…Next up I’ll talk about how the rise of social networking made up for the shortcomings of Napster and the Peer 2 Peer networks.

Now that was a cute song no doubt but it might be better to ask “What Killed Radio?” The radio star we are not all that much worried about. As we will discuss in upcoming weeks, creative music and creative musicians are alive and well thank you very much. You just don’t find them tucked happily in the bowels of the huge corporate music labels any more.

It’s easy to pick one thing that brought down truly innovative radio. The consolidation of radio into the hands of a few corporate giants? Yep – that helped the funeral along. The inability of the big record labels to keep up with a fast changing music world? Yep – that is a HUGE part of it. But there just can be no question – big radio and “air play” no longer drives what is cutting edge in music any more? So where do we find it? Stay tuned. We have a lot to talk about.

If you haven’t heard of the website Purevolume.com you need to bounce over there and start promoting your band!

Purevolume is a website dedicated to promoting recording artists. Each artist has its own profile site which usually includes news, upcoming shows, background information, contact information, and music for free listening and some even allow free downloads.

Purevolume has over 470,000 registered listeners! Reach out to this huge targeted audience and start building up a fanbase.

Welcome to the Death of the Music Industry blog!

Since your here I will assume you know that the music industry has been changing drastically during the past couple of years. No longer are the days of making demo tapes and praying you get signed to a label here to haunt you. Today with the ever expanding technology world you can launch your band into stardom all by yourself.
And i’m here to tell you how to do that. I’ll be reporting on new ways of promoting your band and developments within the music world.

Your success is right around the corner come learn how to find it!