Who is Getting Hurt in this Music Industry Shift?

It's been hard not to notice some of the major Digg articles over the past week. Nine Inch Nails, Jamiroquai, Madonna and an uncountable number of up and coming artists are all dropping their record labels and encouraging people to "steal" their music!

And why shouldn't they? Think about it. A recording artist is a performer. They started out performing live for audiences and created a name for themselves. The money they made originally was from tours, gigs, sponsorships and creating their own accessories like clothing. Then a record label comes along and informs the performer that they want to promote them and help to produce records and all the artist has to do is give the record label a cut of the profits from the sales of the albums.

Simple enough: the record label is the middle man. They take out the stress of promotion and leave the artist to only worry about performing.

In return for all of this, a larger audience is given the opportunity to experience this artist's performance at the mediocre price of $15-20 for an album or $20-60 for tickets to a show. Everyone is happy, right? Not necessarily.

In the whole equation, there is only one group that does not lose money throughout the whole process and you guessed it: the recording label. The audience loses money no matter what. The artist loses money to the recording label because they are only making a few dollars of the $15-20 for each album because the rest goes to the labels.

Now bring in free promotion through file sharing and P2P networks they may or may not require a subscription and all of a sudden, the record label is cut from the mix. The audience still gets the pleasure of hearing the artist perform at a lower cost per album. The artist is still making a fortune from each song download and raising concert ticket prices.

So what do artists need a recording label for? Studios? No way! Most artists have them in their homes or are mobile on the tour bus. Promotion? Nope! The fans are doing the promoting themselves by downloading and telling friends about the artist through any number of ways. Discovery of new talent? Yeah right! In an age where global access is a few milliseconds away, a new artist has a HUGE number of ways to promote themselves without signing contracts!

Now, the question is whether or not other artists follow suit?

I could be wrong here in that this is the beginning of the end for recording labels and this actually could be the movement toward the downfall of the music industry, but I doubt it! Prove me wrong...please!

Have a great day!

An Online Music Exploration

In today's world, no one has CD's or albums or cassettes or 8-tracks anymore. That would be a waste, right? We have digital music formats like mp3's and wav's and hard drives that seem to be reaching the infinite amount of storage for these formats! Guess what? That's awesome!

Unfortunately, after the Napster breakdown and an increased awareness of copyright laws and protection, users now have to pay for songs they download from the Internet. But like any good American law, there is a loop hole!

As I hope to attend law school after this academic year, I've taken an interest lately in finding some of the programs that allow users to find those loopholes and use them for their own benefit.  My last post is very evident of that with the idea of BitTorrent and easy access to blockbuster movies.

The programs that follow can actually be designated into three groups: programs for users that have a lot of music that they want to access at every computer and programs for users that want to accumulate a lot of music, and lastly a program that does both...kind of.

First, a program for those users who have a ton of music and want it available while they are at work, on vacation or just checking their e-mail from a computer that is not their own.

Personally, I am blessed enough to be dating a wonderful girl who's father happened to attain an external hard drive with more (organized) music than I even knew existed. In turn, I happened to receive a copy of this hard drive as a gift! Unfortunately, I would say it is more than a hassle to try to carry the external hard drive around to listen to the massive variety of music. I was, however, fortunate enough to stumble across an article at Lifehacker that talks about a program that would solve my issues. The program is Anywhere.FM and it is on my list of programs to utilize to the fullest extent. The article explains all that this program can do!

Secondly, the program for those of you who want to create a library and not pay a fortune for it. SpiralFrog is currently in a beta testing program that allows you to download music at no cost to you. I just received confirmation that I am a lucky one to test out the beta and it's great! It's a small, simple download and the database of music is HUGE! Just enter your e-mail address in and hope for an invitation in a week or so.

Warning: make sure you have a big hard drive because there is a lot of music for FREE!

And the last program is called Deezer. I've been using this program for a few days and I love it. This online program allows you to listen to all of your favorite newer songs (1980's until now) without actually downloading them. They are streamed online so you don't have to worry about filling your hard drive (this is great for me!) You must register with Deezer and then let the playlist creation begin! Go nuts!

That's my quick overview of the online music programs that are worth noting! I could be wrong and there could be more! Prove me wrong!

Have a great day!

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