No one wants to pay for music any more:
... At least if they can help it. Jeez, it's bad enough paying for software. Just think of all your overheads - new hard drive: check - new laptop/tablet: check - new iPhoney with super duper minutes to all your best pals: check. What is a girl gonna do?
Certainly not pay for any fucking music. Software, ok, if you have to, but in the immortal words of the good Ian Paisley: NEVER! For music. No.
Not even a fiver?
NEVER!
A year?
Ney, Ney and Thrice Ney!
Sorry, the good Reverend has seemed to morph into the good Frankie. It's all good.
The Spotify model is not working and it won't ever work. It will fold in a year or three. It's being propped up by the majors, and when I say 'props', we aren't talking Westwood here. Then again, when I say 'majors', I probably should have said 'minors'.
Crisis all around. The majors were good for one thing. Not anymore. Now they are just being spiteful, what is left of them. We need them, but they are too insulted and dumb to take a hint. No, they will just keep crashing and burning. They missed a trick. Or two.
They had the cash and the contacts to create and invest in major infrastructure. They didn't. That boat has sailed. It ain't coming back. So, we all know where it went wrong. How to put it right?
Spotify will fail. It is contemptible. It is hated by artists and musicians and anyone that needs to pay the rent. Shit, at least before you could take your chances with a big major and IF you did hit it big, it might not have been mansions and swimming pools, but maybe a nice house/car. Allowing you to carry on crafting your art. It's all been sabotaged. Does no one else see a correlation between crap music and the loss of control from the major record industry? Honestly, if this is Rock 'n' Roll, I want my old job back. That was paraphrasing the Saw Doctors there.
I think I might be off on a bit of a rant.
Don't stop me know!
I'm having such a good time!
I'm.. never mind..
Where were we? Ah yes, I was ranting, you were humouring me.
The good days are gone and they aren't coming back.
The future is not what they said it would be.
But still, more and more money ploughed in. Debt grows deeper. Technology makes it simpler and faster to share music files. New generations don't even see it as a bad thing. They demand it even. With their bad haircuts and bad taste. It would be easy to beat on them. They aren't all as dumb as they seem.
Let's follow this flow chart through to the next say five/ten years. Where do you think we will be then? How many Ed fucking Sheridan records do you think the world can take?
The point is, no one cares anymore. This might take a while to register. But it will hit home in a big way in the next few years. Nobody cares. Music is not music anymore, and I am heartened by true music lovers that say: All music is crap these days. Because it is. And they talk about all the good stuff (that is even happening today, but is not mass market enough to make a difference). So I believe them.
It is just about accountants now (when was it never just about accountants and lawyers, I hear your cry?).
I am really sticking my neck out here and I expect it to be swiftly and violently chopped off. I'm hoping not, but I fear the worst.
There is a back catalogue of music that is listenable before the digital limiter/maximiser was invented. And too many people have too much money vested in maintaing that. The rest will just keep on fleecing the sheeple.
Fuck me. An Ian Paisley quote. Frankie Howerd. And bleedin' Gurdjieff thrown into the loop too.
Can't ask fairer than that.
Just be thankful I did not quote that wanker Thom Yorke (even if he technically is on our side coz he doesn't like Spotify very much either, but not because it doesn't take his music to a wider audience, but because he doesn't get as big a slice of the cake as he used to when he joined the music industry when it was in its last glory days, and he was getting paid in full like a mofo - ok, he doesn't get paid at all now, but still, shut up Thom boy!)
This rant may not be my finest hour. But, as culture and society sink into oblivion, I just felt I had to say something. Even if none of it makes sense.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, any ole fule with an inerwebnitz connection can call up the youtubers and get anything they want, faster than a mole can be whacked. And download it to their hd/usb stick/iPhoney for posterity. For free. And youtebntizz just loves this. Keeps on selling the advertising, cross fertilizing the collateral maintained, then selling that again. And you all feel so smug about getting a little naughty something for nothing.
Even if it was just the vids that have a 100,000 hits - not uncommon - a fraction of that payed to an artist could mean the difference of paying the rent for the month or not. No small matter, when the matter at hand is paying the rent for the month. But too much is being made off too many. Google/youtube will never sort out a micro payment system. They will keep on infringing copyright with their system. And we will all dumbly think that we are reaping the benefits, when it is just the whirlwind.
All I know is, this system will not be changing in our immediate lifetime. It is entrenched enough now that I feel I can make that assertion. There is too much work out there by too many people to be exploited, a fatter goose to be plucked you will not find. And to even begin paying what is due to those it is due to, well that is just not on, just like giving power to people by giving them a vote that can change things. That is never done.
Too much easy money to be made from too many dumb people.
Spotify? A distraction.
I know not of one distribution mechanism in these wonderful days of the internet that even three musicians/songwriters/producers can agree on.
That last statement was a bit too Frankie Howerd for my liking.
I think I'll stop there.
(Sorry about the spelling in this instance, but why worry about the style when the content was so lacking, eh?)