PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Vinyl - WIll it save the record business for artists

@rockstar_not
For the little guy, I agree Vinyl is a costly product. But, lets face it, our CDs are not a large part of the industry revenue only CD baby's bottom line. CD Baby relies on us the little guys. Their cost for vinyl and turn around time are much higher than CD production because they don't make their own vinyl records. They job them out as do other small shops.


Best Buy is selling several record players equipped with USB interfaces as well as analog outputs for less than 90 dollars. An investment most high school or college age kids are happy to pay. They are the ones who have always started music industry trends. The example you site of a 100,000 setup is something I have also observed. People will spend ridiculous amounts of money on stereo equipment to play vinyl. I think that is an incentive for the industry to start pushing the media. Not a deterrent.

Here is a system that certainly is a fad. Or maybe not?

https://www.gramovox.com/products/floati...xXhIaAqIy8P8HAQ

Crazy thing

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! How many people do you think missed it??? (still laughing)

I was waiting until next week to see if I got it last week.

Not me. I'm a "Back to the Future" guy so I will laugh next week when he crashes it.

I know I won't miss it

dga. I am aware of the USB turntables. I bought an AudioTechnica cheap model for my son this past Christmas and as I digitized about 15 of my albums that I hadn't repurchased on CD I was reminded of all of the foibles of vinyl that I've gladly not experienced the last 25+ years.

I guess I don't understand which industry it is that you feel needs to be saved from streaming audio.

"...I was reminded of all of the foibles of vinyl that I've gladly not experienced the last 25+ years."



I'll never forget (and always regret) buying some stupid album treatment called "Sound Guard", which was guaranteed to prevent scratches, etc. Completely ruined several irreplaceable LP's.


Want vinyl gear? Estate sales/Garage sales. I have a Fisher turntable that was top-of-the-line in 1977. Got it for 10 bucks. Plays like a dream.


Regards,

Bob

Just got back from a shopping trip, Barnes and Noble center isle display. Hundreds of new vinyl records. Old and new releases. Evidently someone thinks people are going to replace those irreplaceable LPs. And a stack of AT Bluetooth turntables, at the end of the display with a sign above "Perfect Father's Day Present"

@rockstar_not I'm talking about the Musicians who derive their net worth from the rights to their music. The whole music industry, related manufactured music products,music retailers, media outlets.

I posed the question, Will vinyl save the music industry. Most industry experts DO NOT repeat DO NOT think vinyl is an industry savior. Because the music industry has lots of problems. They all think Vinyl is a fad and willnever generate enough money to turn around a troubled industry. Read these 99 problems with the music industry. Streaming services like spotify and youtube pay very little to the artists who create the media that they profit from.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/02/25/the-music-industry-has-99-problems-and-they-are/

Yes they do, but I also wonder how much "put your favorite artist here" and the respective song writers got from you personally for playing a record you like, be it a 45 or an album, over and over again.

Now, when I'm too lazy and use one of the streaming services to play a song, they get more as if I dug out the vinyl or cd and played this instead.

GHinCH As CD sales and Downloads decline year over year, the system that is in place right now, streaming, does not compensate the artist enough to survive. In the past a recording artist could make quite a good living off of a dozen smash hits, with single and LP record sales, and Radio, TV, airplay. Touring was added revenue, not a necessity to survive. Musicians would retire and sit back and relax while the revenue continued to flow in. For today's artists that is no longer possible.

#9
9. Streaming is rapidly becoming the dominant form of music consumption, though it is now widely viewed as a cashless loss-leader for artists and songwriters.

1-10 of the 99 problems sited in the article above from "Digital Music News."

Recording Devaluation Problems.

1. The value of the music recording is plunging, and has been for more than a decade. Across the board, artists are experiencing serious problems monetizing their audio releases.

2. A decade-long decline in recording revenues has dismantled the label system, once the most reliable form of artist financing. That includes both independent and major labels, once the core of the music industry ecosystem.

3. That introduces fan-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Pledgemusic, and Patreon, all of whom have admirably filled some of that lost financing but haven’t come close to matching the overall funding source. Moreover, crowdfunding success stories like Amanda Palmer are sometimes viewed as anomalies, especially given the initial investment in her career by a major label.

4. Streaming continues to explode, but not enough to compensate for broader declines in physical CDs and paid downloads. The overall result is a music industry revenue decline.

5. Even worse, the technological evolution of formats keeps pushing the value of the recording downward. With every subsequent format, monetization deteriorates: streaming pays less than downloads; downloads paid less than CDs.

6. There is little evidence to suggest that this downfall is being made up by touring, merchandising, or other non-recording activities like ‘experiences’ (see below). In fact, many argue that artists are being forced into unsustainably long tours, or touring virtually non-stop just to survive.

7. Other attempts to make up the lost revenue have fallen short. BandPage, a pioneer in trying to monetize artist ‘experiences’ to help make up for lost recording revenues, was unable to scale that alternate revenue source substantially enough. After many years and considerable investment, BandPage was sold at a heavy loss to YouTube.

8. That introduces a number of problems, including artist burnout and an increased risk of accidents while on the road. According to NYU songwriting professor Mike Errico, the artist injury list is soaring, with Dave Grohl, Sam Smith, Miranda Lambert, Steve Aoki, Little Big Town, Meghan Trainor, Nickelback, the Black Keys and Kelly Clarkson all suffering physical, tour-related setbacks.

9. Streaming is rapidly becoming the dominant form of music consumption, though it is now widely viewed as a cashless loss-leader for artists and songwriters.

10. A big part of the problem is that most consumers now attribute very little value to the recording itself, and most consumption (through YouTube, ad-supported piracy, or BitTorrent) happens at little-to-zero cost to the listener.

Very true.

I started selling music on CDBaby back in 2003, released four CD's through them over the years.

Initially I sold quite a few physical CDs, but that changed rapidly, by 2005 I was selling mostly MP3 downloads, not many people buying physical CD's.

But now with most people having internet on their phones and other devices it is all streams, hardly anyone is buying downloads anymore.

When I check my account info I am making between $0.00087734 and $0.00940758 per stream, spotify, amazon, itunes etc.

At .0008 per stream I need 1,250 streams just to make $1.00!

@blue Attitude That's sad. Today you pay CD Baby $9.95 per song up front for digital distribution You may have gotten that distribution free back in 2003. But, at the rate of return you sited if an artist pays $9.95 the first 12,500 streams are break even streams.

I bought my first vinyl in 1958 when I was twelve years old. An Elvis album for three bucks which was what I earned bagging groceries after school for a week. My mother told me I wasted my money and would never hear from that guy again. I still have the album.

From vinyl to tape to CDs to today's technology I've enjoyed the ride. Today Janice and I stream everything - at home, in the Subaru and when bicycling.

And we pay for it. Streaming does not equate to stealing. In 2003 we had a CD that sold quite well, charted in several countries and allowed us to donate all of the proceeds to cancer research in honor of our best friend and stellar musician Randy Howard (see our website for info about him). The songs were eventually all ripped off and became available all over the net for free. We know what stealing is.

Perhaps when the vinyl thing plays out we'll have an 8-track tape renaissance

Bud

I still can't figure out what part of the industry that vinyl sales actually rescues. The premise that high schoolers are going to give up streaming for vinyl has no basis in reality, that is for the vast majority of them. Particularly if they have to pay $90+ dollars for something that has better audio quality on their phone in their pocket. There is a hipster niche, but everyone has a smartphone.

There is a whole different music industry that I would say has blossomed and we don't talk about it, ironically enough. Home recording. Even home recording on ones phone. More people making music these days. I say that's one giant success just not for record companies.

I've thought about this since I saw the headline, and pardon me for not reading all the posts (early gig today).

People have been making music since at least the Neanderthal days. Professionally? Who knows? At least for many centuries.

For the briefest moment in historical time (about from 1950-2000) it was possible for fewer than 1% of all professional musicians to make a living selling recorded music. For every hit record artist there were hundreds of musicians making a living who never cut a record.

Even in the Pre-Rock era, Sinatra, Miller, Ellington, Crosby, Page (Patti), Clooney, and the others thought of records as promotion for their live shows - and that's where they made their money.

During the 50 year time slice, most one-hit-wonders (or one-CD-wonders) never made a dime on their records.

I know, Motown offered us a deal at 2 cents per record, out of the royalties came inflated recording costs, inflated promotion costs and inflated distribution costs.

Plus they wanted to own our name, be the publishing company for our music (the publisher makes more per record than the artist) and have half the writing credits by adding a name to the copyright who had nothing to do with the song.

Our manager figured we would have to sell a million records before we would break even and not owe Motown money. Motown wouldn't even go for 2.5 cents a record, because they knew that others would do it for 2 or less.

So point number one is with the exception of the lucky few, the recording industry has never been for artists, but for the publishers and record industry. +99% of all professional musicians make a living playing music to a live audience and not from record sales.

OK so as I see it, can vinyl save the recording industry??? I don't think so.

Back in the vinyl/cassette days, radio stations all over the country would advertise, "Tonight at 11L00 PM we will play the new ________ album in its entirety without commercial interruption" and millions of people would sit at 10:58PM with a tape cued up and their finger on the REC button.

So piracy didn't kill the recording industry.

Greed did.

Back in the 45RPM days you could buy a new single for less than a dollar. Basically lunch money. But the record companies sold albums and padded most of them with songs the consumer really didn't care about. LPs made more profit than 45s.

How to make even more money? Make the life cycle of a song even shorter, and go from top40 radio to top10 radio. But that made the music more disposable. A "Chiclets Item" chew it up, spit it out, and dispose of it. It lowered the value of the recording so most people didn't really want to own it anymore.

Then when the CD came out, reducing production costs by about 90% did they pass the savings to the consumer? No, they raised the price. OK we have more disposable music at a higher price. Less incentive to buy.

They hired "The Network" to promote major label recordings, in order to put the indie labels out of business. That worked, but with two results (1) promoting a record costs millions of dollars more than it used to - and "The Network" could make or break a record and (2) without the indie labels, there was less innovation and originality competing for the listener's ears, while the big labels were putting out more of what worked last time.

And at the same time they divided the youth market. From Al Jolson through The Beatles all the young people listened to the same radio station. Pop music was the identity of the generation. Everybody may not have liked Jolson, Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis, Beatles and the others, but they knew when they released a new record and knew the words to their song, because the entire generation listened to the same radio format.

Then came disco, followed by alternative, rap, hiphop, metal, death metal, R&B pop (as different from the old R&B 'race' records), and so on. Everybody heard every new Elvis or Beatles records at the height of their popularity, but how many knew all the words to every Metallica release at the height of their popularity?

So Top40 radio no longer was the identity of an entire generation. No need to own the latest _____ record to be "in with the in crowd", instead the latest phone is what counts.

So IMHO the major record companies killed themselves with greed, they had a good run, but there isn't anything they can do to fix it in the short term - perhaps it can't be fixed at all.

Vinyl isn't going to do it.

On the other hand, it makes no difference to +99% of all professional musicians. We still make our living playing music to a live audience. We'll never get as rich as Paul McCartney, but will will be able to buy our house, go on vacation, and do all the things a small business owner normally does. Without ever making a record.

The biggest obstacle to most musicians is not the failure of the record companies, it's Cable TV. But that's another post entirely.

Insights and incites by Notes

Can vinyl save the recording industry? absolutely. As Notes points out less than 1% of musicians drive record sales. Most musicians over the years survived being on records for an extended period of time doing session work with no recognition. They were but an ingredient of the total product.

All the record companies have to do is create a sales pitch for vinyl that is as effective as the sales campaign that motivated masses of people to pay $1.59 for water that can easily accessed anywhere for free. Create a campaign so effective for records so that the world believes about records the same as it does where the whole world buys the idea that 2nd hand smoke can kill without a single documented death solely attributed to 2nd hand smoke.

It's been shown that such improbable things can and do happen. Besides, it doesn't have to be vinyl. The eight track is just as feasible vehicle as vinyl. May even be easier with the higher quality specs the 8 track is capable of producing over vinyl.

Create a need for vinyl to music to match what bottled water became to drink sales. Simple....

Yep, simple. I don't disagree with what seems like a sarcastic response, but the marketing miracle necessary would already be in place, wouldn't it?

Threw out my small vinyl collection and turntable about eight years ago, which was lying in the corner slowly gathering dust.

Have no wish to start all over again and repeat the same mistake.

But hey I have a collection of DVD's in the same corner now, and come to think of it, they need a good dust down.



Musiclover

Excellent post! This whole recording industry phenomenon was only a tiny slice of music history yet sometimes we look back on it as The Way! Before that people shared their music through performance and teaching. Lots of examples in folk music where no one tried to own the music, rather, they just created it or modified it and passed it along. Then corporate interests took control and directed everything, deciding who would be stars and how frequently they would release new music, etc. I would say it was quite a corrupt system from the beginning!

Then digital arrived and people reverted back to a time where music was shared rather than sold and owned! It should have been super-easy to predict! Didya ever know a smart kid who added a 2nd phone line without paying AT&T...a starving college student who tapped into the cable system to get free TV...a friend of a friend who bought the new album and taped it onto cassettes for all his friends? That is human nature right there and music being digitized signaled the end of the recording industry!


Another brilliant observation! When we were kids we had B&W television with 2 or 3 channels that were barely clear enough to watch. We had one phone and often that was a party line if you lived in the country like I did. We had a radio station that played "our" music for a limited time each day. We had a crappy record player and a small stack of 45s. Of course we had libraries and a few comic books but that was about it!

Compare that to what is available today!

- smartphones
- texting
- cable TV with a thousand channels
- NetFlix and Hulu with every movie and tv series ever
- THE INTERNET with millions of options
- unlimited free music from
--- broadcast radio
--- internet radio
--- "legit" online streaming
--- stolen downloads
--- every aspiring artist in the world (millions) who all want you to buy their music so bad they are willing to give it away (and still no one wants it!)

I do not have enough time left in my life to even listen again to most of my classic rock albums!!! Then I have to Facebook and stream and chat and everything else. How in the world am I ever gonna find time to listen to your new music?

My answer is NO. Vinyl won't save a thing. This horse is so far out of the barn. The only chance anyone has to make a career in music these days is 1) perform gigs like some on this forum do and 2) sell shovels to other aspiring artists!

"...sell shovels to other aspiring artists!"



Have you heard about The Starmaker Machine?


Regards,

Bob

Wow! Them's some expensive shovels!