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.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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