Monster and the future of the music business

September is is almost over and my last ‘rambling’ post was quite piss poor, so I thought I would write a little about the music business and ‘record’ stores that are really starting to piss me off. I was involved in a discussion on Facebook about ‘physical media’ last night and It suddenly hit me that I could have problems to get the next Kiss release ‘Monster’ on the release date like I have with all records since Dynasty came out in 1979. Maybe It will be the first Kiss release I will have to order online to hear It at all.

What is the future of the music business. Or is there a future at all? Will we ever see bands with an incredible fan base as Kiss in the future? I really don’t think so. And who is to blame? My answer would be the ‘music and record business’. And please don’t give me the line about file-sharing and downloading. The rot in the business started a long time before the real decline started on the eve of the Twentieth Century.

In the beginning of the 70′s most records companies was run by people who loved music. And those kind of people built artists. If you didn’t succeed at first, they at least gave you a chance or two before you got the boot out the door. Kiss is a perfect example of this. The band needed three records before they really broke with Alive!, and even if they had not broken big they would have been able to go on with the sales they had up until then. And almost all the bands/artists that are big sellers today are artists who grew up under that climate.

That all changed when the larger record companies started to buy up the smaller labels in the late 70′s and 80′s. And haven gotten even worse after those larger companies have merged and became ‘multimedia’ companies in the late 90′s. If you were a band that didn’t make It at once you were out. The companies started to get filled with ‘suits’ instead of people who cared about music. The companies started to demand return on investment at once. At the same time you had the large music chains killing off most of the independent music stores. Before the music chains became multimedia chains in the late 90′s. And they sold. They sold a LOT!

One of the reasons they sold a lot was because during the same period an new media for music was introduced. We got the CD. Vinyl and tapes was out. Now everything had to be replaced and bought again on CD. I have never seen any figures on sale of back catalog sales. But I know what I myself and others I know buy. So the back catalog sales were a huge percent of the total sales during the 80′s and 90′s. Much larger than in the 70′s because most people also was replacing a lot of vinyl.  And the sales sky rocketed compared to the 70′s.

At the same time also the industry almost stopped ‘creating’ new artists with some longevity in them. Of course there were new artists who had hits. But It was mostly ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ artists. When we came into the Twentieth Century sales suddenly stalled a lot. And the business started to cry out about file-sharing and downloading. And even I will admit that they lost money on downloading. But not in the range that they like to tell the public. When people are able to get ‘things’ for free, most of the stuff they download will be stuff they would not buy if they had to pay for It. In all the years I have read they ‘propaganda’ from the industry I have never seen they once that the blame anything else than downloading and file sharing. At most they will admit that they have been slow adapting to new markets.  They have never understood that there is a limit to how many times you can repack a product and sell It over and over, if your not willing to introduce new quality product. PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT THE PRODUCT!!! Or that you have to use money to build careers of artist over a long time span.

The introduction of other multimedia products in the same stores that sell/sold music haven’t really helped the sales of music much either. When you introduce products that are not music in a music store, of course It will hurt the sales of the product you intended to sell in the first case. Most people will just have a certain amount of money on goods like CD’s, DVDs and games. So you won’t sell much more in total even if you expand on other goods. A good example is how sales of DVDs exploded at the same time as the sale of CD’s decreased. And today the companies are crying because people are not willing to upgrade their DVD collections to Blu-Ray. PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT THE PRODUCT ONCE!!!

What’s worse is that the industry still cries about file-sharing when It seems like they don’t even try to sell the product any more. It’s more or less impossible to find a record you want if you walk into a ‘record shop’ these days. There are of course exceptions. But most have a selection that is really laughable. Here in Norway there are almost just one chain of shops called Platekompaniet that have more or less total domination of the market. And with their last ‘music policy’ that they introduced in the summer 2010 It seemed like they really wanted to kill most sales of CD’s in their shops. At least make It totally uninteresting for someone that is really interested in music to visit their shops. And still the industry complain about how they sell less. And trust me. If your pissed about a company for one thing, you won’t choose their website to order stuff online. So at least in my case most or more or less all of my money ends up outside Norway when I buy CD’s today…

And the sad thing is that the industry seem to think that they in a couple of years they will be able to satisfy the market with just streaming and downloading. They don’t seem to understand that you have a many if not most of the people who buy much music or are collectors really don’t have a large incentive to pay for digital files. Digital files for me are worth very little, and they have no value as a collectible commodity. So I’m not willing to pay as much for them as the business seems to think they are worth today. I would rather buy the CD used on eBay cheaper than on iTunes.

So will I be able to buy ‘Monster’ in the shop when It comes out? Probably. But I don’t think It will be many years til I just have to be satisfied with the collection I already have and have to order most of the new stuff on eBay. I just hope most of the music industry falls flat on It’s back when physical media disappears from the market. After pissing on their customers and recording artists for decades they really don’t deserve to prevail. And don’t get me started on the business policy they really would prefer. That as a customer you should not own anything, but pay for use. And trust me. It will come. Because today’s policy with paying for access won’t earn the business as much money as they want to.

I’m pissed as hell and a really unsatisfied customer. And will probably use a lot less on music in the future, because I really feel the cause is already lost. That was all for today. As the title tells It’s all ramblings. But I hope I have made some sense…