Metal Reviews

I realized we haven't talked a whole lot about this, but it seems relevant.

Here's mine:
http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/2007/11/27/dig ... derground/

Good article, although I think labels will always exist in one form or another. All it takes is for one band to help release another's album, and bang! there we go again.

We actually went over this briefly in one of my media classes atmy university, with Radiohead being specifically mentioned.

That album they have put up for download on their site has been purchased, if I'm not mistaken, for an average price of $10. I believe it has also sold over a million "copies". That's 10 million fucking dollars without a label getting a share.

This is an almost perfect situation for an established band like Radiohead. They don't have to spend much of anything in the way of promotion beyond saying "hey we have a new album you can get on our website" on their official website and their myspace, and the word spreads.

Even with unkown bands, I thnk this idea could still work. People seem like they would much rather give money directly to the artist, rather than paying 15-20 bucks for a CD knowing that the artist sees only a tiny fraction of that.

Aside from the fact that I like physical copies more than digitial ones, I think what Radiohead has done is a great idea and will hopefully start a new wave that will wash the greedy businessmen out of music.

Indeed, even if they might exist in a different form I think there will still be people who handle the business/promotion side of a band for them... or even just as glorified money lenders.

I'm not really sure what will happen for the music industry, there's pretty good arguments for "omg music will be ruined", either from the promotion/production becoming so easy that there will just be too much music out there or everyone just downloading music for free, but I also think that as long as theres an interest in music people will find a way to make money from it.

I would much rather give my money directly to the artist instead of a quarter of the $20 a cd costs. For this to work on a broad scale, most musicians need to realize that being obscenely rich isn't something that they have a right to just because they are musicians. People like Gene Simmons think that music is only worth making if you become a millionare but whatever happened to making a decent living off music and enjoying the travel and having fun playing music?

We talked about this a lot at my music college last year bout this. Kind of important to us becasue it was a modern music school. Thats a good article man. Nice job.

I think that eventually record labels will go completey unless they change. Theres not much need for them now. Home recording has come on so much that pretty much every band can get something recorded and with the internet, out there to the public. You can see that form all the company owned studios closing. In London now theres no where near the amount of quality studios there were ten years ago. Only the places like Abby Road have a guarenteed future just because of the history and quality of their recordings. It helps to outline the leaps and bounds in the home recording aspect of the mucsic industy, so its not all bad lol. But for the RC's to survive they have to change this attitude and look forward.

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/11/28/univer ... .html#more

I think RC's will move in to promotion and touring much more then they are now. It makes sence as most bands would say thats where most of their money is made. Esecially metal bands, thats why a lot of them tour pretty much all the time (Bodom and Dragonforce are two bands that come to mind for touring a lot). I can see them buying up the larger promotion companys if they haven't already.

I think that while the cd still has a few years (a decade maybe??) left to go, its days are numbered. I gotta mention radiohead here to.

http://www.radioheadstore.com/stick.asp

That is a fucking good idea! People who don't mind about not having a physical object can just download the album as mentioned in jadens article, but for those fans that like to have something to hold they got the usb stick. Once you got the music on your computer you could just use it as a cool looking memory stick. I expcet quite a few other bands with have taken note of that. Just found out that J - Lo (lol) is doing it now

http://stuff.tv/news/j-lo-on-a-memory-s ... fault.aspx

Also if history is anything to go by the cd will soon join its predecessors in the catogory of obsolete. Record, 8 track, tape. Cd will be next.

I do think the big artist will be able to make money in this (the radiohead thing) way. Weather or not they choose a RL to help them with promotion is something we will find out in years to come. Theres already a small list of big artist going without RC.

And noodles, bout there being to much music out there. I think sites like this one have already helped to see the best bands rise to the top. If a band is serious about doing it for a living then they must get good reviews from as many types of media as possible so that they can get people to come to their gigs. No people at your gigs means no money, no carear. So even tho there will be more artists, most of them are gonna be shit and won't get anywhere thanks to sites like this (in all genres) helping music fans find the good music. And the easy of recording + self promotion will be a great thing because the bands thats are good will be able to get their music out there to a potentially global audience. Thats surely a good thing? Downloading is pretty much inevitable, thats why i think RC will move to promotion and touring in a big way. And smaller bands will focus on doing great live shows rather then spending lots a on a top quality recording thats only gonna be d/l for free then listened to on pc speakers. May as well record a cheap album and give it away.

I could go on but thats pretty much my thoughts on the future of the Record Labels. Good thread jaden

Depends what type of RL they're on. Most 'indie' labels are 50-50 splits. That would mean that both the RL and artist first use the money from sales they make to pay off the cost of recording and publicity. Once they're in the black so to speak, its 50-50 between the artist and RL after things like tax and cost of making the cds are taken into account.

Major lables make the artist pay for the cost of recording and promotion themselves, not like in most indies deals. And when the artist is in the black they only get a 3rd of the money make from sales. The reason artists sign up to that is the huge amount of power the majors have when it comes to getting your music heard by the maximum amount of people in the artists 'target audience'. Somthing indie labels traditionally couldn't do. But everything is changing now, very intresting to see what happens in the next few years.

How much does the average rock musician make per year anyway? I know Queens Of The Stone Age has sold a couple million records here in the US. But on Josh Homme's Myspace, he says his annual income is "Less Than $30,000 per year." I don't know if this was a mistake, a joke, or what. But it definitely made me curious since I think everybody assumes that, if you're a rock star, you must make at least $100,000 per year.

Similarly, Greg Graffin said in a recent interview that one of the main reasons he became a college professor is because he wasn't making enough money with Bad Religion to comfortably retire. Even though I'd venture to guess BR has probably also sold millions of records here in the States.

I once read that Kurt Cobain got 10% of the profits (Over here that works out at about £1 from each copy sold. Nevermind sold roughly 10 million, I think =1 million pounds, or just under $2 million) . Considering he got the vast majority of the band's royalties, you have to wonder how much your average rock star makes. I hear touring's where most of the money is made these days.

I also once read Rob Zombie say he didn't earn enough money to live off till Astro Creep 2000 went platinum, such were the costs.

A Compact Disc is just another form of delivery system for the music. It's going to go the way of Cassettes and Vinyl. Unless Record Labels pull their heads out of their asses and start embracing Digital Distribution, it's going to be a rough ride. They don't want to do that becuase then they won't have their quaint little inflated profit margins.

In my humble opinion, the industry as we knew it is dead and gone. Now, either the record companies quickly realize that or they're fucked. Younger generations don't buy much cd's, in fact, buying cd's is, for some of my nephews, not even an option anymore. Two reasons for that : 1) Cd's are too expensive; 2) You can get almost everything for free on the internet. I, myself, still buy a shitload of cd's but I'm from a whole other generation, one that grew with those big round black things with appealing art; one that didn't have the internet to get just whatever they fancy and who, thus, had no other choice but to buy albums and tape-traded with friends. But it's a totally different world, my "community" used to be my school, my neighborhood and people I'd met in concerts. Now it's a worldwide community the labels are facing and your so-desired album is just a click away.

I see two solutions to slow down the inevitable process of the death of the music industry : 1) Cheaper prices for the cd's (but that only works for those who still buy those soon to be obsolete objects); 2) taxing the internet access and computers.