The fall of record industry
October 12th, 2007 by Niklas Rämö // 6 Comments »
I really like how things are turning out now in the music industry. Radiohead has released downloadable version of their newest album In Rainbows without a record label and fans can choose how much they to pay for it, and yes you can even get it for free if you choose so. Inspired by Radiohead’s success many other major level artists such as Jamiroquai, Oasis, Nine Inch Nails and Madonna are now planning to do a similar move and release their next albums direct-to-consumer without record labels’ assistance. I just love to see artists taking care of their own business and that is also the main mission of Not Evil Music - to help all artists to become more independent when it comes down to the business side of music.
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Using social video websites is a great way to promote your music and uploading music videos to YouTube has become somewhat a standard procedure among indie artists and mainstream artists alike. Some of the video sharing websites also offer an affiliate program for video publishers, which means that you can get a percentage of ad revenues or get paid by the number of video views. I haven’t seen so many indie artists trying to leverage this kind of revenue model yet, so why not give it a try? 
A while back I wrote an article “
Rehearsing is essential for every musician and it is something that bands and artists should do at least on a weekly basis, if not on a daily basis. Although the main purpose of rehearsing is improving musical skills, you can take rehearsals to another level by recording them on video. This is a good way to see how you look from the viewer’s perspective and also to keep your fan base more active. 
Gerd Leonhard, co-author of 
People don’t want to buy music anymore. Okay, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but that is the trend music industry is facing more and more often. There are so many alternative ways for music consumers to listen to music they like that buying records and even paying for downloading isn’t appealing anymore. You can go to pandora.com or last.fm to listen to your favorite bands and discover new music, you can download your favorite music from peer-to-peer and BitTorrent networks illegally, and now you can also go to spiralfrog.com and listen to ad supported music for free legally. So, you still want to make living with music? Then don’t try to sell it directly, there are other ways to generate revenue. 
Here is something that escapes my mind: there are many studies concerning how music piracy impacts on the record sales, music industry and economy, but only a few researches about why people engage in the piracy behavior. Why? For example every year International Federation of the Phonographic Industry releases a commercial piracy report that shows piracy statistics, distinguishes problem countries with high level of piracy and explains how these figures affect negatively on the music industry, but there is only little discussion about the reasons that lead to the current state of piracy. It is crucial to study the motives of people when they engage in the piracy behavior. This way we might understand the issue better and influence it much more effectively.