I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that a small number of big acts blend into a generic showbusiness part of the industry through links to TV shows, movies, and gossip mags, while the remaining 98% operate in a cottage industry.

Breaking a big act these days involves a punishing and exhausting schedule of touring and promotion that invariably ends in tears. Touring musicians are different to movies stars in that they have to present their product in person; attempting this on a global scale, with all the attendant travelling and PR is not sustainable, especially when, in business terms, the unique selling point of the act is supposed to be their creative edge. That’s before you factor in the naive and fragile mindset of the types of people who try to become famous in the first place.

In case you missed all the online hoopla, Arcadefire.com has the new single steaming-ish as a taster. Heard to make anything of “The Suburbs” but “Month of May” is a punk/Springsteen belter.

there was an interesting article a few weeks back about beggars group I think it was, in London and how they were actually thriving and selling about 100k of each release with their umbrella of labels, 4AD, XL etc.. but this is a label that had its roots in the late 70s i.e its been established for 30 years. What about labels that have come up in the last 10 years since the genie was let out of the bottle with napster. Is there a relatively new label that is selling this much that doesn’t have stealth funding?

As jim has said in the past for bands like radiohead that were established over 15-20 years by the muscle of a major label, they have a huge fanbase but more recent bands that have come up since are lost in a fractured, balkanised scene where there is great music but the punter just isnt aware of it.

that’s because most people are not aware that music is so cheap. you also have to put things into context – out of the 98,000 albums released last year how many were actually good? How many of the albums would be looked upon in ten years times as classics? the biggest problem this industry has is champion the mediocre – and that’s everyone involved from labels to journalists.

Interestingly enough the market that’s sinking most at the moment is the US.
The UK seems to have generally bottomed out…………..for now anyway.
I think it is fair to say though that most of the news relating to music sales is very dishearting.

That said the endless stream of bad news wont stop me (and many others I presume) from releasing records.
Whether its stupidity or just sheer bloody-mindedness I dunno but fuck it.

Does anybody know if there are any stats on the ratio of purchases to illeagal downloads these days?

For example if i’m in a band that have sold 5,000 albums is there any projected figure on the amount of people who have illeagilly downloaded the record (and hence heard it)??

I think that could give a clearer picture on the venue filler arguement Jim.

The point I was making in the post I lost was that they need to be more discriminating in their signing policy, focus on reducing costs and find new markets.

MDR – I think we’re seeing the first of your points to an increasing degree – the majors now operate more and more like Real Madrid and “buy” in the talent who’ve already built an audience on indies. The reduction of costs is ongoing (as with any business) via decreased headcount, less tour support, cutdown on promo budgets etc. But it’s the “finding new markets” one which will flummox them. The problem is that the agenda setters at the labels have only ever known one way to operate – sign acts, treat ‘em mean and sell the product at the highest price the market will take. Now, that this policy does not produce the same results, they’ve NO IDEA what to do next. They’re looking around at how the indies operate and seeing if they can adopt some of those ideas – and they’re willing to hawk the family silver to any two-bit chancer with an idea which involves various buzzwords (this season’s favourite: “social media strategy”).

colly – if you have acts who can’t sell over 5k albums, they’re unlikely to become acts who can fill the bigger venues worldwide, regardless of the number of music fans out there. After all, a poor-selling album band don’t suddenly become a best-selling live band.