[DOD]Asprilla;23514204 said:
Ah haha hahaha
The biggest change to the music industry isn't going to be the effects of piracy but the fact that a lot of artists no-longer require expensive production facilities to get a record out, they just need pro-tools on a laptop. As a result someone can arrive at a number of labels with a fully formed product and that puts them in a better bargaining position.
Well now that's not the point I was making and you probably know it. There's plenty of people who don't need any involvement with record companies. My point was that in the past, record labels were a must simply because people with talent had no way of putting together music recordings with a professional finish.
Now technology has moved on so much, a record label isn't required at all for the production at all.
They still, however, require expensive promotion and probably some image management (although this is debatable) and this is what the label invests in. The label puts the investment in for this and for touring, etc and takes a risk on the fact the artist will be successful and make good sales.
Well not really, the ones with the least talent are the ones more likely to require a record label to prop them up and tell everyone how good they are, and sell them as a product.
Because of the number of artists which sink without a trace outweighs the number who take off and actually become profitable the labels form their contracts to ensure a small number of successful artists can support the discovery and promotion of more artists, most of whom won't make it.
Good musicians are ditching the labels, so the type of people using labels now are generally those who produce rubbish music, and they little to nothing anyway.
Piracy directly affects the artists; to say anything else is laughable. Artist contracts are on a percentage basis as are producer deals, photography deals, session musician deals, featured artist deals, etc. Whenever a sale is made or a piece is licenced for a film / advert or a shown on YouTube then everyone gets a percentage. Stealing music takes directly from everyone.
Nope, it's not laughable at all. Artists who make good music don't rely too heavily on mainstream big labels anyway. They make their big money from tours and merchandise sales directly to their fans at shows.
Constantly insisting that piracy is theft doesn't make it theft, no matter how emotional and bent out of shape you get over it.
You just make yourself look stupid with the insistence.
You want to see who takes the biggest share of the pot then look no further than Apple.
The bottom line though is that Apple are just selling the music, an artist would make more going straight to Apple to get their stuff on iTunes than they would going through a record label, who are generally there to rip off as many people as they want.
The artists and labels get virtually nothing form Spotify and the artists I speak to hate it. They know it's the future and are resigned to it but it's driving down price so much that there will no money in releasing music. All releases will simply be promotion for tours.
The future was actually what megaupload were going to do before he got manhandled by the US government.
That in itself shows that record labels aren't required, and that they're just trying their best to cling on to an antiquated system that really isn't needed.
Oh, and the very fact that record labels think it's okay for them to pirate stuff undermines any complaints they have ever for people pirating any of the content they own.
