<story><title>Think piracy is killing the music industry? This chart suggests otherwise</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/07/think-piracy-is-killing-the-music-industry-this-chart-suggests-otherwise/?tid=rssfeed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apalmer</author><text>Are you claiming that music is a dying art form? Really?&lt;p&gt;The music industry is at best a 100 year old historical anomaly compared to the at least 4000 year history of music. The life of musician has pretty much always been extremely unlikely to be financially rewarding. Even at the height of the modern music industry maybe 1 in 1000 aspiring musicians ended up being signed to a major label. Musicians by and large have always made the bulk of their income based on in person performances. The only difference now is music companies now are losing out on record sales and starting to design contracts where artists have to split show and endorsement money with the label as well as record sales.&lt;p&gt;Honestly its a moot point, the technology has changed, and the music industry has to change with it or die. The whole music industry was created by the technology of the record, and will change or die with the advent of easily copyable media.</text></item><item><author>williamcotton</author><text>These articles are pointless. This guy knows nothing about being a professional musician.&lt;p&gt;The investment money is gone. Record labels functioned as venture capital firms. Their bread and butter, the physical audio disc, is no longer. No other entity has yet stepped in to provide mentorship and investment capital for young, bootstrapped musicians.&lt;p&gt;The schedules of musicians do not align with the modern working world. Employers do not look highly on people who take 8 weeks off to tour. In order to make money touring, you have to be pretty well established.&lt;p&gt;Also, unlike software development, there is no &amp;#x27;day job&amp;#x27; that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture. Their only option is are low-paying temp jobs, mainly in the service industry, that they must frequently quit in order to work on their craft.&lt;p&gt;And if concerts and not recorded albums are their craft, they will need to spend lots of time on the road perfecting it. But how? Practice does not make you a good stage performer. And you can&amp;#x27;t play 10 times a month in your home city and expect fans, promoters, or clubs to think nicely af you.&lt;p&gt;Sure, there are still new music artists that emerge, but nowhere in the numbers that they have in the past. It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don&amp;#x27;t see that and in fact argue the opposite, don&amp;#x27;t have any inkling of what is actually going on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CWuestefeld</author><text>Amplifying this point...&lt;p&gt;Even the greatest of musicians through history have had to struggle to survive, it wasn&amp;#x27;t always about rock supergroups skipping across the world in private jets, screaming groupies ready to service their every desire.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of Bach&amp;#x27;s Brandenburg Concertos, which are some of the greatest works by one of the greatest musicians that ever lived. These works were not a platinum hit at the top of Billboard&amp;#x27;s charts. Heck, Bach didn&amp;#x27;t even get &lt;i&gt;paid&lt;/i&gt; for them! These compositions were sent &lt;i&gt;on spec&lt;/i&gt; to the mayor of Brandenburg (hence the name) in the hope of stirring up some sponsorship so Bach could continue his work.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re like me, you picture the hopeful rock star as struggling along, trying to supplement his income by giving guitar lessons to locals. This also describes Beethoven - he was frequently hunting for commissions to keep himself afloat, and had to earn money by giving piano lessons.&lt;p&gt;The idea that musicians should somehow be above all this stuff is a modern invention. Most of the greatest works in history were not done by people enjoying easy financial prospects.</text></comment>
<story><title>Think piracy is killing the music industry? This chart suggests otherwise</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/07/think-piracy-is-killing-the-music-industry-this-chart-suggests-otherwise/?tid=rssfeed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apalmer</author><text>Are you claiming that music is a dying art form? Really?&lt;p&gt;The music industry is at best a 100 year old historical anomaly compared to the at least 4000 year history of music. The life of musician has pretty much always been extremely unlikely to be financially rewarding. Even at the height of the modern music industry maybe 1 in 1000 aspiring musicians ended up being signed to a major label. Musicians by and large have always made the bulk of their income based on in person performances. The only difference now is music companies now are losing out on record sales and starting to design contracts where artists have to split show and endorsement money with the label as well as record sales.&lt;p&gt;Honestly its a moot point, the technology has changed, and the music industry has to change with it or die. The whole music industry was created by the technology of the record, and will change or die with the advent of easily copyable media.</text></item><item><author>williamcotton</author><text>These articles are pointless. This guy knows nothing about being a professional musician.&lt;p&gt;The investment money is gone. Record labels functioned as venture capital firms. Their bread and butter, the physical audio disc, is no longer. No other entity has yet stepped in to provide mentorship and investment capital for young, bootstrapped musicians.&lt;p&gt;The schedules of musicians do not align with the modern working world. Employers do not look highly on people who take 8 weeks off to tour. In order to make money touring, you have to be pretty well established.&lt;p&gt;Also, unlike software development, there is no &amp;#x27;day job&amp;#x27; that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture. Their only option is are low-paying temp jobs, mainly in the service industry, that they must frequently quit in order to work on their craft.&lt;p&gt;And if concerts and not recorded albums are their craft, they will need to spend lots of time on the road perfecting it. But how? Practice does not make you a good stage performer. And you can&amp;#x27;t play 10 times a month in your home city and expect fans, promoters, or clubs to think nicely af you.&lt;p&gt;Sure, there are still new music artists that emerge, but nowhere in the numbers that they have in the past. It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don&amp;#x27;t see that and in fact argue the opposite, don&amp;#x27;t have any inkling of what is actually going on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>williamcotton</author><text>Of course music will still be around. I&amp;#x27;m saying that music as we know it, music that has been made as a result of the industry and technologies of the 20th century, is dying.&lt;p&gt;Claims that it isn&amp;#x27;t are false and misinformed.&lt;p&gt;What is ALWAYS missing from the &amp;quot;new solutions&amp;quot; is the investment in emerging artists.&lt;p&gt;Sure, you see companies like Live Nation&amp;#x2F;Roc Nation setting up these 360 deals. There is definitely some promise to these new approaches, but the investment money is WAY lower than what it was. I don&amp;#x27;t know the figures, I can&amp;#x27;t find the numbers online, but I will talk to people I know in music to see if I can track down some facts and write an article on the subject.&lt;p&gt;My point stands, however. The author of this article doesn&amp;#x27;t know what he&amp;#x27;s talking about and the data he presented is useless and doesn&amp;#x27;t contain enough information to come close to accurately representing the music industry.&lt;p&gt;BTW, there is a great opportunity for &amp;quot;music venture capitalists&amp;quot;.</text></comment>