RAP ON THE DECLINE?
- Thread starter THE D.U.G.O.U.T
- Start date
I found this article very interesting! Props to you for finding it. Anyways, as to my opinion on things.
To discredit the writers broad assumption that bootlegging is hurting sales, only 4% of the people on the internet in the world have High-Speed access. Paris recently affirmed this in an interview he did with Murder Dog. I know you have been using dialup for a while, so you've seen how long it takes to download music on dialup - do most children have that kind of patience? No. I don't feel that 4% of the people who use the internet, a lot not even downloading music - just browsing, can make a dent that large in sales. It's just a viable scapegoat for lackluster record sales - if anything, it's free promotion and distribution.
Unfortunately, today's Hiphop acts are 'micro-wave emcees', meaning they are the product of someone else. They're puppets who sold their soul to the devil, in exchange for fame and fortune (occasionally). With this type of pull and tug work enviroment, the trend has been increasingly swelling - maybe this is a sign consumers have a brain and aren't falling for these run-of-the-mill average emcees who are nothing but punch and hook? I'd like to think that, but the reason for the downslide in Hiphop sales most likely has to do with the economy itself, which was in a large slump throughout the first quarter.
To discredit the writers broad assumption that bootlegging is hurting sales, only 4% of the people on the internet in the world have High-Speed access. Paris recently affirmed this in an interview he did with Murder Dog. I know you have been using dialup for a while, so you've seen how long it takes to download music on dialup - do most children have that kind of patience? No. I don't feel that 4% of the people who use the internet, a lot not even downloading music - just browsing, can make a dent that large in sales. It's just a viable scapegoat for lackluster record sales - if anything, it's free promotion and distribution.
Unfortunately, today's Hiphop acts are 'micro-wave emcees', meaning they are the product of someone else. They're puppets who sold their soul to the devil, in exchange for fame and fortune (occasionally). With this type of pull and tug work enviroment, the trend has been increasingly swelling - maybe this is a sign consumers have a brain and aren't falling for these run-of-the-mill average emcees who are nothing but punch and hook? I'd like to think that, but the reason for the downslide in Hiphop sales most likely has to do with the economy itself, which was in a large slump throughout the first quarter.
I totally disagree with this. Rap concerts have never matured to rival the genre's record sales because of concert venues and promoters discriminating against hip hop and saying it is "violent" and if a fight breaks out they won't make any money or some bullshit. But if you go to a hip hop concert and a fight breaks out they imediately turn on the house lights and kick everyone out, yet if you attend a concert of any other genre of music (usually attended by predominatly white people) if there is a fight they escort out the fighting parties and keep the show going. I have noticed this happens at hip hop shows attended by predominately white kids too. I can think of tons of artists with plenty of staying power, because they are indeed artists and not some pop flash on TRL. But they are often the ones you never see on nation wide tours.
GameRecGame made the point about high speed internet service that i totally agree with. But there is another part to this i would like to mention. Some of the blame needs to be put on the bullshit that is being put out. I for one don't trust most of the music that comes out these days so i listen to the album first on the net to see if it is worth buying. Alot of the records that have been comin out have like 3 hot tracks or singles that get all the radio play for the album but then there is like 17 tracks of bullshit and interludes and skits. No one wants that crap. If they would make an album with 12 tracks of hot songs people would buy the shit, but if you put out weak albums people won't buy it. As stupid as consumers are in this country they aren't retarded. If they get burned by an artist or a label a couple times when they get their albums they aren't gunna buy them anymore. They will turn to the net first or just stop buying all together. Put out full albums of quality music and people will buy it. Keep droping an EP pumped full of filler to make it an LP and people will stop buyin your shit and will go burn the EP worth of music from the album.
GameRecGame made the point about high speed internet service that i totally agree with. But there is another part to this i would like to mention. Some of the blame needs to be put on the bullshit that is being put out. I for one don't trust most of the music that comes out these days so i listen to the album first on the net to see if it is worth buying. Alot of the records that have been comin out have like 3 hot tracks or singles that get all the radio play for the album but then there is like 17 tracks of bullshit and interludes and skits. No one wants that crap. If they would make an album with 12 tracks of hot songs people would buy the shit, but if you put out weak albums people won't buy it. As stupid as consumers are in this country they aren't retarded. If they get burned by an artist or a label a couple times when they get their albums they aren't gunna buy them anymore. They will turn to the net first or just stop buying all together. Put out full albums of quality music and people will buy it. Keep droping an EP pumped full of filler to make it an LP and people will stop buyin your shit and will go burn the EP worth of music from the album.
4 percent of the world with high speed connection is still alot of people... how many people in the world have the internet? its gotta be millions if not over a billion... so 4% of that is huge... all you need is 1 person in each town... and he can bootleg enough CDs to go around...
I was in Mexico for spring break... bootlegging out there is crazy... there is all kind of shops on every block selling 3 cd-rs full of music for 100 pesos... which is a lil over 10 dollars... out there people dont make alot of money... so spending 10 on 3 cds full of music they like is better that spending 10 on a cd they might only like 2 or 3 songs... the average wage out there is like 50-100 pesos daily... about 5-10 dollars... so I cant be mad at people buying the CDRs... I know this has to be happening in alot of countries...
As far as the states go... there is enough money going around that we can all buy real CDs... but then again there is also alot more music to choose from... and we cant get all the albums... We just need more balance... and have to spend a lil more...
I love music and im a collector so I buy real CDs... if I hear a song and I like it... im getting the album... I hate CDrs... but i do make myself a lil CDR mix from my collection here and there so having a cd burner is a must for me... I also have downloaded alot of old rare songs I cant find in the stores... audioglaxy and napster were also good tools... its just people abused them...
I was in Mexico for spring break... bootlegging out there is crazy... there is all kind of shops on every block selling 3 cd-rs full of music for 100 pesos... which is a lil over 10 dollars... out there people dont make alot of money... so spending 10 on 3 cds full of music they like is better that spending 10 on a cd they might only like 2 or 3 songs... the average wage out there is like 50-100 pesos daily... about 5-10 dollars... so I cant be mad at people buying the CDRs... I know this has to be happening in alot of countries...
As far as the states go... there is enough money going around that we can all buy real CDs... but then again there is also alot more music to choose from... and we cant get all the albums... We just need more balance... and have to spend a lil more...
I love music and im a collector so I buy real CDs... if I hear a song and I like it... im getting the album... I hate CDrs... but i do make myself a lil CDR mix from my collection here and there so having a cd burner is a must for me... I also have downloaded alot of old rare songs I cant find in the stores... audioglaxy and napster were also good tools... its just people abused them...
Gone are the days of making any serious money on the Indi tip....
Those were the days though...............Underground rap will always be around but as far as making any money off it...
I don't see it anymore...I wish.........you have to go major!
That's reality! I grew up on bay rap.....but i'm getting older and
I ain't feeling it as much.....maybe that's where the decline is...
Those were the days though...............Underground rap will always be around but as far as making any money off it...
I don't see it anymore...I wish.........you have to go major!
That's reality! I grew up on bay rap.....but i'm getting older and
I ain't feeling it as much.....maybe that's where the decline is...
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069732
moneybox
Hit Charade
The music industry's self-inflicted wounds.
By Mark Jenkins
Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 8:19 AM PT
2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it's not going away. The recorded-music industry's first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year's stars. Britney Spears' latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There's also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels' very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.
In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA's assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.
The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: "Home taping is killing music." The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, "C30, C60, C90, Go!''
By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era's backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of 'N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.
In addition to cassettes, late-'70s industry apologists blamed video games for undercutting record sales. There may have been something to that, and the biz faces even more multimedia rivals today: cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs, as well as much more sophisticated video games. Perhaps more important, younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the '60s and '70s, when rock was rationed, semi-subterranean, and generation-specific. Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno, yet in general rock today defines parents as much as (or more than) their kids.
The major labels have snubbed older music fans in recent years, yet over-40s now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992, according to the RIAA's 2001 annual consumer profile. Unfortunately for the majors, the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing. These consumers help support the many smaller labels that market alt-rock, world music, new age, reissues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, post-minimalism, and other niche genres.
Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don't develop strong loyalties. They're less likely to investigate a breakthrough act's previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.
This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.
Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar's latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.
In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren't yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn't even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn't an issue anymore.
This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.
In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don't want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels' dwindling empires.
moneybox
Hit Charade
The music industry's self-inflicted wounds.
By Mark Jenkins
Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 8:19 AM PT
2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it's not going away. The recorded-music industry's first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year's stars. Britney Spears' latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There's also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels' very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.
In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA's assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.
The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: "Home taping is killing music." The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, "C30, C60, C90, Go!''
By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era's backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of 'N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.
In addition to cassettes, late-'70s industry apologists blamed video games for undercutting record sales. There may have been something to that, and the biz faces even more multimedia rivals today: cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs, as well as much more sophisticated video games. Perhaps more important, younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the '60s and '70s, when rock was rationed, semi-subterranean, and generation-specific. Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno, yet in general rock today defines parents as much as (or more than) their kids.
The major labels have snubbed older music fans in recent years, yet over-40s now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992, according to the RIAA's 2001 annual consumer profile. Unfortunately for the majors, the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing. These consumers help support the many smaller labels that market alt-rock, world music, new age, reissues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, post-minimalism, and other niche genres.
Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don't develop strong loyalties. They're less likely to investigate a breakthrough act's previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.
This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.
Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar's latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.
In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren't yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn't even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn't an issue anymore.
This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.
In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don't want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels' dwindling empires.
one of the biggest problems is to many amatures putting out sorry product, thats the thing that bothers me the most,its hard to go to a store and pick up an inde album,
if its gonna come back to the bay then its gonna be about ten years or so rhe way things are going, too many kids with no skills or money or production ,im done with music except for mastering its time to move on to makeing movies!
if its gonna come back to the bay then its gonna be about ten years or so rhe way things are going, too many kids with no skills or money or production ,im done with music except for mastering its time to move on to makeing movies!