The future of the Music industry

[Acsii]

Howdy all. I was scrolling through the internet, as I do, after I got back from the studio yesterday and thought to myself. Where is the music industry leading to? Is it leading to it's despise or has it not yet reached it's climax?

So today I'm going to start this thread and see what others might think. THe first thing that always comes to mind is how the definition of Popular music has changed. If I was to say Pop music to someone, the average person wouldn't know that it used to mean Popular music and all they think about is Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, One Direction. How ever Pop music used to be Rock 'n' Roll it used to be Grunge, Punk, Early Electronica. Times change. Now I'm not going to say that the music industry is dying just because I don't like current day Pop music, but more if you analyse pop music (the stuff with lyrics) most of them have very brief and barely in depth lyrics, however yes some do have in depth lyrics that tell a story. And if you look at the instrumental side, quite a few will have a simple beat playing with a simple bass and a simple lead on top, now you could argue that this is a method to draw more attention to the lyrics, but what about the instrumental breaks... In the end the music industry is plummeting however this has happened before, and the industry built itself up again, hopefully we can do it again

Anyway that ends my rant. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this matter. I'll be sticking around to discuss stuff.
Cheers

[Fimbulin]

Piracy is ruining many sound designer's and sound recorder's jobs, because people aren't paying them for their work and claim they "would not buy it anyways..."

*pulls hair* an acquaintance of mine emailed the top torrent websites to ask them to take his kontakt library down. They reported over 20,000 downloads over the past three months- and only 150 people bought it legitimately- barely covering the production cost. He downright said he quit and I don't blame him. This is just one example of how piracy affects the music industry.

Think about it. These kids that make music without buying their software are riding on the coattails of the people who do purchase. If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, or if you complain about prices, then maybe music production isn't the right thing for you.
/rant

Theory wise, pop music is built on hooks. What was used in classical music for emphasis points and transitions is the ONLY THING we hear in pop. That makes what would be the best parts get repeated and boring fast. Movie music is getting better, but I don't know how soon it will peak or if it already has.

[Stu Beef]

Although music INDUSTRY is in the thread title, I believe the topic of discussion you really want is more along the lines of this recent thread: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6049


I would like to continue the conversation though; I feel like people ignore that there is plenty of innovation occurring out of the public eye, and it would be nice to discuss what microscopic trends we think will eventually make their way into the mainstream. I'm not exactly a connoisseur on that level, but somebody somewhere has to be!

[Acsii]

on the note of piracy it seems that a lot of places are bumping their prices up so they can pay for the cost to maintain the studio through a smaller amount of clients

[itroitnyah]

Yeah, generally people like Beiber and One Direction get richer than the really good artists like document one or flux because swagfags don't know how to pirate music, I guess But yeah, I think that it is quite a shame how pirating software has become so popular. The good people at music deserve money as well, and the people who design libraries for kontakt or make their own software and synths deserve to get the money for their effort as well. Which is why I'll be paying for Newtone (not implying anything here) once I get the money. And if I ever get rich, I'll find people who make software that's always getting pirated and give them a bunch of money just for fun, lol.

inb4 this thread turns into a discussion about pirating, genres like dubstep, dnb, house, and other nonstream genres have plenty of beauty in them, we can just blame the music industry for promoting the genres that don't.

[Freewave]

Well it's only a thread about pirating if you detour it into that which it easily appears to be. And yes i think pirating is breaking the door down so that people can make music literally for free and people can download it for free. Last time i checked (except for the top 5% who are now wanting to make something back) brony music is based on non-label, free releases, and most likely made off pirated music. While it's great that people are thinking about the repercussions of pirating to companies, on the flip side of that piracy is often a reaction to high prices ($15 cd prices, exceptionally high software prices). I'm not sure the answer is to continue to raise prices and count on those that are doing the honest path. I think companies need to take a more realistic path and make the costs low enough to be still of value. Ultimately if you are going to make money OFF of music you need to be paying for your tools.

I haven't see a whole lot of changes in the last 2 years like we saw in the last decade tbh in terms of how we get and make music but here's a list of all that led up to where we currently are.
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScient ... _get_music
Definitely the 2000's were a huge change and shift due to all these factors^

[Navron]

And if you're the one that invents a new style nobody has heard before, people will only respect you until your style becomes mainstream, and then they will hate you.

[Nine Volt]

And if you're the one that invents a new style nobody has heard before, people will only respect you until your style becomes mainstream, and then they will hate you.

*cough*Skrillex*cough*

[Nine Volt]

-

[Captain Ironhelm]

I dunno...I really like Skrillex.
I hate the people who think they know everything about dubstep because they bought Bangerang on iTunes.

*Bangarang.

anyway. . . pop music won't crash, because I'm pretty sure people will always like what the big boys decide to put out for them, been going for many years. If people stop caring, then good, maybe they'll broaden their musical horizons.

[Peak Freak]

Music industry is dead since over 10 years, apparently it cannot sink lower, so it is slowly rising up again. After all the Skrillex EDM wubwubwub stuff comes singer-songwriters with their straw hats. Then the 80s will come back.

[Nine Volt]

--

[Captain Ironhelm]

Then the 80s will come back.

OH DEAR GOD PLEASE NO
:3

actually this would be amazing haha

[Acsii]

Then the 80s will come back.

OH DEAR GOD PLEASE NO
:3

actually this would be amazing haha

I would die if this happened

[Applejinx]

Most of my pro friends are all freaking out over pirating for like the last decade, some of them even closing up shop and quitting- I'm not talking software or Kontakt pirating, these guys mean regular mp3s! They really cling to a world where direct access to the sounds is supposed to come at a price. I think costless duplicating of purely virtual audio files changed that game quite a lot. It's sort of like if you had to pay for the letter E, and now everybody just plain uses them all the tim

Sorry, didn't pay my E bill and it ran out

Wubs are clearly the new electric guitar- there's a commonality to a lot of these new synth things. Sounds are made through recombining, sampling, layering, more than they ever were- and the WAY sounds layer, has become a thing. Little details in tempo matter in genres- dance/body music takes on interesting new meanings when rather than having to specialize in playing an instrument, you program it so it's HOW you program it and the way you make it hit/swing/slam/etc and the pace at which you work the dancers. Some of the realities of this are just the same as they used to be when you had to learn to play a bass line that grooved or whatever, but electronic musicians have to basically comprehend ALL the things about feel that performers used to learn, only without training their bodies to do all those complicated motions and string-twiddlings and coordinated drum-hittings. The ideas are the same but expression is just telling the samples what you want them to do, and doctoring them to do it.

There's also the 'long tail': there's always a place for the big hit popular song, but folks dive into obscurities and can find them more than they used to. The world is too big to make all the cult things be mainstream. We've got to develop ways to connect people with the weird stuff, let them find things outside the mainstream without MAKING that stuff be the mainstream (which will never work). The average taste of the widest mass audience is always more lame than you want it to be, and follows certain rules. Some of the rules stay pretty consistent...

[DrSorkenstein]

In all seriousness I think we've just been riding an EDM trend for a while. Over the past 10 years or so music has become more electronic and some of the "club music" has moved into the charts. We'll probably see some new trend emerge eventually and take music in a completely different direction for a few years while everyone tries to make songs that fit the trendstarting genre.

Wubs are clearly the new electric guitar- there's a commonality to a lot of these new synth things.

This is really a great comparison. The guitar turned into a legend with the emerging rock n' roll, hard rock and heavy metal throughout the 50s-80s. Think about the abundance of metal bands in the 80s and it's not hard to see similarities to today's oversaturated EDM market.

[Applejinx]

Well, besides that- when distorted electric guitar became a thing, it never went back. That sound is everywhere now, in different forms. Wubs themselves do a similar functional thing to the heavy guitar, in a mix. So 'heavy synth' is a permanent fixture now for the new non-instrumentalist music: newer stuff might displace it or force it to alter, but the essence of it will remain just as heavy guitar remains. It's all methods of filling a LOT of sonic space, really...

[A2Z]

Applejinx pretty much has it spot on me thinks.

The trending nature of mainstream music will always be over saturated with stuff that people who don't commonly listen to mainstream do not like. When a certain kind of music garners lots of hits and purchases off iTunes and other sites, it's no wonder mainstream music will swing in that direction so radio can get more listeners, advertisers will get more spotlight, and record companies can acquire more buyers. Go where the money flows, so to speak.

Piracy does play a role in why the music industry is faltering. It is an obvious formula of loss of profit from time and money spent on production, and I can see why a lot of investors and developers are backing out. However, as we've seen so far very little is being accomplished to combat this. iTunes/Bandcamp/etc make a great leap in moving away from physical CD costs to more user-friendly and convenient ways of buyers getting spend their money on the music they want to hear, but this still does little to recover from the losses incurred. There are many potential solutions, and I have a few ideas of my own, all with their own flawed logic and what have you but these are just my ideas:

1) Lowering production costs can help satisfy the tipping point between red and black ink on your budget ledger. A lot of really cheap hardware/software alternatives are available on the market to get really close to the same "studio quality" results from significantly more expensive brands. I think a lot of artists/producers have what I think is the false idea it that it takes thousands of dollars and countless man hours to make anything worth a damn in the industry. Truth be told, this will indeed probably make a nice sounding track, but I have heard some really nice mixes from programs and hardware people generally call "crappy, low-grade, amateur". When you sit someone down in front of a program that they know how to work really well and give them a little time and breathing room, at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you used to make the track as long as it sounds good hitting your ears. That's another quick note I'd like to bring up. With the rise of simpler, more effecient mastering tools in the DAWs we use and overall ease of access to them (ironically through piracy), I don't see the need for 50+ people to work on an album. There are plenty of one-man artists pulling the whole weight of their production and being successful at it. Though this will be a sad result for recording engineers and mastering artists, it's just the way of business. I know I'm leaving out the ever important marketing side of music, but I think you get the idea.

2) To make this not as long as the last, let me just say it's ease of access. I think a lot of people don't buy music/software/etc. a lot because it's either really hard to obtain, or it's unreasonable for the price. It's just easier to do a Pirate Bay search and get what you want. Also some people just want to have a full product to play with it, but not necessarily spend a lot of money for something their not going to be making a profit off of (hint: reason why I never sell my music). The real problem with this would be getting the company to put faith in the potential clients to come back and purchase the full product. However, by making the product more accessible it can help make the buyer not search so hard for what they want and half to go through complicated license agreements. This might be why Steam is such a popular method of delivering game content to interested consumers. Just a thought.

There is a lot more stuff I could go over, but a lot off people reading this probably went "tl;dr", which I don't blame them. Also it's 6:40am and I'm tired. Not a good excuse, but maybe I'll follow up later.

[Strezzkev]

Oh the music industry...here comes my rant
Basically You could watch the change it made around 2008? I remember listening to the radio, and it was that party hip-hop things like "Apple bottom jeans", then groups like 303 came around, cobra starship's one hit wonder "good girls go bad". suddenly the producers for major labels take a change of things discovering house-style music is worth while, so katy perry and lady gaga get their deals and then david guetta gets renowned. it all turned so fast, soon flo rida is just taking house songs and rapping to them, Maroon 5 gets a producer and you can't even tell if there's a guitar in their songs. Now Universal records has swallowed up EMI, probably the largest electronic record company, leaving all mainstream house in all control to the "Big three", Unversal, Sony, and Warner... basically I find that anyone signed onto these labels, not actually producing their own music, this saddens me,

now Whenever I find actual musical talent the songs mean much more to me, I still have faith in deadmau5, adam young aka "owl city", and skirllex, though among the mainstream, they've held close to their own style of music and left the creativity to themselves. which is why i quickly fell in love with this site, everyone has such a different style, different interpretations. and for that I thank you

I haven't been really listening to much mainstream for months, but I have been noticing the dubstep sounds in television advertisements, I'm kind of proud for dubstep, such a unique style of EDM made it big. not just to adrenaline raged college kids and teens, but to the WORLD!!!!!!!

heh, but in all reality, I see house n' wobbles mixing with mainstream hip-hop for a good long while, who knows what we'll get next o.0

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Here's my rule for the modern music industry.

"Hey Anthony!"

"yeah?"

"check out this HUGE NEW HIT"

"is it from Sony Records/Universal Records/That other one I can't remember the name of?"

"yeah!"

"go away now"

I've never had much faith in big record releases, it was the reason I never listened to music until I was 14. First it was dull, repetative 'punk' rock, then dull, repetative hip hop and now it's dull, repetative house. Labels like OWLSA and Mau5trap are a saving grace to the music industry, because they don't have the "big faces" signed to them. They have PRODUCERS, not faces and image-based bullshit.

It saddens me to think how much work producers put into pop tracks and how little recognition they get for it. It all just goes to whoever happens to be singing. All I have to say is that, on this planet, good singing voices are a dime a dozen. They are not special. Take a look at Eurobeat/Oddesy; he can sing, thats not very special, but he makes his own goddamn tracks, and THAT is what is special about him. The singing, in my eyes, is completely secondary.

But even though it is secondary, it is necesary to the structure of a song (provided that said song is intended to have lyrics). But I tend to lean towards the non-lyrical side of music. I do not listen to music to hear someone else's opinions, if I want to hear people's opinions I'll go follow them on Tumblr or something.

I also see a lot of quantity over quality in modern releases from the big 3. It's just a big rush to get whatever random track about how drunk you got/how in love you are with a stranger so you don't loose your short-attentioned fanbase. In my opinion, fans like that aren't fans worth pleasing. Fans who are willing to wait, because they know a great track takes time to perfect are the kind that I'd want.

Now, I will be honest when I say that most of my music is pony-related. My reason for that is that this fandom's music is unrelated to the 'image-struggle'. Not with the people I follow anyway. But I'm looking to change that. I love some of this fandom's music, but I like diversity a lot more now than I did back when I started downloading oodles of pony music.

The sad thing is though, seeing people support these talentless hacks on the face of all the work. I get that people may like it, but there is A LOT of people who are much more talented than Beibs or One Direction (We don't know we're terrible!) that deserve their attention. And on top of that, I can name at least 5 people I know who only listen to a big release for a week before moving to some other drivel. Good music is worth listening to for more than a week, anyone could tell you that.

Closing statement: the minute you get away from the Big Three releases, the quality of the music you hear will improve drastically.

[A2Z]

Closing statement: the minute you get away from the Big Three releases, the quality of the music you hear will improve drastically.

I completely agree with you. However, I believe that some people either just can't hear the quality that independent artists offer or are just so involved in mainstream music and/or the image it provides that they don't care to listen to anything else. After I started writing and playing music of my own, I grew an intense fascination and could appreciate how music is written and sounds as a whole better. Maybe people just need to learn to play/ compose music

That, or maybe people just legitimately like mainstream music and we're just arrogant in our beliefs that everyone should listen to what we tell them too...as what we think "The Big 3" do

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

That, or maybe people just legitimately like mainstream music and we're just arrogant in our beliefs that everyone should listen to what we tell them too...as what we think "The Big 3" do

I'm no one to tell them to stop. I AM however, someone to criticize the SHIT out of everything I godamn hear

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

some stuff about composition. go read it yourself.

I make what pleases me. Pandering does not enter the formula

I'd feel like an idiot if I made things for the sole purpose of pleasing some bigwig at a Record Label.

[phaux]

Maybe we will invent different kind of music where notes would be different frequencies and rules like 12 semitones per octave wouldn't apply?

[Nine Volt]

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