Music comes alive as more performers than ever hit the road

OK, so this article, like the two below, come fomr Fark. They just have a great links over the last 24-48 hours, and there are several more links I would recommend (including: Heather Grahams' boobies; a 17th century coin with a picture of a UFO (Or Ezekiel's wheel from the bible, which, well, was also, a UFO); and a science study that showed that monkeys will pay (trade food I think) for the opportunity to see pictures of female monkey botoms - but not all female bottoms - only thos ebottoms belonging to the females in a group who are most desired)Yahoo! News - Music comes alive as more performers than ever hit the road

But, all those cool things aside, the reason I chose this link is because it talks about how, with the advent of digital music, and potentially lost record sales, live music is becoming a larger and larger business. A few years back, in the Weekly Dig office, we covered the demise of Napster, and the new Digital Copyright laws effect on Digital Radio and other digital music technologies, and I was often asked, as I researched these articles, what did I think about the advent of digital music. I consistently said that digital technology was making less important (and slowly obsolete) the necessity to purchase an actual product (piece of plastic) to enjoy music. Most consumers simply don’t need the disc (as sales of the I-pod can attest to), and the current distribution method of music (CDs) was a format, methodology and technology from an era gone by. I also made an argument for the fact that the distribution of hard-copies of music as a money-making opportunity for musicians was a fairly new thing in the history of music, becoming big business by the middle of the 1900s, but previous to that, musicians made their money playing live (concerts, tours) or occasionally seeing sheet music copies of their music so it could be performed live. In fact, most bands/artists don’t make much money off record sales. Most small bands hardly see a dime of record sales (it costs so much to produce and promote a record that unless sales are huge, small band are often in debt to labels after a first album). However, most bands keep all of their live performance revenues. So, for msot bands (excluding superstars and one-hit wonders), selling records has never been their bread and butter, touring has been. And for some bands, like the Grateful Dead (a band that encouraged taping and swapping of their music by fans), touring was the most important thing they did (and did well and made a bug chuck of change). My opinion a few years back was that only the Record Industry, not the artists, had anything to fear form digital music swapping. The distribution network that major labels are clinging to is simply not the preferred method of acquiring music for most people nowadays and is likely to erode further as a useful method of acquiring music.

This could lead to artists controlling more of their income. Of course, no one is going to come out to a live show unless they are familiar with the band, so there will still likely be necessary a promotion mechanism to work the radio-conglomerates, MTVs and other hit-making machines of the industry, but I can see labels slowly being relegated to a promotional arm for artists, not a distribution industry as they have been. However, from all my reading on the topic, the industry is loathe to see this happen because apparently there isn’t as much money to be paid promoting a musician as there is in exploiting their art. But, if indeed the distribution channel of selling hard discs at record stores does, over time, become a less profitable and necessary venture as I suspect it will, there will be amazing opportunities for small bands to promote themselves diligently (and inexpensively) on the web and in local and small publications and college radio, and be able to avoid the major label route entirely while still having listeners and fans wanting to come to their concerts, all over the country and perhaps even the world.


Change is good, and the music industry is in for a shift.

Wish I had more time to discuss this.

I will post some far-free links soon.