Music's going out of business and you're to blame.

A few days ago the above tweet from Bette Midler got some attention. She's one more in a series of prominent and once best-selling musicians who are displaying how their royalties have shrunk to laughable rates thanks to music streaming services.
Ah, the great irony of ironies-- musicians are being more transparent with their finances than the Pandoras and Spotify. How is this any different from the recording industries golden age, when the record labels would have musicians sign shifty contracts in exchange for say, their copyright, or less money? As far as I can see, there's only one big difference. The record labels actually spent money by investing in the artists, be it through marketing, touring, or advancing them money to make an album to begin with, which in turn led to a thriving economy, both for musician, but studio and artist alike.
Adland has been writing about this subject for quite a long time. I know I've been at it for two years now I've written about this. And that's just in my spare time.
Back in 2012, I interviewed Britta Phillips (from Luna, Dean and Britta, voie of 80's cartoon Jem, etc.) She expressed a wish that "there was a way to track music that is downloaded. Like a digitally embedded barcode. All entities that make money by allowing people to download to have to pay the musicians who are downloaded."
I still think it's a fantastic idea, although trying to get pirate sites to pay for your content (let alone legitimate sites pay reasonable rates) is head-in-the-clouds thinking. If this recent Slate article is anything to go by, Britta's husband and band mate Dean Wareham seems to understand this all to well.
If you were particularly lazy and didn't read beyond the headline you'd get one of the main points: Dean Wareham: "You can get attention. You just can't sell music." But put it in context a bit further. In Dean Wareham's memoir Black Postcards he describes a time before streaming services, when record companies spent a lot of money investing in their acts, radio and record stores were still prevalent. he is then asked to juxtapose that time with now.

Yeah. I mean, everyone’s in this situation. Everyone’s in this boat right now. Everyone’s saying, “Good lord, it’s easy to get attention.” Or maybe not easy, but you can get attention. You can get on the Internet, you can be all over the place, and connecting with people. It’s hard to sell music, sell any physical product. Now it’s getting harder to sell downloads as well. And it’s not just me saying this. Apple and iTunes will admit as much also.

My hope is that the light will shine down and wake up the dim people. Maybe once and for all they'll understand that for every Lady Gaga there are lots of musicians out there, most whose names you know, who can no longer pay the bills because they've enabled this situation. Perhaps one day they'll understand the musicians will not keep making music just because "they love to do it," any more than google will stay in business out of love.
But if some people are really still okay with that, and don't care about the quality of content, then they won't notice when content falls into the cultural mudslide and all there is to consume is crap. Question is, who will determine the outcome? google and the idiots who care more about convenience than content? Or people who still care about the content?
Me, I'll keep seeing Dean Wareham whether he plays at the proper club or in a bike shop. Because I believe in the value of content from all medium.
Me and twenty other people.src="adland.tv/ere-not-paid-shills-music-industry-thats-problem/813768184">musicians have stopped making music and started working for The Man, figuring it's easier to make a profit by joining them than not. Sure, google and its like have been able to run rampant and influence the government (although that is finally starting to change) but there were a lot of missteps from different places over the past twenty years. I'm not interested in finding patient zero of guilt, however. I'm interested in how we're responding to it as a society.
Any population that fights so hard to raise the wage of burger flippers but provides no such safety net for content producers, is a huge part of the problem. Any group of people that tells another group to focus less on their content and more on merchandise as a way to make a living is delusional. Any group of people that won't pay for an icon's music until after he dies and is therefore unable to make any more music does not know the value of music to begin with.

My hope is that the light will shine down and wake up the dim people. Maybe once and for all they'll understand that for every Lady Gaga there are lots of musicians out there, most whose names you know, who can no longer pay the bills because they've enabled this situation. Perhaps one day they'll understand the musicians will not keep making music just because "they love to do it," any more than google will stay in business out of love.
But if some people are really still okay with that, and don't care about the quality of content, then they won't notice when content falls into the cultural mudslide and all there is to consume is crap. Question is, who will determine the outcome? google and the idiots who care more about convenience than content? Or people who still care about the content?
Me, I'll keep seeing Dean Wareham whether he plays at the proper club or in a bike shop. Because I believe in the value of content from all medium.
Me and twenty other people.src="adland.tv/ollateral-damage-how-free-culture-destroys-advertising"> two years now I've written about this. And that's just in my spare time.
Back in 2012, I interviewed Britta Phillips (from Luna, Dean and Britta, voie of 80's cartoon Jem, etc.) She expressed a wish that "there was a way to track music that is downloaded. Like a digitally embedded barcode. All entities that make money by allowing people to download to have to pay the musicians who are downloaded."
I still think it's a fantastic idea, although trying to get pirate sites to pay for your content (let alone legitimate sites pay reasonable rates) is head-in-the-clouds thinking. If this recent Slate article is anything to go by, Britta's husband and band mate Dean Wareham seems to understand this all to well.
If you were particularly lazy and didn't read beyond the headline you'd get one of the main points: Dean Wareham: "You can get attention. You just can't sell music." But put it in context a bit further. In Dean Wareham's memoir Black Postcards he describes a time before streaming services, when record companies spent a lot of money investing in their acts, radio and record stores were still prevalent. he is then asked to juxtapose that time with now.

Yeah. I mean, everyone’s in this situation. Everyone’s in this boat right now. Everyone’s saying, “Good lord, it’s easy to get attention.” Or maybe not easy, but you can get attention. You can get on the Internet, you can be all over the place, and connecting with people. It’s hard to sell music, sell any physical product. Now it’s getting harder to sell downloads as well. And it’s not just me saying this. Apple and iTunes will admit as much also.

of musicians out there, most whose names you know, who can no longer pay the bills because they've enabled this situation. Perhaps one day they'll understand the musicians will not keep making music just because "they love to do it," any more than google will stay in business out of love.
But if some people are really still okay with that, and don't care about the quality of content, then they won't notice when content falls into the cultural mudslide and all there is to consume is crap. Question is, who will determine the outcome? google and the idiots who care more about convenience than content? Or people who still care about the content?
Me, I'll keep seeing Dean Wareham whether he plays at the proper club or in a bike shop. Because I believe in the value of content from all medium.
Me and twenty other people.