‘Last days of the dinosaurs’
p2pnet.net News:- Attendees at the recent Southwest Music Conference & Festival, which “now serves as perhaps the best available barometer of the state of the business,” according to managing director Roland Swenson, heard Elvis Costello and Robert Plant tell it likes it is.
“Those who opted to hunker down in the panel rooms heard oft-sobering views about the current state of affairs in the music biz,”says the Hollywood Reporter.
“Jacob Slichter, former drummer for the Minneapolis band Semisonic and author of the wry memoir ‘So You Wanna Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,’ said it’s tougher than ever for a young band to secure ongoing label support these days.”
No kidding.
“I don’t know if there are any artist development labels left,” Slichter is quoted as saying, “getting a nod of assent from eMusic editor-in-chief Michael Azzerad, who hosted the interview session.
“Singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, now a Universal recording artist after long tenures at Columbia and Warner Bros., reflected on the changes he has witnessed in the business during an interview conducted by MTV Networks senior vp Bill Flanagan. ‘The creative people inside the companies have become increasingly invisible,” Costello said. ‘They box in the creative people inside this massive and unwieldy structure, which resembles the last days of the dinosaurs’.”
And ex-Led Zeppelin lead vocalist Robert Plant stated, “I hate the idea that the jukebox is based on five songs, mass popularity,” according to the Reporter story.
“Even the term ‘rhythm & blues’ has gone into a kind of cabaret now.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
<-----Best way to accelerate a Mac? Throw it out the window----->
See:-
Hollywood Reporter – SXSW dances around industry woes, March 18, 2005
March 26th, 2005 at 5:15 am
Will the Label Heads ever get a clue?????? Hope not!!!!!!
March 26th, 2005 at 6:44 am
to my friend above i must disagree.. i don’t “hope” the labels die.. that is, die without purpose..
so long as they’re capable of abandoning their ambitions to corrupt the law in order to control the rest of the economy.. so long as they operate their business according to proper market forces and keep their fingers out of sectors in which they don’t belong.. i have no trouble returning to patronage of these organizations, and have no trouble with their existence.
On the other hand, this article is absolutely true. Not only has long-term support and cultivation of acts gone down the tubes, resulting in mindless homogeneous crap.. but the quality of the mastering has gone downhill even faster.
I have mp3’s of the cowboy bebop soundtrack (which is pretty darn old), and they sould better and richer COMPRESSED than most new cd’s sound in full quality. It’s sad when the nuance disappears.. and is a tragedy when the creativity disappears at the same time.
March 27th, 2005 at 6:50 am
Very very very well said. And I also agree that the quality of mastering has gone down the drain too. There are so many remasters being sold today with exactly that tag – “remastered” – which would imply to be the best sounding copy ever released. I have compared some to older CD releases of the same title and have found them to sound worse. A good example is the Rush catalogue. The record biz is now again re-releasing new remasters of all the Rush records (actually done right), but think of all the people who bought the so called “remastered” crap that was already out there. When will the record companies ever be held accountable? They should be forced to replace the crap that they put out there at no cost to the consumer.
Steps like these might actually gain them some consumer loyalty.
Ted V.
March 28th, 2005 at 9:32 am
Isn’t always the portly old gent whose made all his money out of an industry and doesn’t have to worry about his income who complainst the loudest about the industry that got him there? Of course forgetting about all the people who got left behind or didn’t get heard over their voices in the rush for work and recording contracts is necessary for one to morph from record industry stuffed suit into messiah of the digital age.
March 28th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Best way to accelerate a Mac? Throw it out the window.
Ha ha ha. Very funny.
Won’t be coming back here again.