OK Go’s Damian Kulash explains today’s music business
For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn’t going away. We’re just moving out of the brief period—a flash in history’s pan—when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It’s an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.
For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.
Then came the Internet, and in less than a decade, that system fell. With uncontrollable and infinite duplication and distribution of recordings, selling records suddenly became a lot like selling apples to people who live in orchards. In 1999, global record sales totaled $26.9 billion; in 2009, that figure, including digital purchases, which now represent 25% of sales (nearly 50% in the U.S.), is down to $17 billion. For eight of the last 10 years, the decline in revenue from record sales has gotten steeper, which is to say the business is imploding with increasing vigor.
Music is getting harder to define again. It’s becoming more of an experience and less of an object. Without records as clearly delineated receptacles of value, last century’s rules—both industrial and creative—are out the window. For those who can find an audience or a paycheck outside the traditional system, this can mean blessed freedom from the music industry’s gatekeepers.
Read The New Rock-Star Paradigm by Damian Kulash in the WSJ.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 23rd, 2010 at 01:40
Rad! Andy Ross is so hot!
December 23rd, 2010 at 03:01
Is this phenomenon also true for writers?
December 23rd, 2010 at 15:11
music won’t go away. it would be easy to categorize music but one wouldn’t be able to accurately express its worth and power. i wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my lolo’s talent in music which saved him from the japanese. interestingly, i want to immigrate and to die in japan.
December 23rd, 2010 at 16:04
@atomic_bum: Take me with you! I have this odd ambition of being BFF with Utada Hikaru, an intelligent singer/songwriter/composer whom I adore and respect. Fanboy much, haha.
December 23rd, 2010 at 18:42
utada hikaru, mommy ng mga jpop and kpop artists. at talagang utada hindi boa? hehe. halika, punta tayo for the sakura festival.