Simon Napier-Bell: The Music Industry Is Careering Towards Meltdown

[jaguarr]

This is a great article by famous band manager Simon Napier-Bell (Yardbirds, Wham!, Marc Bolan, T-Res, and many others), detailing his experience and view of the music industry and why it's headed for a complete meltdown. It's very long, so I won't post the entire text, but damn is this a good read:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2241544,00.html

Enjoy!
jag

 

[DV8]

This is a great article by famous band manager Simon Napier-Bell (Yardbirds, Wham!, Marc Bolan, T-Res, and many others), detailing his experience and view of the music industry and why it's headed for a complete meltdown. It's very long, so I won't post the entire text, but damn is this a good read:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2241544,00.html

Enjoy!
jag

don't you mean careening?

 

[jaguarr]

don't you mean careening?

The article actually says "careering", so that's how I left it.

jag

 

[cookiva]

Hmmm, interesting read. Thanks Jag!

 

[Figs]

That Morris Levy sounded like a real C*** Sucker himself.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

10 cents' worth of vinyl selling for $10 - 10,000 per cent profit - the highest mark-up in all of retail marketing. Artists were simply an ingredient,

Why do people play stupid like this?
Is there really anyone stupid enough to think that when you buy a CD, you're buying a plastic disc?

When I bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas...it cost $40 or $50...and it came on a 10 cent disc, in a cheap, plastic box, and it was worth SO much more.
It represented the work of a team of HUNDREDS of artists, experts, staying up for days at a time, straining, testing, straining some more, re-testing, for YEARS.

And I have gotten HUNDREDS of hours of enjoyment out of it.

I didn't buy a 10 cent disc, at all.
It's elementary, why do people even cheapen their arguments with this idea.

It's like saying the Mona Lisa should sell for $5...the cost of that thin layer of paint and some old canvas stretched across some old wood.



And artists are "simply an ingredient" ?
Well, I'd buy a fudge brownie without walnuts, which are just an ingredient.
Try taking the artists out of it. You have blank discs...no different than a bulk stack from Office Max. Absurd.

 

[jaguarr]

I agree, Wil, that it is an absurd sort of thing to view the artists as just an "ingredient". Napier-Bell is relaying what he's seen in terms of attitude of the record companies towards artists, though, and it's a rather sad way in which they appear to regard most of their artists; as a necessary evil.

jag

 

[bell110]

Good. The sooner the better.