99.9% of musicians can't make minimum wage, meanwhile some self-declared insects with bad haircuts are still making $100+ million a year from partly plagerized albums they recorded 40 years ago. Welcome to the music biz.

The 99.9% just don't make professional music...

I don't know if 99.9% don't make professional music, whatever that is.

But 99.9% don't make POPULAR music.

And that's not scary. It's not even strange.

It takes a ridiculous amount of work and talent to make a popular song. Not to mention a hit.

Cheers!!

I agree.

It takes a ridiculous amount of work and talent to make a song popular.  

Popular songs are written and professionally recorded all the time; and relatively cheaply. That's the easy part.

The talented people who perform the real work are the artist management teams and the marketing professionals who convince an apathetic public that they need to consume their latest product.

You get a "hit" by paying these people to promote your work.

Very scary indeed!! I started my FB page MUSIC in ATLANTA approx. 1 year ago with my only goal being to promote the music, artists, venues, etc that I love! It doesn't get any more grassroots than this! But I'll continue at absolutely zero profit to me as long as I can or until some big label crushes me or I lose total faith in the music industry! And judging from this article that time sounds nearer than I'd like to believe!

OK. It it's so easy and so cheaply done lets see you write one.  Share one of your hit songs with us. Put your credibiltiy on the line and proove your statement.  

There's no such thing as 'professional music' but thereis such thing as professionally sounding music.

Three labels?

You forgot the 4th and biggest of them all: The Pirate Bay.

Piracy is the only scary thing left in the industry, since Ms. Swift was kind enough to kill Spotify last week.

OK, #10 is scary, too.

But the bright side is that Rhapsody clearly demonstrates what some of us have said for the longest time:

They hate artists.

Here's the link to Rhapsody's suicide note again:

http://news.rhapsody.com/2012/10/22/wheres-taylor/

i can see why that rhapsody article would not allow comments.

because how sad would it be for a commenter to expose the truth.

its label politics here.

-taylor swift is signed to big machine, her label.

-big machine is distributed by the king umbrella umg.

-all streams are paid directly to umg. then the money trickles down to big machine eventually, uhhh... if ever.

-however, all downloads are reported and paid out to the label.

making it a smart political move by big machine.

silly garrett

#4 is from an article dated 28th March 2011 - the digital landscape has changed a fair bit since then...

Not sure if that's changed too much since then, not seeing that cluster of big outlets really getting moved. Spotify's grown since then but AIM is already EU.

It is from 2011, and March at that, however I don't think this level of concentration has fundamentally changed.  There are certainly shifts in streaming, which may have eroded iTunes percentages somewhat, but keep in mind this is a report generated by UK-based AIM, where Spotify penetration was quite strong in 2011.

/paul

Spotify penetration in March 2011 report was insignificant. You should not trust everything you get from media. Especially this kind of sensationalist segmented articles. Today iTunes is no more than 70%.

Re #8:

Given the criminal nature of Mr. Dotcom's new enterprise, he won't be able to use a .com or .net domain.

So he's going to use a Gabon-based site.

The question is however, if Gabon wants to be the new center of organized crime.

And since Mr. Dotcom couldn't come up with an original name, he'll probably get sued for trademark infringement right from the start.

.

Some years back, a techie friend told me the piracy trend to watch for would be:   Data centers in Africa.

Here's the next trend and business model:

Take lessons from the porn industry -- sue the pirates!

A federal court in Illinois just ordered a thief to pay $150,000 per stolen movie:

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-pirate-ordered-to-pay-1-5-million-damages-for-sharing-10-movies-121101/

You're entitled to the same amount for each song pirates steal from you!

this one is patently false as anyone who is or works with a touring artist can attest:

90% of a ticket price goes to artist fees.
 
...according to Live Nation.

follow the link it's a live nation person saying it.

pretty much the artist is taking the huge % of the ticket price leaving scraps for everyone else.  but you can't say that out loud without being anti-artist

...and then the artist pays their manager, their booking agent, their publicist and likely pays back their recording advance....

oh yeah and their tour manager, their van repairs, their gas, their accomodations (if they can afford them), their food, their sound tech (if they can afford one) and other support staff they have on the road (which most don't, 'cause they can't afford it)

Look at the landscape and how increasingly difficult it is for music artists to make money at their given profession. Plus, they numerous times they get ripped off before getting to a place where they can demand a certain monetary guarantee.
Regardless, I call bullshit. You don't have to be an insider to figure out that big ticket surcharge, parking fee, and taxes amount to way more than 10%. Fuck Live Nation.

This made me chuckle… 

Re # 5

What was that same stat 15 years ago, please?

that last one is clearly a dig at amanda palmer, and a total joke. amanda pays her touring band a salary and invites fans who play certain instruments to play for free with her on stage. thus they don't have to, and if they are going to they willingly do it to add to an orchestra of fans with their favorite artist. this is totally a non-issue but it gets blown completely out of proportion by stupid comments like the one made in this article.

So says the apologist for the woman who can't even account for all the money she made on kickstarter

Sad to say that, but popular music is done, finished..

popular music died along with the lables and vinyl records, 

MP3 is not what we call rocknroll ,and people today are less and less interested in popular music + since the end of the 90's the artists really suck !

It is pretty hard to say that popular music is done when Swift just sold more albums than anyone in their opening week since Eminem in 2002. And considering the fact that this was done without Spotify and Rhapsody numbers, it could be seen as quite the opposite of popular music being done. The fact that she sold 1.2 million from straight up purchases (for the most part) is pretty astounding. Big Machine may have been restricting Red from streaming for their own $$ reasons, but as a result it showed people buying music like they were in 2002.

So what are the pros about these changes in the music biz? 

#15 .. IS THE COLLECTION OF 20 DOUBLE ADDAMBONGG ALBUMS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON/ .. WHICH REQUIRED NO BUDGET TO WRITE & RECORD, ONLY A LOT OF REAL TALENT ..

DDEX is defining and developing the music supply chain standards. The sooner we implement the standards, the sooner we all get paid.  

Things are about to get a whole lot better over the next few years. The Majors aren't buying up catalogs for no reason. Watch for the coming format change! Also the economy recovering will give people that extra money to spend again that's really the reason everthings sucked the past 6 years.

Well, the music business model is broken. We can fix it. What if there was something better than free? i.e., people would want to pay for digital downloads instead of wanting it for free via pirate sites?
A rewards-based system that encourages buying and sharing music is here, as opposed to punitive, protective and restrictive laws and policies.

www.Tell-My-Friends.com will work hard to change this. Because getting rewarded is better than getting free.