So Much Art, Music and Writing Online - But Where's the Good Stuff?

The old 'saw' about artists having to suffer for their art gave merit to the idea that only the most determined artists had the best chance for success or recognition. The easier any endeavor becomes, the more players and kibitzers come to the table. The traditional business infrastructures of art, music, writing, design, photography and creative thinking were built upon subjective filtering of demonstrable junk, leaving in the main mostly good stuff for us to peruse.

The problem now is simply that the old mechanisms (e.g., critics, curators, studios, publishers) evolved to deal with traditional numbers of new works coming on the scene. It was reasonably well handled, but for the carping and whining of those artists whose work was derided or ignored. Now there are uncountable and unmanageable legions of so-called artists of all stripes whose works are seeing wide distribution. The old mechanisms have been toppled to some extent and are often tossed out the door along with all of the dedication and single minded pursuit of style, quality and substance offered by most of the traditional arbiters of taste. Instead we're now confronted with the fact that the wishes of so many heretofore unimportant artists are coming true: they now have a platform as visible as the one normally provided to better writers, musicians, artists and thinkers whose traditional regimen of having to run a gauntlet in order to achieve success is no longer necessary. The net effect is already felt.

Now too often, the one with the best search engine optimization gets the most attention. We are averaging down. The same people who bemoan the difficulty of sorting through the private eructations of myriad bloggers, incompetent musicians and writers seriously in need of grammar lessons, also bemoan the difficulty of finding "good stuff". Just as the quality of a Wikipedia entry survives scrutiny in direct proportion to the objective accuracy of the writing and number of factual, germane citations associate with the entry, so too do writers, musicians, painters, photographers and philosophers publishing online survive the cull of popular opinion. The problem is, the late '90s pronouncement that millions of undiscovered artistic gems would be uncovered has not come true. There is not a greater percentage of good quality work now and there is no recognizable quality mechanism to use as a filter. Existing filters demand that inexperienced users apply their own criteria. That, by any definition, is not a move to quality. To determine the differences between good quality and bad quality, dedicated observers whose principle focus is the type of work being scrutinized remains the very best way of filtering creative output. Seeking out the opinions of a variety of experts has always been the most reliable way of finding "good stuff" and at the same time educating ourselves.

I just don't have the time to study hundreds of thousands of paintings, books, music recordings and opinions. I have a business to run. I rely on people who have dedicated themselves to becoming experts - making art or writing or music their business essentially - to tell me where to look first. This is just common sense. Those same experts come to me or someone like me when they are in need of expertise in my speciality. The Internet and the Web have failed in this regard because they are a long way yet from being a platform capable of sustaining the aforementioned experts.

Music CD Sales Dive, Online Sales Rise, Consumers Suffer . . . Again

The initial sales numbers are in and it looks terrible for the traditional music biz. For the third year in a row, sales of music CDs have dropped - somewhere between 12-14% below 2006. At the same time, online music sales have increased between 40-50% depending on which stats and reports you believe. No matter which source you use however, it's absolutely fair to say that music buying and the music industry in general are both changing dramatically.

So I say BOO HISS to all of you who are content with low fidelity MP3 downloads. Your willingness to accept terrible quality is the main reason the rest of us are going to eventually have to suffer with the same dreadful audio quality you insist on paying for. The music industry needed almost ten years to improve the audio quality of the (now) venerable music CD - it took awhile for compression technologies to catch up with the quality offered by LPs. But here we are, 25 years later, with music CD recordings which long ago put the nail in the LP coffin, and all consumers want to do is compress the life out of everything (reducing fidelity, clarity, nuance and entire instruments in the process), just so songs can be conveniently downloaded for 99 cents a pop.

Wake up folks! Music choices should have nothing to do with how easy it is to download a particular song. Music choices should be all about listening to the song with all of the recording present rather than permanently lost to the vagaries of MP3 compression.

Read this carefully: Unless you're buying (or ripping) tracks at 396Kbps variable bit rate, you're just not getting your money's worth - not at 99 cents, not even at 10 cents. Data storage space is cheap right now, and getting cheaper by the minute. Download speeds and bandwidth are getting better and better every month. Unlike the technical transition from LP to CD recording, there is no longer any obstacle standing in the way of full fidelity and full quality MP3 downloads from the major music sites. But as long as consumers accept crap, that's exactly what they're going to get.

Great brick & mortar music stores are dying every day throughout Europe and North America as consumers rush to purchase and download terrible quality MP3s. It's irrational.

Recently, I played some music (from CD) for friends visiting one weekend. One of the guests commented that he was familiar with a particular band's music and that the songs seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite place album. Turns out he already owned the album - purchased and downloaded from either iTunes or Rhapsody (can't remember which right now). The problem was, he'd never heard the original CD recording. Now that he has heard the real thing on a decent sound system, he feels ripped off. That's because he has been ripped off.

There's no question that consumers everywhere are going to rush toward the lowest cost retail offers. It's in our nature. Unfortunately, you only get what you pay for, and right now what you're paying for is low fidelity crap.

The only great thing about online music stores is that you can now pick and choose the contents of album downloads. I say Hallelujah and it's about time consumers had the option of ignoring the filler garbage which populates almost every LP and CD ever released.

The music industry around the world brought on the demise of traditional music marketing and merchandising because of the arrogance and foolishness which traditionally permeates the studios and distribution channels. What a bunch of dolts! Traditional brick & mortar retailers on the other hand, have always been the tail wagged by the dog. Bye-bye retailers.

So the music business is changing. No problem. But it should not be changing for the worse.

CD Wow In Court Over Grey Market CD's

It seems that it's going to be more difficult to get foreign CD releases of domestic artists. The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) are seeking a contempt of court order against CD WOW over claims that it is deliberately selling CD's made for other countries. In a statement issued by CD Wow they denied that they'd intentionally used grey imports of CDs not intended for this country and stated that any breaches were a result of human error.

Whilst I agree that artists, their agents and recording companies are somewhat justified in protecting their intellectual property and licenses. The nature of the internet is making it more and more apparent that the copyright laws we currently adhere to, don't work all that well in a global market.

I'm confused in this day of the internet and the aforementioned global market, why certain industries are still so regional in their thinking. I'm betting that a great many of these CD's are being bought by collectors for content and packaging which is not available on domestic releases. I know that I occasionally pick up CD’s overseas which includes multimedia DVDs and other content. For the collector this "Grey" market is a source of goods which are highly sought after. These goods are even legal and are licensed in the territories they are made for. So what, are the record companies, complaining for? (Rhetorical Question).

In the case of CD WOW, the retailer may be looking at trying to keep their margins low, I can't say one way or the other because I'm not in their shoes, nor am I their accountant. But remember this ... these record companies are the same folks, who think nothing of using cheaper labour and costs elsewhere to maximise their profits here. If that’s the case, why not pass on the cost directly to the retailers and subsequently to the consumer? Even better, price the products at a more reasonable level …

Here is a quick example:
U2’s - Achtung Baby retails in the US for $13.98. It retails here in the UK for £14.99 ... Why is it twice as much here? OK the price I'm quoting is the suggested list but I'm doing so in both cases. I can buy music from UK and Irish Artists cheaper, pretty much anywhere else in the world, and in some cases, even cheaper than they are in the US.

I'm guessing it's because they think they can get away with people paying more for stuff here in the UK ... They're trying to keep us a captive and lucrative market. .

Music, Media and Money

I'm both fascinated and annoyed at many of the approaches to money making being taken by the music companies. They bitch and complain about piracy and to be honest they are probably right to a certain degree. However, I've been buying music for a long time, and much of my music until about 10 years ago was on vinyl. Every time a new device or media technology is announced, I cringe and think, "does this mean I'm going to have to buy all the music in my library again".

I've previously bought music on LPs, Tapes, CDs, DVDs and even the odd piece of digital music online and on memory card. I love gadgets like many others, however I can tell you this: I won't be jumping to, or spending a lot of money on new media. I'll continue buying CDs and ripping them to my media players. I'm happy enough with that.

Stop re-inventing the wheel. Frankly I'm sick of spending my hard earned money to make some fatcat music executive or lawyer rich. If you want me to buy music I already have, you've got to offer me a lot more than some new packaging or a "remastered" version. Invest some money in value added content and pay the artists more. You media moguls can certainly afford it.

In case you're wonder why I'm so pissed I sat down recently and figured out how much it would cost me to replace my record collection at £15 a CD. I freaked. Think about this a moment. The record companies sue the hell out of copyright violators and yet when it come to paying the creators of that same music, they drag their heels and cry saying the music business is expensive. Yet the RIAA and other organisations with similar interest have been trying to change the law as regards royalties so that they don't have to keep paying the creators of the music they're selling. Read this article over at IGN for more. It details that the RIAA recently petitioned judges to lower the royalties so that the record companies can make more money.

For another take on why the MPAA thinks piracy exists, read another article, again at IGN. It made sense to me.