I believe that the whole issue of recorded music industry is simple process. Some smart people (Recording studios) saw an opportunity to make money by recording a live music shows and selling it on LP's and later CD's and DVD's. It worked great and they made lost of money and paid the artists as little as possible. Recording sessions followed on from this and that worked great too. They had free advertising from radio stations and being smart even got the radio stations to pay some of the people involved in the process of making the music.
Nice idea and the made lots of money but alas like all economic money making ventures, if there is too much money to be made someone else will jump in or find a better way to produce it or something better.
This concept or idea has come to an end perhaps as a result of the internet but mainly because customers are better informed and can not understand why they should pay $30.00 for a plastic disc that costs $3.00 (marginal cost) to make (this includes the the artists fees but no advertising). To stop the downward trend of sales maybe start selling them closer to marginal cost of the product say $5.00 or less.
Artist should be paid when they work ie producing music and if they can get (extort?) money from the studios for selling their music, also good but it should not be exorbitant. This means the artists are no worse off than before, radio and the internet is now free advertising and even the recording studios will make money just like any ordinary business should.
The same is true for television, movies and and to a degree the newspaper industry which had smart people that sold advertising and gave the product away and now there are simply better ways of selling that advertising. News Corp is caught in a triple whammy - Good luck to them but in my honest opinion they have made to much money from other peoples efforts for far to long and the smart peoples ideas have outlived their usefulness.
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The simple truth
I believe that the whole issue of recorded music industry is simple process. Some smart people (Recording studios) saw an opportunity to make money by recording a live music shows and selling it on LP's and later CD's and DVD's. It worked great and they made lost of money and paid the artists as little as possible. Recording sessions followed on from this and that worked great too. They had free advertising from radio stations and being smart even got the radio stations to pay some of the people involved in the process of making the music.
Nice idea and the made lots of money but alas like all economic money making ventures, if there is too much money to be made someone else will jump in or find a better way to produce it or something better.
This concept or idea has come to an end perhaps as a result of the internet but mainly because customers are better informed and can not understand why they should pay $30.00 for a plastic disc that costs $3.00 (marginal cost) to make (this includes the the artists fees but no advertising). To stop the downward trend of sales maybe start selling them closer to marginal cost of the product say $5.00 or less.
Artist should be paid when they work ie producing music and if they can get (extort?) money from the studios for selling their music, also good but it should not be exorbitant. This means the artists are no worse off than before, radio and the internet is now free advertising and even the recording studios will make money just like any ordinary business should.
The same is true for television, movies and and to a degree the newspaper industry which had smart people that sold advertising and gave the product away and now there are simply better ways of selling that advertising. News Corp is caught in a triple whammy - Good luck to them but in my honest opinion they have made to much money from other peoples efforts for far to long and the smart peoples ideas have outlived their usefulness.