One of the most succinct and accurate assessments of the modern music business. As digital music hopefuls head to Nor Cal for @SFMusicTech the attendees should be aware that this conference has promoted many if not all of these “13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry.”
The list covers everything from “T-shirts & Touring” to “The Long Tail” and from “Kickstarter” to “Streaming.”
Lie #1: Great music will naturally find its audience.
Lie #2: Artists will thrive off of ‘Long Tail,’ niche content.
Lie #3: The death of the major label will make it easier for artists to succeed.
Lie #4: There will be a death of the major label.
Lie #5: Digital formats will produce far greater revenues than physical.
Lie #6: “The real money’s in touring”
Lie #7: There’s an emerging middle class artist.
Lie #8: Kickstarter can and will build careers.
Lie #9: Spotify is your friend.
Lie #10: Google and YouTube are your friends.
Lie #11: If Pandora could just lower royalties, they could then survive, and really help all the artists out there.
Lie #12: T-Shirts!
Lie #13: ‘Streaming is the future…’
Here’s one in detail…
Lie #10: Google and YouTube are your friends.
The Lie: Google and YouTube have anything but their own profit-maximization goals in mind.
The Truth: This is business, not altruism, not matter how it gets spun. And, the interests of Google and rights owners are diabolically opposed and will continue to be so. Which also means that anything that is DMCA-compliant is ultimately great for Google, and fantastially bad for content owners.
So if you want exposure, go to YouTube. If you want a paycheck, find it somewhere else.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about this story at Digital Music News is that we didn’t write it. As we’ve stated repeatedly more and more people can see the truth as plain as day that musicians are not empowered by the internet as much as they have been more exploited by it.
A very basic refresher is in order to all of these businesses who are using music as the basis of their business models online: NO MUSIC = NO BUSINESS.
READ THE FULL POST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130925lies#r67vc32IgD2J_zeHZy7D0g
The Trichordist 
Reblogged this on The Creative Process.
Amusingly we heard this with cable TV well before the internet. That there were loads of niche markets out there for film makers to exploit. The reality, at least in the UK, is that the cable channels are almost entirely repeats of broadcast TV. Yes we can watch a channel consisting of episode after episode of 70s sitcoms, or BBC wildlife films, but there is nothing new there at all.
Reblogga detta på El Sueco Music and commented:
“A very basic refresher is in order to all of these businesses who are using music as the basis of their business models online: NO MUSIC = NO BUSINESS.”