A New Media Paradigm. Part III

A New Media Paradigm. Part I

A New Media Paradigm. Part II

The point is not really the type of music you like, so I apologize to all the Country Music fans I’ve offended even though my true opinion is in fact that I’d rather have my ears Van Goghed than listen to it.

It’s all about the money.

In the vinyl business model your $12 album paid about $2 to the store and about the same to the artist.  The rest went to the greedy bastards in the music business.  Especially during the transition to digital when you had to buy everything twice this was quite a lucrative racket and enabled Record companies to pay Sports Star advances to people like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna.

The interesting thing about advances is that they are advances against future revenues, so it’s not like any of those people were getting real money, what they were getting was the same old $2 only all in a lump up front.  Don’t produce, lose your popularity, sell less, and some soulless accountant shows up at your bling bedecked mansion and tells you your blow budget is cut off.

Bummer to be you dude.

But the soulless accountant and his record company exec friends were still Aok until they started sailing off the shores of digital Somalia.

When you start cutting into Polygram’s blow budget now you’re in for some trouble dude.

I’m both a purist and a technician and I know that it’s simply not possible to duplicate all the information contained in analog media, but as you keep getting incrementally nearer the limits of your derivative you rapidly approach something that is close enough for jazz.  Your brain will fill in the missing pieces.

But once digitized the question simply becomes how many.  If you can play it you can duplicate it, maybe not exactly but close enough for government work (much less than you need for jazz) which is exactly where the execs went to protect their intellectual property.  Unfortunately for them the world is flat and different cultures have different ideas about what exactly property and ownership mean.  Ask Scandinavians (noted pirates and cut throats since Viking times).

So things changed and now you can download your iTunes for $1 a pop and Apple and the artist each get a nickle.

Not quite enough for a swimming pool full of Moet, or even a bathtub.

Still, ya gotta have your bling and the next big thing is concerts and merchandising.  Ever wonder why it costs over a grand to get front row for the Stones?  You’re paying for Keith’s new liver dude and those things are not cheap, even in China.

It has been democratizing in a way.  Now all the artists are starving unless of course you got your start when there was still a mass market and a common culture, but those days are dead as doornails.