Death of the Music Industry

I just had a fantastic conversation with a co-worker about the Music Industry. It was fueled by this recent graph and discussion from Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-charts-explain-the-real-death-of-the-music-industry-2011-2
Which was fueled by this less-recent incorrect graph by Bain:
http://laughingsquid.com/charting-the-death-of-the-music-industry/
Basically the music industry has seen a lot of action in the last 40 years and the info presented on Business Insider is pretty vivid and tells an interesting story. Read the info in the first link, well worth it.

1999 was not only the peak, but also the year that ripping CDs became cheap and easy. It's been a downhill slope from then on; the appearance of Digital Downloads only looks like a dying battle as it rode the back of the CD sales it was helping to destroy. It may be too early to tell how Digital will do in the future. Digital growth appears to be declining with the death of CDs; Digital is showing its own growth.

The really interesting peak is ~1978; 8-Track, vinyl and the new Cassette all shared a peak, and then (I can only assume) the ease of copying tapes, and copying Radio songs to tape, happened. This strangled the Music Industry until the invention of the CD, which for a few years kept the songs on lock down. You could still copy songs to tape off the radio, but then you had a crappy tape version, and all your friends were listening to the shiny CD version. This brings us to 2011, I haven't bought a CD in about 10 years, I have bought digital tracks in the last year (rarely a full album), and I very recently acquired a new vinyl disc from a local band.

So what happens to the Music Industry now? It's not like the industry is losing money, it just isn't quite making as much. I'm in a band and I'm going to record and release a new album this year,,, what do we do? At a quick glance it looks like we should jump ship now, but after further study I think there are niches for a band like mine to thrive.

First of all, recording equipment and software is at an all time low cost. So if bands can't afford to purchase the tools they need to record themselves, there are currently lots of small studios at great prices to do the work for you. Recording obviously isn't the issue. So you paid a little to get the recording made, but according to the graph there is little hope in you actually making any of that money (definitely not all) back. Seems like bands are primed to make a recording but at a loss to release it. Is Digital the only format we should focus on?

After a little analyzing here is my plan. After recording is done, pick the 2 best songs to be mixed and mastered early for digital release. These 2 songs will be released as singles digitally, they will be available a couple weeks before the full album release date. What album, in what format? CDs are currently just a bump in the music fans' road from purchasing songs to getting them on their iPod, after that the CD is landfill. Tapes are obviously obsolete; I had plenty of tapes that warped over time and easily broke (too many small moving parts. Vinyl was the last physical media that was worth owning.

Vinyl has its advantages: large album art, simple media format and an audio quality better than CD. So when our full album is released it will only be sold as a 12" Vinyl LP, and the sleeve will contain the download codes for the digital version of the full album. A short time after the Vinyl is released (maybe one week or less), we will then make the Digital version available for purchase. Digital music fans and pirates will either get the digital versions for free or for sale, but by that point it honestly won't matter. We will have sold the Digital Singles, we will have sold the Vinyls, and by the time the Digital Album is available for purchase we will already be working on writing our next album.

What does the next ten years look like for this graph? Perhaps all bands will be involved in a subscription model where you subscribe for a year; all year you get to listen to all the music you love on all your little digital devices, but the product lives in the cloud,,, you don't actually own it. This model exists now, but it hasn't really taken off yet. The next decade should prove to be pretty exciting in the Music Industry.

This was shared today too, 'burning' used to be called 'taping,' amazing!
Home Taping is Killing Music (ca. 1980)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music