Found an interesting article on arstechnica

Looks like the shoe is finally on the other foot. Hope artists use it to kick industry arses really hard.

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The new business model
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So what is emerging is an increasingly "ephemeral" global music culture based not upon the purchasing of discrete physical packages of music, but on the discovery and subsequent promotion of musicians through file sharing. The big winner in this model is not the digital music file seller, but the touring band, whose music is easily discoverable on the 'Net. As with so much of the rest of the emerging world economy, the shift is away from buying things and towards purchasing services—in this case tickets to concerts and related activities.

"Some artists and music labels are making full use of filesharing and the participatory culture it sustains rather than rejecting it," Cammaerts and Meng note. "In the process, these artists and music labels are developing useful alternative models for revenue generation."

Good find, Fred! Thanks for sharing!

Pooey. I still want the CD.

The album is a creation of the media companies too. A way of forcing people to pay for things they don't want. Sure, I'll buy the full CD of an artist that I really like, and I trust to be able to make a dozen songs I'll enjoy. But more often than not, there's only three tracks I want to hear out of the collection.

Many of the artists I'm listening to these days don't even release albums. As they finish a track they put it up for streaming and offline purchase. This model works really well for me.

Sort of. Media distribution was not quite as flexible as today way back when the album was king. For a short while, it was the most efficient means of distribution.

I just thought that the article was a well written overview of how the industry is changing and why. I REALLY want artists to benefit from changes. No artists = no music. Everything else is just transitory support. In the case of big music companies, it became a leech then giant boat anchor.

All I can say is that my music purchases have increase at least 50 fold because of file sharing though most of those purchases probably aren’t considered “mainstream” bands.

Dude, look at your avater. You're not normal.

Seriously though, industry wide revenues from music sales have been falling for years. It's nice to see that people are still spending on music. It is amazing how many summer music festivals there are these days.

If you only knew . . . .

My latest thing at work is making little stick figures out of twist-ties and standing them in my empty mail cubicle. Recently I’ve started giving them flags to hold and yesterday a twist-tie dog. No one has said anything yet, I think they’re afraid to.

Before that it was making “ear-buddies” and putting them all over the building. They are these bullet shaped foam earplugs called ear-buds (hence “buddies”). I drew various faces on them and stuck them all over the place. Best part is other people picked up on that one and started doing it so they multiplied like rabbits. It drove our anal-retentive Chief so nut he made them stop ordering them and switch to the cylindrical ones.

Dean, you are my newest object of idolatry. Sublty driving bosses nuts is an art form.

The "ear-buddies" thing makes me think of "Trouble with Tribbles."

At first I was going to say that they multiplied like Tribbles but figured more and more people these days wouldn’t get the reference.

I have a whole list of various thing I do periodically to get under their skin. I do them just often enough to irritate them but not enough to make their lazy asses actually do anything about it.

I can’t wait until gnat season coming up soon, they still can’t figure out how all those gnats (thousands) get into certain offices every year.

All other idols have now been cast aside.

Dean, it is clear you are a true "arteest" with this.

I applaud.

Awesome about the foam ear plugs, bread I'd people and gnats. We have a bunch of the 'bullet' shaped foam ear plugs at work. They are the camouflage style so maybe I can make a whole army?

Camo would have been cool. Ours were just a florescent lime green. Although for a while we had some that were florescent swirls of various colours. Sort of like Timothy Leary meets hearing protection.

I listen to Pandora all day long, then make a list of cool songs/artists I find and buy some of their music.

Too funny Dean!

That puts you in my generation. I don't think my daughter has purchased more than three albums. In her world, downloading (free) is the norm.