The real reason why the music industry collapsed –. ABC Technology and Games. Australian Broadcasting Corporation)I don't like pushing cases that I can't prove, but in this instance I believe my observations, experiences and reasoning hold more water than those given by the music industry. The following isn't particularly balanced, but hopefully it's thought provoking and offers a not- widely- stated counter to the music industry's claims that piracy is killing their business and that downloading is the primary reason that music revenues have collapsed since the 9. I'll start off with some graphs which generally illustrate my point before going into a lengthy justification. What the music industry says. What actually happened. Source: There are many variations of the same graph. The point is that there was a huge spike in the 9. I aim to explain that. You don't have to be an analyst to identify something wrong with the record industry's graph. Predicting an unprecedented period of revenue generation off the back of a two year growth period when two of the preceding three years had seen revenue declines (one of them large) is more than optimistic. It could be explained by new strategy, marketing and innovation pushes by the music industry, but hindsight shows no evidence of that. In a nutshell, the music industry is adamant that illegal downloading is the prime cause of its revenues dropping over the past decade. Opponents say that we're buying more music than ever, but that we're buying individual songs and not expensive albums on CDs and that's why revenue is down. But is the current quality of music really comparable to what was on offer in the 9. Or is it more akin to the 8. What really happened. The following is something of a personal history, but then my formative years were spent growing up in the early 9. I was a very early adopter of the web and MP3s in particular. My experiences were mirrored by everyone I knew when growing up. As to how much my world was a tiny microcosm in the great scheme of things is up for debate. In 1. 98. 8 I was 1. I struggled so much to fit in. I just didn't get what was going on. Christian music website featuring CD and Movie reviews, Links, Devotionals, Giveaways and Contests, Listening Parties, Free Music Downloads, Blog and much more! An abnormal music blog. Unfortunately, I think it is all doom and gloom because the previous routes indie labels had to get bigger through sales of at least some physical product are gone. Nirvana broke through with a great song, but there were djs. Rolling report: Holland host France, Euro 2016 winners Portugal visit the Faroe Islands and Roberto Mart. Join Alan Smith for updates. Metal Sucks The Top 11 Obscure Nu-Metal Albums Ever Made Metal Goes to the Movies, Fall/Winter 2014 Edition-. I liked Michael Jackson (who didn't back then?) but the first CD I bought was the Fat Boys' (with Chubby Checker) The Twist and the first 4. I bought was Dr and The Medics doing Spirit in the Sky (which is actually awesome and, fashion apart, more 9. For those who look back on the 8. I can't stress how wrong you are. We catch up with The Off Off Off Broadway Company ahead of their #ShinyNew5 performance. How did you first hear about the Shiny New Festival? From the Lantern Theatre’s Twitter feed. How did the company start? You don’t have to feel sorry for people with ears. They’re not “haters.” They’re music lovers. Singing has always been about, guess what? Electronic music and highly produced music is about the coolness of. There are various types of digital music formats. What type of file format you want to use in your game depends on the platform your game will run on and what. Simply upload your music and build your own unique library. Soundvault licenses your music automatically and pays 60% of the license fee to the music owner. For every great song there were a thousand audio turds which made up the mainstream. It doesn't look like anyone's bothered to upload many of them to the internet. Yep, that's the Coca-Cola logo you see at the foot of the sleeve art to your right. Wilfully Obscure has indeed sold out, and in the process has forfeited lock, stock and barrel any remaining shred of credibility to a nebulous. Then one day it all changed. I was at my godmother's house and her son played a record (we often hijacked our parents' stereos back then and they had turntables). CDs were available but they were expensive and the players massively so. Cassettes were the most popular format for albums with singles mainly being sold as 4. CDs. Anyway, he played a single called It's so Easy by a band from America called Guns n' Roses. Have you had one of those defining moments in your life when suddenly you understand everything? An angry sounding mental singer and some kick- ass guitar. They kept saying the F- word too. The song was near irrelevant (it's hardly one of their best). It was the sound and the vibe. Over the next months at school just about everyone had got into this band. It brought people from all years together. Whatever people think and say about Guns n Roses now, to me they were the defining band that kicked the 8. At the very least they were one of the first. Quite simply, everyone I knew got into music. People were discovering new bands left right and center and we were swapping albums at school. It's hard to believe now but MTV was awesome back then. Several bands formed at school. We met other bands from other schools at the gigs and found that pretty much the whole country was into music and going to concerts - especially small local ones. I'm still adamant that Thermal Heaven (demo) would work well at Wembley.)If you didn't like rock (and you weren't some trendy 8. Rave and Jungle instead) then there was an Indie movement happening at the same time. The Stone Roses were kings of this movement and were backed up by Suede, The Charlatans, James and a heap more. You'd tend to like one genre or the other but generally you respected the other people's music and hung out at similar places. Another ground breaking moment was when metal band Metallica performed a new song for the first time at the MTV Music Awards. It was called Enter Sandman and you can watch the performance here. It instantly elevated these kings of metal to being one of the top bands in the world. Their Black album became the ultimate rock/metal crossover success and unified a bedraggled bunch of 8. Dunlop trainers, skinny ripped light- blue jeans, Iron Maiden T- shirts, biker jackets and long permed hair with a fringe) with all those who liked hard rock (and who'd previously been regarded as a separate scene). It was unlike anything we'd heard before. A bit indie but with loud rock guitars. The video featured a bunch of cheerleaders in a school gym and a bloke with a mop. Seattle became the focus for the world of music, Nirvana went stratospheric and we all bought lumberjack shirts. Pearl Jam released Alive shortly after and we discovered a raft of other neighbouring bands like Alice in Chains and Mother Love Bone. The mainstream completely gave up pretending that people still cared about pop. Nirvana appeared on Top of the Pops and attracted a legion of teeny bopper fans not unlike One Direction (much to Cobain's chagrin). New amazing bands appeared out of the blue all the time. A hit movie appeared, . This was followed up by another iffy movie with a stunning soundtrack called Judgment Night which saw some of the coolest bands team up with some top rap acts. Suddenly we were listening to the burgeoning rap scene too which included NWA, Ice- T and Cypress Hill. The Commitments was a massive film. That got everyone listening to classic soul. A tribute album to the Dead Kennedys contributed to us getting listening to punk. The point. I could go on and on. The point is that the music scene of the early 9. As things progressed from the start, we'd identify new bands and then work out who their influences were meaning that we'd start listening to (and buying) music from the 7. Led Zepplin, The Doors (which was another massively popular music movie), Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix et al. Some, like Aerosmith, released their best work (Pump) at that time. As we took up instruments we'd start investigating all the great musicians, especially those featuring guitarists like B. B. King, Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and Les Paul. As we diversified from just rock through to metal, indie, rap, and even club music (The Prodigy can take credit for crossing over those scenes), we went looking for anything that was good. I even bought an Edith Piaf album because I'd loved the soundtrack from the movie French Kiss. If you weren't into anything edgy then you still had massive bands like U2 and INXS to provide a bridge between respectable 'proper' bands and the mainstream. The pop world had Madonna storming the planet with Vogue and Michael Jackson was at his peak. When Freddie Mercury died parents and kids alike watched the tribute concert which opened with Metallica, featured artists like David Bowie and a duet between Axl Rose and Elton John. College bands like REM went ballistic. Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora performed an acoustic medley and unwittingly invented the whole Unplugged movement which got many hard rockers respecting music that wasn't loud. Music festivals all over the world became huge and were packed with great bands. Monsters of Rock at Donnington Park saw some of its greatest shows while Perry Farrell launched Lollapalooza in the US, to name but two. There was something for everyone. Music was all pervasive. We weren't just buying music from our favourite bands but anything that got recommended by the thriving music press or something that got fished out of a bargain bucket. My favourite bands were called Kyuss and The God Machine there were loads of great minor bands to pick from. Guns N Roses were becoming a caricature of themselves. Metallica weren't doing much new and then, out of the blue, Kurt Cobain shot himself. This was incredibly upsetting to me and millions of others and it rather emphasised a change that was in the air. Music (new music in particular) was losing its edge and becoming more commercial. I can put a rough date on the first nail in the coffin for me - the day when devouring new music ended and I went back to listening to music from those bands I already knew - mid 1. MTV, which had been so hugely inspirational for the past five years started putting two acts on very high rotation at the expense of all the angry, angst- ridden good stuff. They were the epitome of sanitized, radio- friendly, power pop shite. They were Buddy Holly by Weezer and Basket Case by Green Day (I've since forgiven Green Day but it took a long time). It seemed MTV was determined to push these bands ahead of all else and for the first time since the 8. I just didn't get much of what was happening in the mainstream music world anymore. Fortunately, 1. 99. North of England who'd been playing gigs in local cinemas and other dives. The band's two brothers were a massive hit with the media but pointedly they didn't sell out. Their rivalry with a soaring Blur kept the spotlight on them. Oasis versus Blur (and the flourishing Brit Pop scene) provided a welcome parachute into a reawakened world of commercial music and a reappearance of pop music. That journey was arguably underlined by the Spice Girls and Take That who represented the final move from 'proper band' and 'live music' Brit Pop into predominantly commercial, industry- friendly music. The good thing about this time was that at least CDs and CD players had matured and dropped in price.
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