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Straight to Video
Rock Art Rock
PJ Harvey
SXSW, Austin TX
March 21, 2009
By Brian Birzer "The PJ Harvey photos I took on Saturday night, March 21st, in a lot of ways were the payoff for the week of chaos that was SXSW 2009..."
Chhom Nimol from Dengue Fever
(and her dress collection)
Austin, TX
April 27, 2009
By Brian Birzer "Chhom Nimol is the singer of Los Angeles based Dengue Fever..."
Raymond Pettibon
Santa Monica, CA
March 1, 2009
By Brian Birzer "I met Raymond Pettibon at the Rock Paper Scissors show in Santa Monica on May 1st of last year..."
Scott Weiland
Austin, TX
January 16, 2009
By Brian Birzer "I took an assignment from Rolling Stone to cover the opening night of Scott Weiland's solo tour a the beginning of 2009..."
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On the Horizon: The Future of the Record Label
by: Jason Thomas
The common thread that binds those of us who span those generations is the music, the soundtrack to our lives. And there’s a decent chance that most of us have a healthy respect for the music adored by those in generations not our own. Where we differ dramatically, however, is how we all discovered and acquired those works of art that so helped shape our everyday lives. The companies that were the original entities who produced and made available music since the phenomenon of popular culture are still around, but they are failing miserably and no longer seem relevant to those of us, well… those of us likely to read this column.
Many people from the earlier generations could often just listen to the radio to find solid rock ‘n’ roll, and even for those on the hipper side of the fence there existed a large and hardly secretive counterculture that was prone to gathering at large music festivals where underground community thrived. Those from the middle generations grew up skeptical, battered by disco, put off by Reagan, and possibly driven insane by what new wave was shaped into by the mainstream. Driven to college radio and hanging out in local record stores, you likely found yourself eagerly awaiting EPs and LPs ordered from distant towns to show up in the mailbox, the feeling of opening each sleeve an indescribable sensation. For those of us who remain consummate seekers of music in a post-Napster world we have to only look to that magical network of fiber-optic cable that leads us to Blogland. We almost never purchase music, and if we do, we increasingly expect neat little files to be delivered to our desktops.
Across the recording industry, record sales have been falling over the last several years. In 2007 alone sales were down 17 percent. What should a label that looks to bring good new music into the collective consciousness look like in the future, given the rapid decline in the recording industry’s main revenue stream? The big record companies are likely to always be around. Even many of the more successful labels outside of the Big Four still rely on their bigger counterparts for distribution. Then there are the big independents. But what is the future of the little startup label? No longer are 18-year-olds with disposable income sending off for copies of the small run EPs that sustained the smallest labels in the past.
There has been a noticeable shift in the way the biggest labels are trying to run their business. They have increasingly turned to other revenue streams aside from album sales. In an unusual opening of the accounting books by the British Phonographic Industry the UK’s Financial Times reports: “The BPI, a UK trade body, said that 11.4 percent of record labels’ revenues came from areas such as copyright licensing, merchandise, and sponsorship deals.” In the shift away from focusing on record sales, the record labels have slashed their A&R departments, which are responsible for finding and developing new acts.
I see in this a new role for small labels of the future. Like the 50-year-old Island Records, which was the most successful independent record label in history before its sale to PolyGram in 1989, these smaller labels could help reshape the industry in a rapidly changing time, while making the musical world a better place.
Pages: 1 2
by: Jason Thomas
published: July 23, 2008
in column: The Smoke-Filled Room
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