Some recent articles you may have missed:
I daresay most indie artists experience a visceral glee while reading these words in Rolling Stone:
Just a few years ago, many [music] industry executives thought their problems could be solved by bigger hits. “There wasn’t anything a good hit couldn’t fix for these guys,” says a source who worked closely with top executives earlier this decade. “…Now, very few of those people are still heads of the companies.“
(Emphasis mine.) When Rolling Stone gets on board the record industry is dead train, can the record industry actually be anything but well and truly dead?
So who killed the record industry as we knew it? “The record companies have created this situation themselves,” says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group … [M]any in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels’ failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. “They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster.”
The article also has an incomprehensible quote from the RIAA:
The RIAA maintains that the lawsuits are meant to spread the word that unauthorized downloading can have consequences. “It isn’t being done on a punitive basis,” says RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol.
That’s right, the RIAA aren’t trying to punish the stroke victims, kids, and dead people they sue. They’re simply charging a premium for a basic lesson in cause and effect.
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Sales of Green Glue must be through the roof after their reference in Wired’s How to Soundproof an Apartment to Muffle Your Wife’s Drumming. The article mentions a few products, so it comes across a little sales-pitchey, but it also has some great tips on soundproofing an apartment:
Noise problems are typically complex and multifaceted, and as our acoustic consultant told us, sound is like water: block it from traveling along one path, and it will simply find another.
To make matters worse, applying almost any soundproofing measure is harder in practice than it seems in theory.
Soundproofing materials can be difficult to work with, contractors aren’t always familiar with them, and the quirks of existing construction can derail even the best-laid plans.
Finally, a quick interview with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, in which he discusses some of the tools they use:
we don’t do anything with the computer apart from record and edit. The computer’s a tape machine for us, so it just comes back out into the desk. I like harmonic distortion, and when you take away a tape machine you take away about seven tiny layers of harmonic distortion
Tags: music-business
