The blogs and socials have been blowing up over the recent to most news that new music is not selling as well as old music. However, as I pointed out here, news about what is happening in the Music biz doesn't always circulate in the Main Stream Media so information like this often seems like a suprise.
Moreover; there is a very simple reason why it's happening -- the music made before the auto hits ruled the airwave, it was better. Now why it's better is from a number of reasons some of which are too much technology and others include the use of factory line processes to churn out hits. In a factory how much diversity is there? Not much, right.
The human ear, mind, and HEART needs music that is about something and or finds a place that wasn't being occupied by sound at the time and the right song, meleody or whatever it is that makes music, music...
It's a jagged little edge or a black hole sun that stirs our imagination, not the same micro-seconds reprocessed over-and-over again. We want to pour through the liner notes, look at the art and see where that music fits into our world and when it does there's just something magical about it and when you try to make it a process instead of a discovery the magic cannot find a place to bond to the music.
For those that have been part of a creative process the alchemy of events, peoples, weather and timing all come together, or not, and the hows and why's aren't really documentable. It's just that feeling and it makes it's way into the recording process. Maybe it's love and that spark goes from the minds to words to each song; And, carries into the engineering, mastering and manufacturing and the gestalt of a recording is just much bigger then the limited creative soul that multinationals are kinda know to have since they've always got their mind on the money.
Too bad giving them money it's on the minds of today's record buyers?
Now what does this all mean? Is there more afoot and what is the bigger question? Let go back to last years midyear report from Nelison and it was 1st starting to show the decline of the hits and the power of being in a catalog, which is something that the majors wanted to keep from the indies. Back in 2013 I was starting to really focus in on the lack of cooperation and hoped the news about catalog sales would be a final blow to the notion of Doing it Yourself "DYI" and that being part of a distribution catalog was everything. Of course, the music biz is just one of those things they don't teach you in music biz school or on the Intertubes. One usually finds out by being in it, luck helps, and after years of not being a catalog or having already been in one the value of it start to become self evident.
Our company, Altavoz, has been preparing for this day, when the back catalog was again worth something, think the best kind of passive income, and having a Back-catalog Distribution Deal now is the play!
Coming up in the next few weeks Altavoz will make another announcement or two that will further reshape how music, particularly pre-1972, masters and recordings are brought back to the public domain.
PS Physcial is leading in sales over digital with 53.1% of the total market.
