Terry Lee - my official artist profile -alivenotdead.com

The Death of Music As We Know.

The Motion: The Death ofMusic As We Know

What I cannot understand is people's continuous rants about the "death of our industry"...

Is it dead? Then how come you, me and all still have work?

I know for sure my music ain't dead. My neighbors have threatened to call the police if I didn't promise to stop hiding at home and cooking up the finest of hits.

This industry isn't dead. The death of the traditional system and medium which music is consumed is FORTUNATELY a victim as the world goes thru the most revolutionizing century of our civilization.

What happened during the Industrialization Revolution? It lasted about a century. The cause of it is plenty just like what we are going through.

We've been talking about the Space Age for decades. 2001 Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Back To The Future 2, etc....and you don't we were going to move towards it?

We are in the Digital Age and as everything moves towards not ever having to leave your couch....

It is only natural that we NOT ONLY accept it but start embracing it.

I don't want to be that person who sits around going "CDs don't sell nowadays".

I've met some record company bosses who still tell me "CDs just don't sell".

My political correct answer is nod. "yes, lo ban. its sad".

My real reply is:

"Shit, are u a fucking imbecile? I knew that since I was 17".

The truth is people will sit around and speak "wisdom" when they don't know what to do.

Truth is...we're 8 years past the "realization" that the industry is dead when it comes to CDs and LEGAL downloads.

Be honest, how many of us LEGALLY DOWNLOAD all the time?

There u go.

The answer is in the experience. How u define an experience is so broad that no one has been able to clearly define what our new "product" is.

Look at how much fun we have on alivenotdead. i have as much fun writing and reading other people's blog as anyone. What we seek is:

Information
Accessibility to stylemakers you may admire.
Anything current
Belonging to a community
Entertainment

These are all elements that new media provides.

I will continue this again.

But think about the bigger point for a minute:

What are searching for in the music industry?

The consumer is never going to pay for music again after Napster. So let's get over it. The consumer will always spend. Therefore called THE CONSUMER.

His wants and needs and above all expectations for quality and what defines it has changed and moved beyond his generation but to all those below too.

We're looking the right way. Just not down the right road.

almost 16 years ago 0 likes 13 comments 0 shares

Raffi

so you don't think there's a market for legal downloads? Apple has done a pretty good job... 5 billion singles sold in like 5 years...

almost 16 years ago

Dan Burns-Findlay

The music industry is alive and well. It's music which is dying. JediJean: Your words give me hope! 10 points for mentioning the word 'audiophile' and being under the age of 30 years old, then an additional 10 bonus points for combining the words 'internet' with 'crap sound quality' :) Although check my blog post about FLAC vs. MP3 format files to remedy that situation. Etchy: Apple has done a good job lowering people's expectation of what a good quality recordings should sound like. And destroyed the LP album format in favor of 30 second long ring-tones into the bargain :) > The consumer is never going to pay for > music again after Napster. So let's get > over it. I agree on that point more than anything else. > These are all elements that new media > provides. For new media, true. But for new music for art's sake? Not at all. Radiohead or Cocteau Twins or Tricky or Massive Attack or Nine Inch Nails or Leonard Cohen never tried to be entertaining, accessible or even current when they made music. They had passion and emotion and a burning desire to create something that needed to be created and the world is a much greater place for them. No matter how flawed the old label system was, it did allow for a few people like them to flourish. The new system [music revenue generated by ad endorsement] only seeks to reward media creators for being commercially acceptable. Lowest common denominator. McDonalds. Which does not bode well for the future. Remember that scene in "Demolition Man" where the Cops are singing along to advertising jingles on the car stereo? The line between advertising (endorsement) and pop music had blurred so much that the two become inseparable. 'Cause without support for artists, thru music sales, you can only generate income through endorsement :) It's an interesting time, will grant you that much. A topic of much discussion amongst my friends , many years already.

almost 16 years ago

Dan Burns-Findlay

> We're looking the right way. > Just not down the right road. The only future is free digital media. How that media gets financed is the confusing issue.

almost 16 years ago

Marie Jost

Dan F, in terms of the state the commercial music industry is in, think back to the late 70s. Although many now regard the 70s as the last heyday of truly universal popular music, a lot of it was junk pure and simple. Commercialism drove the market to produce a great deal of pap for mass consumption. Artists were promoted who were unoriginal and not very talented by the record companies. Payola was rampant on commercial radio (the way most music was commercialized). So what happened--PUNK. A different paradigm was introduced and, while punk never did rule the world, it did change a lot of people's ideas about how music should be created and consumed. And it launched acts that would have been inconceivable before. Honestly, I believe that these things come in cycles. Each time we cycle through, it is a little different. In the early 50s, jazz gave way to rock and roll as the popular music of choice for young people. So now we are on the cusp of some monumental change in music. We just won't know what it is until we're in it up to our eyeballs. Terry--I'm an old foggy (I'm 50), I don't download. I don't own an I-Pod (no need for one, I listen to music in the car or at home, where I have good stereo equipment). A lot of the music I buy is classical and non-Western classical and various types of regional "international" music (what some industry folks call World). Audio quality is important to me. Also, most of this music does not make it to any download site. Most of the people who listen to and buy this sort of music are baby boomers, like me. The industry still hasn't found a way to make it appealing for us to join the download generation, so we buy CDs. The Internet has influenced my buying habits enormously, though. Now, if I want music from Hong Kong, I can order it off the Internet. Ditto for music from Argentina, Spain, Brazil, Iran, North Africa, wherever. Music that used to be extremely hard to track down if you weren't visiting its country of origin is now widely available world-wide. What was a little trickle of exposure to music around the world, of all types and style, is now a tidal wave. I must say, I'm delighted.

almost 16 years ago

Andy On

Shut up and go watch The Dark Knight! ps. You're a sexy beast.

almost 16 years ago

Dan Burns-Findlay

Hi again Marie ... we're having this ongoing dialogue on about twenty different pages now :) The 70's were a bit 'wild west' in terms of money making. I reckon late 80's was the financial heyday of the industry and the early 90's was when things we settled. After '95 all hell started breaking loose. That aside, The Sex Pistols became extremely notorious off the back of the established system despite how much they despised it. It did grant them an audience they would have otherwise never reached. On a side note - there hasn't been any significant shift in contemporary music for a long time. Rock from jazz. Punk for rock thru new wave falling into Hip-hop ... actually, I'll blog that later I think.

almost 16 years ago

Marie Jost

DanF--my comment about the new paradigm that punk introduced had more to do with who was making the music and how. Suddenly the idea was that anyone could pick up a guitar, a bass or a pair of drumsticks, form a band and make music. Clubs were filled with people who had never been in a band before performing. All kinds of small and independent record labels sprung up. There was a lot of local action, it wasn't all coming out of national acts. I remember being in Chicago and then Chapel Hill, NC while this was all happening and being amazed by how many new acts sprung up locally each month. There were special shows at the local clubs that showcased all this local music, in addition to the bigger national and international touring acts. It really was music for the people by the people. This was a very big part of the whole "do it yourself" movement in music that has been so aided and abetted by the personal computer and all the recording software that has been available for it in the past decade.

almost 16 years ago

Dan Burns-Findlay

JediJean: it's not the internet to blame, it's the file formats which are being passed around and labelled "CD Quality" when clearly they are not - are the porblem. MP3's and iPod while kinda useful, do more harm than good to people's perceptions. But if you do accept & listen to CDs (what else is there?!) then I will stand behind FLAC as a format. FLAC is a bit for bit loss-less copy of the PCM data stored on CDs with all the archiving benefits of compressed formats. FLAC is not compressed. It is exactly then same. MJ: re: Punk - gotcha! Mis-interpreted your comment.

almost 16 years ago

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Languages Spoken: english, cantonese, mandarin
Location (City, Country): Taipei, Taiwan
Gender: male
Member Since: November 20, 2007