This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.

It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue — recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.

[…]

The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.

Huge stuff, and I’m willing to bet that the same holds true (albeit in larger numbers) for American artists. There’s some great graphs that clearly demonstrate the trend included with the article, go check it!

(via Times Labs Blog)

“It’s the first time I’ve seen rats swimming toward a sinking ship.”

(Via ★ Daring Fireball by way of Fake Steve Jobs.)

So let’s get this straight. The music labels think we should pay more for a song downloaded from a server that isn’t theirs, over a network that isn’t theirs, because, well, just because. One gets the feeling that, if given the chance, music executives would just hire thugs to mug anyone on the street wearing white earbuds.

Sadly, the music industry is still one of the most corrupt businesses around, seeking to do the most profitable thing in the short term, instead of investing in its customers or striving to create new business models. The looming threat of the truly independent musician to the old world order of the music label makes them grasp even tighter to hang on to what they can. I realize we’ve heard this all before, but when put so frankly like Gruber has, I cannot help but add my own two cents.

(Via ★ Daring Fireball)

Seems that Warner didn’t do too well money-wise this fiscal year. According to an article at Mashable!, it seems they did $5 million in profit out of $869 million in revenue. Seems they’re finally feeling the pinch from going to war against their consumers. As quoted in the article:

The RIAA and the lesser known but similar IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) receive funding primarily from EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal. Estimates put the combined funding at an approximate $132.48 million a year. Sony and Universal haven’t been recently vocal about their feelings on the RIAA, but Time Warner CEO Egar Bronfman recently confessed that ‘We were wrong to go to war with consumers.’

The article at Mashable goes on to compare these profits to Radiohead’s recent “pay if you want to” bit with their latest album, saying:

That’s right, even by the most critical of earnings estimates, Radiohead made between half as much to as high as twice as much as the entire Warner label made in profit this year.

When you can make more money giving music away, do you think that perhaps it is time for a new strategy, Bronfman?

(Via PaidContent by way of Mashable!)

The US House of Representatives has gone a step further in helping the helpless RIAA and MPAA in defending themselves from the monstrous and looming threat of college students with P2P clients. For a while there, I was worried that mom and pop entertainment companies would no longer be able to afford the salaries of those that produce the entertainment for us consumers, but lucky for us Congress is on the job.

In the House Education and Labor Committee’s comprehensive College Opportunity and Affordability Act, there is a small section dictating that any university in receipt of federal funding shall act as an enforcement agents for the stoppage of unlawful downloading. The committee unanimously approved the bill today.

This comes hot on the heels of Warner head’s apology for going to war with its customers, but perhaps he forgot to remind his lobbyists that his customers include kids in college. No matter, though; defunding American higher education is a small price to pay to ensure we remain entertained.

[via ZDnet — courtesy of Mashable]

Spot the difference:

What a week. From the moment Radiohead announced their plans for latest release ‘In Rainbows’ we’ve been itching to see how you, the listeners, would respond. We let our friends over at Drowned In Sound in on some early data after just 12 hours. Now that our weekly charts are compiled there’s not much else to say apart from ‘Wowzer’. Below you can see the Last.fm global tracks chart for last week, and below that the official UK downloads chart for the same period. Spot the difference?

Last.fm global tracks chart for week ending October 14th

Official UK downloads chart — Week Starting October 15th

(Via Last.fm – the Blog.)

Linkin Park’s singles often inspire the question “haven’t they already written this song?” An mp3 that does the rounds from time to time mixes Numb (on the left) and Pushing Me Away (on the right) to illustrate this with almost comical effect: All Linkin Park Songs Sound Exactly The Same.

As shown below, and forgive the hyperbole, much more than they sound the same all Linkin Park songs look the same. And while it’s easy to criticize the band for their overuse of a formula that’s by now cliche, the similarity between their tracks at least holds a lesson on the importance of song arrangement in pop music production.

Each image above shows the audio level in (roughly) the first 90 seconds of a Linkin Park song. The tempo has been adjusted for a few tracks for better visual alignment.

Kinda ridiculous. And that, my friends, is why so many songs on the radio sound the same. Formulaic structure & composition.

(Via Hometracked)

[Edit] Seems the link is now dead, and to see the article you have to search the archives & register. Sorry!