Did Steve Jobs Kill Music? - Page 3

There've been some polls on one of the largest audio production forums about what sample rate people work in. The bulk of the votes were for 44.1K for the actual production format, because really you can't hear much difference and the difference in processing overhead is significant. Everyone uses 24 bit for production purposes of course, because that's a big win at the production stage, and there's probably more argument for the larger bit depth than for a higher sample rate.

I would imagine that some of the difference you hear comes from the fact that the folks making those SACD/DVD-A releases knew they were making them for audiophiles and just put more TLC into them.

It is the case that if the standard delivery format was 24/96, then more people would just do it whether it had any real benefits or not, since there's no reason not to do production at at least the delivery format level. But I'm not sure most people would hear much difference in reality.

I generally use 44.1K or 48K for production purposes. 88.2 and 96K place a very high burden on the production computer when using heavier weight synths, convolution reverbs, etc... It's often just so not practical to do it.

I bought my first record player in oct. 09, and 3 days later on craigs list a couple was moving and no longer wanted to cart their record collection to the next house, again.

Great albums from their entire lives, the Doors, floyd, sabbath, and so many more I would never listen to.

I had these people's entire music lives in 6 milk crates, and as I would pull them out I would think of what was going on in their lives and the wold as I'd listen to them and read the liners.

Lossy formats nearly destroyed music, which Steve Jobs promoted with the iPod. Much of the music is just left out and compressed which is especially noticeable with large scale classical and jazz. What's most popular today has no complexity so doesn't suffer. I've given up on lossy formats and am purchasing CDs, lossless downloads and HD Tracks. I have some mp3's including Beethoven's symphonies that I also have the same performance on CDs and the mp3's and apple's compressd versions and the compressed one's are unlistenable to me. I'm certain part of this is having a trained ear. Most people couldn't care less and just listen to their moronic rap without the slightest idea that's something missing as there is no complexity to the "music."

Steve Jobs didn't kill music, it was the record execs. The record execs keep releasing crap and are hanging on to the notion that the internet(read: digital downloads) is evil. The only thing Steve Jobs did was help kill B&M record stores, people like to buy a few songs instead of a whole album. You can still buy CD's online or at certain department stores. The same can be said about the demise of video stores, Netflix and the internet killed them.

I like Jon Bon Jovi but he is way off the mark here.

As for sample rate and bit depth, I think CD's should be 48KHz/24 bit but it's too late to implement. HDCD's(20 bit) were a great idea but Microsoft killed them and hybrid discs are dead as well.

Jon Bon Jovi hasn't put out a catching tune since 1987 and he is blaming
Steve Jobs?

The record industry got what was coming to them..

Hey Jon ..... waaaaaaaahhhh! waahhhhh!!
go away no one cares

The obvious answer to the question that makes up the title of this thread is a simple and resounding NO! Music is neither dead nor dying.

The "industry" is simply evolving. It has always evolved. Things change. Musicians are not going to stop being born. Consumers will still be able to find music they like to listen too. Some will happily pay for it, some will not. Nothing will stop musicians from making music or stop their fans from listening to and enjoying it. AND we can still listen to all the music that has ever been recorded ever! How cool is that?

The dynamics and logistics of the music industry have changed. Period. Some like it, some do not. It is no different than ANYTHING else.

If everyone agreed on everything, the internet would be so boring.

Now everyone go put on your favorite album (or single if you prefer), in whatever format you want....vinyl, SACD, pirated MP3, etc....and just enjoy the thing so much you forget this thread exists.

YES, it IS different from anything else. There is no other industry in the world that suffers from this level of theft. The people who like it tend to be the ones who are stealing whatever they want, and the ones who don't like it tend to be the ones getting ripped off. And for obvious reasons that any of us would share if we were the ones getting ripped off. It is NOT something that any industry or individual should have to just get used to or deal with.

You took my comment out of context Dean....and I agree with your statement. I was referring to the prior statement about some people liking it and others not. Which IS like anything else.

Until they create and enforce policies to effectively control the digital distribution and transfer of their product, the people who steal music will continue to do so. Sure there are laws already in place, but who is policing it? The RIAA has taken some big steps in recent years, but they have not scratched the surface yet.

The DRM policies are the tricky part. There is a seemingly fine line between making sure someone can truly OWN media content without restrictions on how, when and where they can use it, and making sure they cannot illegally distribute it. And no one will ever be able to come up with a plan that everyone benefits from and agrees on. This "war" will continue until the end of time as we know it.

The Woz created the PC;
The Music Industry alienated the public off with their $15-$18.00 standard album pricing;
The world's science community created the internet;
The Internet enabled file sharing (or mass copyright breaches);
The less than moral realm of the public revolted against high prices, considered only their "me generation needs" and capitalized on the internet's easy access to anything they want for free;
Jobs capitalized on that just as he does everything in the world, added a 50% markup on it and laughed all the way to the bank.

Car thieves didn't kill the auto industry because they have a local and viable check to prevent jacking of their product - the police of the world.

There are no police in the internet world to enforce copyright amongst the billions of thieves jacking the music industry's product.

Thus, the lack of a real internet police and copyright enforcement scheme killed the music industry. Until that changes the industry is on a joy ride out to the lake and isn't comming back.

Why is it that people don't understand that you AREN'T paying for the piece of plastic, you are paying for what's on the piece of plastic. The movie, or the music, or the software didn't cost pennies to produce. It cost from many thousands to many millions to billions of dollars to produce. That's like arguing why milk doesn't cost pennies because the plastic jug it's in only cost pennies. Nothing is priced based on the container it's shipped in.

Not to mention that the cost of the CD has not gone up since it came out, and actually has gone down in dollar amount, while inflation has gone up 2.5x or so in that period of time. So the actual cost of a CD today is really probably 3x less than what it was. So in the greater scheme of things it's a very good deal. And clearly that many times over covers the reduction in the actual price of the production of the piece of plastic.

I couldn't agree more !!!

Autotune killed music (not only Disney stuff, listen to Glee, even latest 2 albums by Michael Buble use Autotune)
Craptastic recording quality killed music
I almost never use iTunes because none of the song I'm looking for is available at VBR MP3 level.

At the same time, music does NOT have to cost millions to produce if the artist and the recording engineers have talent. Yes, the cost needs to be recouped and it is a business, but releasing 1-2 good songs crammed into a 10-song craptastic album and selling it for $13 (average price in Canada) is just BEGGING to be pirated.

It's the little kid in everyone that enjoys getting their candy for free, and they even get to feel a little naughty in their rooms late at night when they finally downloaded the last song of an album complete.I'm the typical resourceful hypocrite. If I paid for all the music I enjoy, i simply wouldn't have it. I couldn't afford it. And wouldn't listen to or want more of it.

With the tools that are available now it's 1000x easier to find new music and emerging artists. And that's for things You like. Online radio is single handedly saving the music industry. Satellite bridged a temporary gap to keep or rolling, but that's gone. Dump your stock now. I remember being up all night listening to Spinner with a pad of paper writing down artists and songs. Then came Amazon and the"here's other artists like the one your liking at. Now the pinnacle of all, PANDORA. Finally someone really payed attention. Oh, and what's this? They pay the artists through advertising, or you can pay them by getting an inexpensive subscription. Most but not all the music in my genres are at a low and the popularity contest is at the forefront, but wait. The critical mass is forming, just like every generation. I think it's sad that that's all people strive for, but you tube is hot and people want to be popular. But still there are the VaDrum's out there that had no where to go a few years ago. Music evolves with culture. When that changes, so will it. Too bad it just sucks as bad as it does rightnow...

Again, you have to understand the business before you make these types of arguments. And, BTW, NOTHING is begging to be pirated. The manufacturer of any product has the right to set the price. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But don't use it as an excuse to steal it. If you do, then be prepared for others to make the same assessment of the value of what you do.

The cost of the music is only part of the cost. If they spend $50K making an album, and don't promote it, then they might as well have flushed that $50K down the toilet. If generally costs far more to promote the album, so that people know it's available and who the artist is and all that, than it does to make the music. That is an important part of the process.

And the music business has an 85% failure rate. There's nothing that can be done about that becaues of the nature of the business. There's no way to know ahead of time what will work and what will not. All they can do is throw material at the wall and see what sticks. So the winners have to cover all those losers. The only way to lower that rate is to take absolutely no chances, which is not what we want. We want them to take more chances, but that will only happen when they have healthy revenues, as was the case up until downloading started.

Of course in today's environment the immediate response would be, well I don't think I should pay for their mistakes. But that's just sillness. It's the nature of the business. If they couldn't cover the cost of those losers with the winners, they wouldn't be doing it at all.

As to the couple good songs thing. Again, that's not a reasonable complaint. Artists don't purposefully put crap songs on their albums. The fact that you don't like the other ones as much doesn't mean that they are bad songs. And, come on, $13 for something that you can listen to for years as many times as you want? It's just outrageous to me that people would try to make out like this is some sort of massive rip off. Particularly when they have those songs they stole (justifying it by the high price of a CD) on their latest gen iPad, which they of course purchased after tossing away their previous gen iPad, which they only put down to play their latest Xbox games on their 52" plasma TV.

This just isn't true. The streaming music companies are barely hanging on, because almost no one buys the subscriptions. And they pay almost nothing to the artists. The amount of money paids is insanely small. It will never make up for the loss of actual sales of the music, not even close.

There's a good image out there somewhere that shows the relative sizes of revenues from sales of music through various means. It's quite an eye opener. Even someone like Lady Gaga wouldn't make much of a living if she depending on streaming sources for all her income. Someone who is trying to do the off the grid independent thing, if they got 100,000 streams a year, which would be large for that type of act, would make more working at Burger Kind, quite a bit more actually.

MP3s, iPods, and iTunes have not ruined the industry. That's like saying that guns cause war.

No, if anything has harmed the business side of music, it's the alarming lack of ethics in our society. You should not steal just because you can get away with it. Simple concept. Difficult problem to solve.

So then "resourceful hypocrite" is now a politically correct term for "unethical glutton"?

I guess go ahead and do whatever you have to do to sleep at night.

Ah, but something is better than nothing. They certainly make better margins by other means, but those other means inherently have limitations. Limitations that prevent the proliferation of all that is non mainstream.

The radio is a great example of breaking even. That's about the ratio of songs to ads that can support itself with a full staff.

Here's a thought, there would be a lot more musicians if there were no industry. They would make a living like everyone else, but there would be no international stars.

I wouldn't say I'm proud of it. More an example of the electronic generation where everything is at your fingertips.

However, like everyone should, support your artists by going to see them. I do. I just like to keep listening to them when I get home.

That's not remotely true. Everyone knows that there is far more music out there than what is most popular. But most people aren't looking for other music. Don't blame the industry for that. They aren't preventing non-mainstream music from getting out. There are plenty of indie labels that provide that. But the reason those labels are small and indie and not large is because most people don't consume non-mainstream music, which is why it's non-mainstream.

The public drives what music gets made. If you think that the industry is passing up huge sales of some other kind of music because they have some kind of agenda that they consider more important than making money, you are definitely wrong. They are happy to sell what sells. When kids liked grunge, they sold grunge. If kids like Lady Gaga, they'll sell Lady Gaga. Don't blame them if what kids like today is not your kind of music.


I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to point out here. Radio is a conduit for other people's content. They pay nothing to create the content, so they have a fraction of the costs. It's a completely different business. You can't support product companies through advertising because you bear the costs of creating the content. You have to sell it to make your money.


There are already a huge number of musicians. The only difference is that unlike now, where some of them get a chance at being well known and generating enough revenues to provide another crop of musicians the same chance, none of them would. They'd all be working at Burger King and Costco and making amateurish albums in their bedrooms on the weekends.

And of course the entire music production studio business would collapse and there would be no more folks out there with the expertise to make high quality music. Most artists are NOT capable of making great sounding music, because they don't have the technical expertise or the facilities to do so.

Can anyone guess the fastest-growing musical format in 2010?

The answer is here

But of course that's a bit misleading. Going from zero to one is an infinite amount of growth, but it's still only one. There's just no way vinyl will ever be an important factor again. Even the CD is almost done for at this point. Higher quality optical formats pretty much died on the vine from lack of interest from the masses. Maybe blu-ray, as it becomes more well entrenched, might provide a viable delivery vehicle for high quality music.

But kids drive the music industry mostly and they would rather have a crap MP3 (that they didn't pay for) in their iPod earbuds than a high quality listening environment where you have to actually sit still and commit time to music enjoyment. Them days seem to be gone down the ADD drain.

Even I have trouble with it and I'm not youngster anymore (unfortunately.) I do sit down occasionally and do 30 minutes or an hour's worth of eyes closed music listening in my little music studio. But I used to put on The Wall or Mellon Collie or any number of albums and just completely disappear into it for the whole album. I'm not sure I could even do that anymore. I've been infected myself I think. Alanis had it right. Here can you handle this?.... Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines.

There are occasional points of hope, like MGMT or M83 and stuff like that, Kings of Leon, etc...

I think stealing music is wrong but I also believe the industry and artists contributed to the problem. Everybody in the industry had to make millions of dollars rather than a comfortable living and that lead to high prices. I understand that is capitalism, make as much money as you can, but I think they priced their product higher than what it was worth to people so when the ability to steal the music came along people took it. I am not saying it is right but that is what I believe happened. While I know people are still stealing music I think the billions of downloads being sold now show that people will pay when a product is reasonably priced. I think the movie studios found this out. When the video cassettes first came out they were most times $100 or more so people made copies. Now that you can buy a dvd for less than $15 I think there is a whole lot less stealing of movies than if they were still $100.

I think people also resented having to pay for the same song multiple times as the delivery method changed. Somebody said you are not paying for the delivery, you are paying for the content but I disagree. I have paid for the same song on vinyl, cassette, CD and downloads so I have paid for the same content multiple times, the only thing changing was the delivery method. I resent having to pay multiple times for a song so I have very little sympathy for the music industry.

I also think that as the price of downloads go up, you may find that more people will go back to stealing the music. I bought a lot of downloads at 99 cents but I am much more discerning at $1.29 and will be even more if it goes up higher. Again, the industry has the right to set whatever price they feel is right but unfortunately for the industry, the public has a way to fight those high prices by stealing.

Ok sure, but with advances in recording technology you can record in your home studio for cheaper than ever.

I think albums with six figure production budgets are few and far between these days. Sure the marketing budgets can be quite a bit more, but in reality a sizable chunk of the price of a CD is going to pay the salaries of executives who are stuck in the stone age. I mean we are talking about an industry that at one point wanted to try and keep people from selling their own property back to stores as used. Is it really such a shocker that people don't necessarily want to give them their money and also don't view the $17.99 CD as a "good deal"?

If the price was $9.99, if you sell 100,000 copies, which was nothing back in the hey day of the industry in the 90s, then that's 1 million gross. If the majority of the public thinks the price is fair not only does it drive up demand, but it becomes quite a bit more morally objectionable to steal it.

You can make a record that sounds like you made it in your home studio for cheaper than ever, that's true. Most people will make complete crap sounding albums in their home studios, because it actually requires a lot of skill to make a good sounding album. It takes even more skill to make one when you are fighting the room and the equipment.


This is just standard downloader rationalization #4 or thereabouts. You have no idea what anyone makes at most of the labels I'm sure.


This is number 10 or something. Do you really think that the people out there stealing music have the slightest clue about anything? No, they don't. They aren't stealing it because some record company did this or that. They are just stealing it, period. And not very many CDs cost $17.88, and for those that do (probably bought in a B&M store that might still exist), not nearly all of that goes to the record company.


That was nothing for the biggest selling acts. The problem is that very few of them sell even that many. That's why the sales of the ones that do are so key to the record industry's revenues. And of course the ones that would have sold the most back in the day, are now the ones that are also stolen the most.


This is clearly not true, as evidenced by the facts on the ground. People are NOT stealing because of the price of the CD, they are just stealing. If it was half the price they'd still steal it.

NO, they do not. They have the right to either buy it, or not consume it at all. They have absolutely ZERO right to steal it. It's against the law, so it's not a right.


Everybody in the industry does NOT make millions of dollars. The point at which music was the most important and some of the biggest selling years (relative to what came before) were during the 70s when top artists typically made way more money than now. And of course the sales were going up until downloading became possible. Do you really think that suddenly in the year that the Napster case made it widely known that you could get music for free that that's when people suddenly decided that music costs too much and all rocks stars were rich and therefore they should still music? Of course not. They started stealing it because they could, and they continue to do it though hardly any musicians make large amounts of money anymore and the industry sales are half what they were in 1999.

So I just wish people would stop trying to push this standard excuse.


So, what? You wish that music was still on 8-track? Do REALLY think that they owe you a CD becasue you bought a cassette tape back in the early 80s or something?

Yeah pro tools is sooo hard to use..


Wow so you know everything and everyone else knows nothing, got it. I've worked in record stores, so I know that the margin that the store gets is about 25-30%, typically $5 on a $16 CD. The artist gets $1-2 if they are lucky after "packaging" deductions by the label. That leaves 60% to be divided between the label and the distributor.



You clearly don't know what you are talking about, back in the 90s even one hit wonder bands like The Toadies, Belly and Better Than Ezra went platinum, that's ten times the number that I cited. Clearly only huge acts could sell 1/10th of that! Even today a band like Wilco, hardly a household name, can still sell 100,000 copies of a record in a single week.


http://www.wilcoworld.net/promo/down..._PR_070809.pdf


Clearly you can't prove that. In any event I'm not saying that no one would steal if the product was cheaper, but that it would reduce the amount of theft. It's a simple cost/benefit analysis, at some price point it stops being worth the time and risk involved to track down illegal downloads to an extent that just buying the item is the more attractive option to a larger number of people.

Also, did you say artists made more in the 70s than now? Sounds like you haven't been to a concert since that time, everyone knows that's where the real money is and it far, far more lucrative now than it was back then.

A computer isn't hard to use either, but let's see you write a high quality application without years of experience. It has nothing to do with how easy the tool is to use, it's about being able to record good MUSIC, how to create great compositions and record them well. I've been working hard at music production now for four years, and I'm just now getting to the point where it's not embarrassing. It takes many years to learn to make really good sounding music. And it's easy to see that this is true if you hang around other musicians who are doing the same.

And of course if you want to put a small string ensemble on your album, that sounds like a real string ensemble, then you aren't likely to do that in your bedroom. Or a choir. Or any number of other instruments that would never have access to or be able to reasonable record realistically in your bedroom.

And most artists are not technical at al on this front and couldn't do anything on the recording front themselves. So this is just a silly argument. I'm sure that people could make prescription drugs in their bedrooms as well, but it wouldn't be considered a good thing to try it.

The whole premise of this type of argument is absurd, and it's straight out of the downloaders rationalization handbook. People are breaking the law on a mass scale, Do you blame them for doing wrong? No, you start talking about how people should just make music in their bedrooms instead, and work at Burger King.


And you think that this is wrong? The artist was fronted money to create the album and the promotion of the album by the label. The artist doesn't cover the other losses, the artist doesn't pay anyone else's salaries, etc.... There's absolutely nothing wrong with that equation. If the artist wants to take a bigger slice of the pie, he can go out on his own and finance his own albums and promotion. And then he'll figure out why he only gets a small slice of that pie.

Any time in business that you go to someone else to finance your dream, you will not get the bulk of the rewards. That's just the way it goes. The same applies in the venture capital world. If you want to keep all the rewards, you have to do it yourself. And you soon find out why people go to venture capitalists.



I said today. And you cliearly haven't looked at the stats. Check the Neilson stats on sales. You will find that a tiny percentage of albums or songs EVER sell more than about 1000 copies. It's amazing how small. Yes, when one does well, it can do quit well, far less so now days. But it's actually a very small number, and of course those have to cover all the other bands that lost money. And those will be the most pirated of all, because they are most popular.


The cost of CDs has gone down considerably since 1999, but theft has gone up. If the cost was the factor, then theft would have not been going up. They were buying lots of music at the higher price up until downloading became possible. Music sales had been going up steadily. Downloading starts, prices go down, downloading goes up and up. How much more proof do you need?

And yeh, if someone wants to sell their entire album for $1 or something, maybe it becomes easier to buy than steal for some number of people. But that's pretty irrelevant. Are you willing to work for the amount that people would be willing to pay you compared to stealing what you do with zero consequences? I doubt it.


For a very small number of acts it's lucrative. But I was talking about music sales. And of course it's the music sales that provides the revenues for providing the leg up for the next round of acts, not concert revenues that go to the artist. Though now, because of the huge theft of music, the labels are now demanding a cut of the live revenues as well, since that's the only way they can get their money back in many cases.


And of course this thread has gone exactly the way I said it would, i.e. pages of people explaining why it's the fault of the people getting stolen from, and appologizing for theft, explaining why people should be happy getting anything at all for music, etc...

It is wrong. But don't take it from me, I'll let Steve Albini educate you.

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

There's no education there. Look, if you want to get somewhere in life, and you aren't willing to finance it yourself, then you have to swin with the sharks. That's just the way it works. No one is going to risk a large amount of money on you, and then just let you keep all the rewards. It ain't gonna happen.

According to one book I have on the boom years here in Silicon Valley, the average CEO of a company that went to the VCs to finance his company, by the time it went public, had 6% ownership in his own company. Someone might think, well that's just stupid, why would anyone do that. They do it because 6% of a big number is a still a lot more than %100 of a very small number.

If I came to you and said, hey, I have this idea that has about a 10% chance of succeeding. Give me $500,000. If it does well, I'll give you you $600,000 back, and I'll keep the rest. You would fall over laughing. You are the one risking $500,000. If it does well, you would keep the bulk of the rewards, because you took the risk. And, if you were doing this for a business, and had many millions at risk all the time, only 1 out of 10 of which did well, you'd want even more of the rewards. You would be stupid to do otherwise.

And, yes, people get ripped off in business. It happens all the time. It's your responsibility as a business person to be on alert and not sign anything stupid. If you do, it's no one's fault but your own. And a lot of bands sign stupid things without understanding it.

But still, when people get the chance, they go with the label, because that's where the opporunity to get a small part of a big pie lies. It's not going to happen on your own. And most artists aren't remotely capable of even running a small business, much less a fairly substantial undertaking. Wilco, who you mentioned, signed with Warner Reprise, and when they were let go from that label, they didn't go out on their own or go to some small label, they went to another large label owned by the same parent company.

And of course plenty of them will go with smaller labels, who clearly are not blood sucking in any way. And do you think that those small label's albums aren't being stolen just as much? The only way it would happen less is just the degree to which the small labels don't have the marketing muscle to make their artists more widely known, or to the extent that they deal in out of the mainstream music that just has a much smaller market.

So the theft going on has zip to do with the activity of labels, and it's just a smokescreen to try to thrown that up. As I indicated earlier, if you want to bet me $1000, we go to the mall, stop a random selection of kids with iPods and ask them what labels the stolen music they have on their iPod is from. If even 10% of know 10% of the right answers, you would win. Would you be willing to bet $1000 on that? If you did you would lose.