wappinghigh
Well-known Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2011
- Messages
- 185
I want to thank jimby for his incredible insight.
I am definitely one of those bloggers who "thought they new everything about the music industry". Now I know a lot more (from their point of view)
There will always be new formats. And better ways of delivering music. Obviously the current way is via the net. So the industry must embrace this. Right NOW. With ALL resolutions. If they can't be bothered to do this now, then why be bothered at all being in business? As for hi rez not making money...well this is often the case is it not?...The premium product might break even, even lose money, just to sell the next level of quality down by the truck load. But whether the online store method will remain the dominant way of music delivery 10 years from now, well that is a mute point. By then we may have hirez stereo and surround internet radio stations. Rhapsody 5.1...Who knows. The point is if the industry doesn't embrace change, it will never remain in the game. It can't just roll over and die ! Or all we will be listening to in 10 -20 years is tin can catalog stuff from a torrent site in Shanghai...maybe even in Chinese... The industry HAS to always have a premium product out there in the market. Premium product is what life is all about. What makes certain societies move human endeavour to the next frontier. Without this, we would all still be listening to our music via ham radio....
The other point I want to make comes down to jimby's recurring theme explaining why the DVD-A medium failed. His point? "It didn't sell". Why?
My view?...well could it be it wasn't available, wasn't marketed and there wasn't a "universal player" to play the format? And it was played by DVD players..gear not renowned for their hi quality sound, and often attached to TV's and low fidelity equipment... a complete mismatch to the "target audience"? But heck, what would I know...I lived right in the middle of a 1st world English speaking developed city of 4 million people for the 6 or so years DVD Audio was available and NEVER heard about it, or remember ever seeing one! Yeh sure, the labels got hit by the "perfect storm" competing formats and then the ipod.itunes store era. But what did they do for 6-8 years? The answer? Nothing. They just let it happen. They thought CD and DVD sales would last forever. They were way too slow off the mark selling their product to the next generation. Instead of getting quick smart out of the starting blocks when they discovered the format wasn't selling and putting hirez and surround up on their own websites and selling from there, what did they do? All they did was try and fight the new way of doing things. Fight apple. Fight Napster. Even try and put college torrent kids in jail (while the judge was probably listening to his copied tracks on his ipod). By doing this they were fighting the customers, not what they should have been doing (which was embracing the new way of doing things). They were caught out. Right now I'm listening to Floyd DSOTM. Yep. they've got it in one. The music industry sure did miss the starting gun ! It's no use blaming the customers. Their customers had already moved on and were demanding something different.
Well my look at hi-rez stereo and surround music from a clean sheet now:
We have a medium accessible to billions of people world wide.
A lot of the hidden "costs" Jim talks about can be stripped out via internet distribution and marketing, and the market is so much larger.
There is now a universal player (the computer, or network streamer)
Which can now be attached to high end gear (see www.computeraudiophile.com)
All good, for HDtracks etc al 5.1 FLAC. Every available piece in the catalog. Right now. What on earth is the music industry waiting for?
I am definitely one of those bloggers who "thought they new everything about the music industry". Now I know a lot more (from their point of view)
There will always be new formats. And better ways of delivering music. Obviously the current way is via the net. So the industry must embrace this. Right NOW. With ALL resolutions. If they can't be bothered to do this now, then why be bothered at all being in business? As for hi rez not making money...well this is often the case is it not?...The premium product might break even, even lose money, just to sell the next level of quality down by the truck load. But whether the online store method will remain the dominant way of music delivery 10 years from now, well that is a mute point. By then we may have hirez stereo and surround internet radio stations. Rhapsody 5.1...Who knows. The point is if the industry doesn't embrace change, it will never remain in the game. It can't just roll over and die ! Or all we will be listening to in 10 -20 years is tin can catalog stuff from a torrent site in Shanghai...maybe even in Chinese... The industry HAS to always have a premium product out there in the market. Premium product is what life is all about. What makes certain societies move human endeavour to the next frontier. Without this, we would all still be listening to our music via ham radio....
The other point I want to make comes down to jimby's recurring theme explaining why the DVD-A medium failed. His point? "It didn't sell". Why?
My view?...well could it be it wasn't available, wasn't marketed and there wasn't a "universal player" to play the format? And it was played by DVD players..gear not renowned for their hi quality sound, and often attached to TV's and low fidelity equipment... a complete mismatch to the "target audience"? But heck, what would I know...I lived right in the middle of a 1st world English speaking developed city of 4 million people for the 6 or so years DVD Audio was available and NEVER heard about it, or remember ever seeing one! Yeh sure, the labels got hit by the "perfect storm" competing formats and then the ipod.itunes store era. But what did they do for 6-8 years? The answer? Nothing. They just let it happen. They thought CD and DVD sales would last forever. They were way too slow off the mark selling their product to the next generation. Instead of getting quick smart out of the starting blocks when they discovered the format wasn't selling and putting hirez and surround up on their own websites and selling from there, what did they do? All they did was try and fight the new way of doing things. Fight apple. Fight Napster. Even try and put college torrent kids in jail (while the judge was probably listening to his copied tracks on his ipod). By doing this they were fighting the customers, not what they should have been doing (which was embracing the new way of doing things). They were caught out. Right now I'm listening to Floyd DSOTM. Yep. they've got it in one. The music industry sure did miss the starting gun ! It's no use blaming the customers. Their customers had already moved on and were demanding something different.
Well my look at hi-rez stereo and surround music from a clean sheet now:
We have a medium accessible to billions of people world wide.
A lot of the hidden "costs" Jim talks about can be stripped out via internet distribution and marketing, and the market is so much larger.
There is now a universal player (the computer, or network streamer)
Which can now be attached to high end gear (see www.computeraudiophile.com)
All good, for HDtracks etc al 5.1 FLAC. Every available piece in the catalog. Right now. What on earth is the music industry waiting for?
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