3rd likely reason for declining music sales: The music itself!

September 23, 2003

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there is a third likely reason why music sales are declining. While the music industry may think that file sharing and CD piracy affects their sales and others reckon that DVD and games sales are taking over music sales, there is a third likely reason why music sales are declining: The music itself! If the music industry try and sell music that is not of the listener's taste, then obviously they will not buy the album. Over the past five years, the music has changed to mainly Rap lyrics and techno & electronic beats. This vastly differs
from 80s music which mainly had a nice easily listening rhythm and the lyrics
were sung instead of bla-bla-bla such as "The Thong Song".

Most of the artists that condemn piracy tend to have rap music or music that sounds like it was quickly developed to make a few quid. These artists try to make their income by solely relying on the music industry, going against piracy and by forcing consumers to purchase their CDs in order to hear their music. Any artist who happily allows consumers to share their music generally does the best and ends up having nothing to lose. They don't have to rely on the radio to play their tracks and their music is quickly spread across the globe from consumer to consumer. With this, consumers are more likely to purchase their albums and more importantly, go to their concerts and look out for new songs by the artist.

Sept. 22 issue '” The music industry can sue every middle-schooler from Poughkeepsie to Palo Alto, but record labels will not cure their woes if they continue to churn out cut-rate albums at top-rate prices. For the past five years, they've been pedaling anti-art: boy bands, Britney and 'The Thong Song." Judging by sales numbers, kids finally figured that a lot of artists were only as good as their Svengalis, or that an entire album by 98 Degrees was really just a single with filler.

'WHO EXPECTS A 12-year-old girl to buy a record with her baby-sitting money for one good song?" says singer-songwriter Michelle Branch, 20, whose 2001 single 'Everywhere" is still one of the top swaps. As a teen, she lifted some of her favorite singles off the Internet. 'Why not download the one song you like?"

Few top-grossing
musicians want to criticize file sharing since Lars Ulrich of Metallica
was verbally attacked by fans and peers for condemning piracy at a Senate
hearing in 2000. In fact, many labels didn't want their artists speaking
to NEWSWEEK for this story. It's likely that rappers Eminem and 50 Cent
now agree with Ulrich because, as top sellers, they stand to lose
millions. But opinions differ radically depending on an artist's success.
Punk upstarts like the Ataris'”who have nothing to lose'”have embraced file
swapping. The spiky-haired outfit used Napster and MP3.com to promote its
first three independent albums and build up a fan base before signing with
Columbia last year. Now its cover of Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer" is a
hot download, and the band's members couldn't be happier. 'If our single
is downloaded, then maybe they'll buy the whole album," says Ataris singer
Kris Roe. 'And if they download the whole record, then maybe they'll come
see us play. We just want to be heard."

It is the music industry themselves that are losing out. They take on many artists who think they know how what their consumers want, quickly compose a rhythm (or use a preset), rap some lyrics and hey, they have an album to sell! Many others take a good classic song, alter the rhythm and rap the lyrics, thus ruining a good song 🙁 When they find out their music is not selling as they assume it should, they go and blame piracy and file sharing.

Just to see how easy it is to compose a 'modern song', I got hold of a shareware music composing application, selected some 'electronic' beats and effects, placed them on the Riffs, selected a backing rhythm and hit play. To me, it sounded as good; if not better than the techno stuff on the radio. Then again, as rappers don't need to 'tune'
their voices as they stick to one continuous note, it is just a matter of
quickly writing up something to rap along with their 'backing music'.

My favourite music was back in the 80's and early 90's. I have roughly 50 albums including Billy Joel, Bee Gees, Paul Simon, Queen, ABBA and so on. As the radio inIreland rarely plays anything but modern music, I honestly had to rely on downloads and other sources before choosing whether to purchasing an album. I have no albums in my collection from the late 90's until this time. While there are many teenagers hooked on
modern music as this what they grew up on, I find that most consumers aged from
the 20s and up prefer the 80's and older.

Source: MSNBC News