Five Lessons the Faltering Music Industry Could Learn From TV

[bdiament]

A friend sent me a link to this.

I find it well considered and basically, spot on.

 

Five Lessons the Faltering Music Industry Could Learn From TV

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

The Soundkeeper | Audio, Music, Recording, Playback

Barry Diament Audio

[wgscott]

Excellent (apart from dissing Kojak).

[esldude]

I largely agree with his premises.

 

I didn't really see his Kojak comment as a diss. Just an example that even the best of TV back then is more predicable than the best of TV now.

[Musicophile]

Great article. I watch nothing else but high quality TV series these days any more, and am glad to have this level of intelligent entertainment accessible. General Hollywood mainstream stuff just doesn't cut it any more.

 

Luckily in music, some outlets like BIS/eclassical or Soundkeeper are out there that have understood that there is a market willing to pay, provided they get appropriate quality back.

[mayhem13]

Well there you have it. Paid subscription service is the model of the future. The quality and format remains a question.

[Musicophile]

Well there you have it. Paid subscription service is the model of the future. The quality and format remains a question.

I don't think this article was about the subscription model per se, this was more about what intelligent, innovative, high value content to create that people who do have the money actually want to pay for.

[Synfreak]

Thanks for the link, Barry!

 

This one:

 

Think about this: music is the only branch of the entertainment world to embrace progressively inferior technologies. Movie theaters have upgraded their experience. Video games have achieved unprecedented standards of visual quality, far beyond what the inventors of Pong and Pac-Man ever dreamed of. No one wants to watch TV shows on a 1964 console. But music devices sound worse than they did a half-century ago.

 

truely says it all ...

[mayhem13]

Thanks for the link, Barry!

 

This one:..

 

I don't agree with the half a century ago gear sounds better than today's stuff. If memory serves me right, I'm pretty sure my rig outperforms my dads McIntosh gear we grew up with.....and headphone lovers have never had it so good as they do now. As for portable music, those of us old enough to remember 8 track and cassette as the mobile formats, those were about as bad as it gets.

 

Music IMO has become for the majority, a background feature to other activities such as driving, exercise and work. I don't see a change on this in the horizon. Personal or individual time has become more valuable as there's less of it in our modern society and there's simply more to keep us occupied when we do come across a lull in the day.

 

I'm older now and the economy has changed to where I've found it neccessary to work more hours to remain comfortable and plan a retirement. I need to exercise to offset the less physical work I now do. Pay television as the article puts it has become far more engaging so I spend a bit more time with that than I used to, or should. My DIY projects have gotten more encompassing as there's less to say to my wife. LoL. And the forums, well that takes up a bit of time as well. I live in an urban area so there's lots to do with leisure time and a live music performance is little more than a stones throw away. There's also less frequent but much longer phone conversations to mom and the kids now that they're out on their own. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? I certainly hope not but suspect otherwise.

[DaQi]

Good article thanks for sharing.

[Stereolab42]

I dunno. There seems to be something fundamentally different about how people want to consume TV and movies than how they consume music. With music, the overwhelming majority of people become locked into the bands and genres that were popular in their youth, and have almost zero interest in exploring anything new. (Which to me is terribly sad but nonetheless the truth.) Whereas with TV, shows like BB and The Sopranos are regularly watched by all age groups. Bands popular in the sixties through the nineties are making plenty of bank with remastered reissues and endless tours from listeners who now actually have money. Heck, just look at HDTracks' album listings.

[maelob]

Interesting point about being locked in bands and genres of the past. I kind of tried to avoid that and always look for new music. It kind of make me feel young. Lol For the people that say that modern music is bad obviously are not really looking. But I guess thats for another thread.

[JakovH]

Most of the music I listened to in my youth sounds awful to me today although many still like it. Yes there are a few bands/songs I will still play but my favourite music is all within 5 years old.

 

Oh and most of this modern music is awfully compressed with very low DR. Better by far though.

[Boris75]

 

Music IMO has become for the majority, a background feature to other activities such as driving, exercise and work.

 

 

In this respect, and in this respect only, modern tools facilitating dynamic-range compression have brought huge improvement. I for one do not enjoy uncompressed recordings at all in my car. However, things are exactly the opposite on my stereo rig at home. I wish every modern recording came in two forms: a heavily DR-compressed one for use on the go and as background music, and one with natural dynamic range for use at home when truly listening to music.

[mayhem13]

In this respect, and in this respect only, modern tools facilitating dynamic-range compression have brought huge improvement. I for one do not enjoy uncompressed recordings at all in my car. However, things are exactly the opposite on my stereo rig at home. I wish every modern recording came in two forms: a heavily DR-compressed one for use on the go and as background music, and one with natural dynamic range for use at home when truly listening to music.

 

So true Boris and no answer in sight for the problem. It seems labels are engineering recordings for just that, portable and mobile sound. It would appear that the solution should have been for the electronics to offer the compression as switchable and leave the damn recording alone!......but we're past that now and I don't see it reversing with recordings for popular music. Rock, Country, R&B, Pop will all be doomed to heavy handed engineers guided by the labels for superior SQ from headphones and cars.

 

I'd add that the trend for final mix down work is done with console box 2 way monitors is also responsible for where we are with compression. But that's another topic for another thread. It's one of the few areas that Barry and I agree on. If you mix through a little two way bookshelf speaker, nearly everything needs compression at reference level for balance output. Large dynamic systems do just fine with dynamic peaks. See.....I've said too much already.

[james45974]

In this respect, and in this respect only, modern tools facilitating dynamic-range compression have brought huge improvement. I for one do not enjoy uncompressed recordings at all in my car. However, things are exactly the opposite on my stereo rig at home. I wish every modern recording came in two forms: a heavily DR-compressed one for use on the go and as background music, and one with natural dynamic range for use at home when truly listening to music.

 

I agree with Mayhem also, all sorts of DSP's are available and having dynamic compression done at the playback device rather than the source recording would seem to be the answer, just put the capability on the D/A chip.

[esldude]

I guess there is no incentive, but one thing I wish could happen if a subscription model becomes the norm. If you gain access or rights to music with a monthly fee, I would like some sort of model to allow torrenting (from an approved central tracker) old music no longer available. Like lets say Sony now owns the rights to some old LP they never bothered to release digitally. Why not let owners of those LP's digitally record them and distribute them at nearly no cost to Sony? Or even better reel to reel music. If you already have a Sony access right via a monthly subscription, then it wouldn't be pirating the music.

 

I am sure there are plenty of legal gotchas and other difficulties with such a thing. I suppose I can dream of it at least

[esldude]

Sorry, a glitch in the Matrix caused a double post.

[Audio_ELF]

Sorry, a glitch in the Matrix caused a double post.

Watch out for the back cat...