4 ms·

I'm still a bit lost as to why this and the music industry haven't been more disrupted by technology. You don't need a record label you don't need a book publis

I'm still a bit lost as to why this and the music industry haven't been more disrupted by technology. You don't need a record label you don't need a book publisher, you can, if people want to consume your content just write your book and have people just send you money via patreon or one time donations. I've made music with friends for a long time, and the industry makes it very hard for any independent artist to get ahead. You have some of the worst deals ever imaginable given to these kids, who are often only 18 or 19 and the label just takes everything. Why do we need any of that, I go out of my way to buy music exclusively from independent artist, while I might stream some popular hit. When it comes to actually buying merchandise, or music I only give it to the Indies.

kevingadd 5y ago
It's in part because advertising still drives visibility which drives sales, and all the main discovery mediums are centralized and sell ad placements to the highest bidder. Combine that with the typical algorithmic promotion algorithm, where Amazon etc want to show you things they think you're likely to buy, so they mostly sell you things that are already top sellers.
JeremyReimer 5y ago
The publishing industry was disrupted by technology in 2007 when Amazon released the Kindle. It took a few years, but for a while, independent book authors were rivalling the "Big Five" publishers in terms of both sales volume and books sold. Part of this was driven by the big publishers' response to indies: they raised the price of their own eBooks to protect their hardcover market. They even illegally colluded with each other, along with Apple, to force these higher prices across the industry. But they were sued and lost, and the result was a lowering of big publisher eBook prices across the board. On the independent side, the problem was that too many people were publishing too many books. It was impossible to keep up, and there was no good system for finding the "best" independent authors, since tastes are so subjective and the vast majority of independent authors didn't have any money to spend on marketing anyway. So that leads us to today, where the "Big Four" (trying to become the Big Three) still have access to their promotional machinery, which includes retail bookstores. There are a very few insanely successful independent authors, and a veeeeeery long tail of folks that have no way of getting noticed in the crowd. Still, the sales volume of traditional publishing and independent publishing remains about equivalent even today (it's hard to get exact numbers because Amazon doesn't like giving them out, but apps like KindleSpy offer a broad estimate) It's just that the latter is spread out among many more authors.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > and the result was a lowering of big publisher eBook prices across the board Did it? I must have missed that bit. As far as I can tell, the only result of the case against the publishers & Apple has been government enforced Amazon control of the ebook market.
  - shakna 5y ago
    It was normal, for a time, for eBooks to be more expensive than their physical counterparts. A "convenience fee", if you like. Whilst that can still happen, it is no longer the _norm_.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throw_m239339 5y ago
> You don't need a record label you don't need a book publisher, you can, if people want to consume your content just write your book and have people just send you money via patreon or one time donations. Yes you do need the biggest possible label. All the big artists today (post 2000), they might have started building their audience on the internet organically , but at some point one absolutely needs a label that has all the connections, budget for advertising, touring, featuring, ...to grow as an artist, nothing has changed on that regard. What collapsed is the record industry, which virtually doesn't exist anymore, save from vinyl records maybe. The people that are useless on the other hand are the middlemen like Spotify and co, they serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Better distribute your music freely on Youtube instead and grow your audience there, or do live shows on Twitch. This is a technologist forum, but people here needs to remember that just because you have a product to sell doesn't mean it will sell, no matter how good that product is, you often need to hire people dedicated to selling that product to clients. Music is no different.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Tech N9ne doesn't have a label. Most of the music I listen to is independently released. I actually enjoy supporting artist directly vs having a label steal half of what they make.
  - throw_m239339 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_N9ne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_N9ne According to wikipedia, Tech N9ne has been on many labels before, including majors such as Warner Bros. What is your exemple supposed to demonstrate? At some point, during his career, this artist benefited from being on a major label.
    - 999900000999 5y ago
      He got dropped though. Meaning that you really don't need a label to succeed. Many artists do better after going indee.
Larrikin 5y ago
All of my friends that are truly veracious readers prefer physical books. I've wasted a good bit of money gifting kindles. Vinyl has some hold outs, but after music went digital on CDs the next step to digital distribution was inevitable since ultimately music listening is an interaction that is for your ears. Many readers prefer turning pages on top of the visual experience for some reason, which I'm sure has been an impediment for bypassing publishers
- joe-collins 5y ago
  Vinyl doesn't merely have holdouts, but it's actually outselling CDs, now. (Granted, all physical media remains a tiny fraction of the recorded music market.) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/vinyl-records-outsell-cds-in-us-for-first-time-since-1980s https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/vinyl-records-... I figure this is mostly the trendy bandwagon at work, but from those I know who partake in such, having a highly visible piece of cover art is another motivating factor behind its resurgence.
- richardatlarge 5y ago
  I read all my books on my iPhone. Who needs a kindle? I used to have a massive library of books. But now in NZ, ebooks are a dream, as print edition prices are a nightmare
  - radicaldreamer 5y ago
    That's really interesting... where do most of the books in NZ come from? The US has relatively low prices for print books (sometimes cheaper than eBook equivalents), but that might be a quirk of the US market.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > All of my friends that are truly veracious readers prefer physical books. I've wasted a good bit of money gifting kindles. Interesting. I'm a voracious reader (several novels every week), and while I suppose reading a paper book is a bit nicer on average, there is really no substitute for being able to tote around hundreds of books (both read and unread) in an ereader. There are certainly exceptions. Graphic novels and large format art books don't work too well as ebooks. Poetry can benefit from being typeset in a fixed format (line-wrap weirdness is jarring). But anything that is mostly prose that I'd otherwise be reading as a mass-market paperback might as well be an ebook instead.
rackjack 5y ago
There are too many books and too many songs. The problem is no longer accessing them, it is finding them in the first place. Generally they need marketing to be discovered. This is where big name publishers come in. If you find a way to disrupt the recommendation industry you will be ahead of even Google.
dhosek 5y ago
I was thinking about this conundrum a bit during my MFA when I met Wesley Stace and he mentioned something about there being a stigma against self-publishing literature that doesn't exist for self-releasing music. I think part of it is barrier to entry. Any schmuck with access to a computer with a word processor could write something that looks like a book and put it on Smashwords, etc. and claim to have published something. For music, it gets a lot harder: There's a higher cost to being able to get an MP3 available on the music services, not just on the part of the middle men who will gladly take your money to put things up (it's been a while since I've been in the music game so I don't know how big a role these folks play nowadays), but also just for the act of recording which requires the non-trivial purchase or rental of recording equipment, not to mention the training to be able to produce something that's not embarrassing (although the latter has not stopped more than a few people from releasing stuff like that anyway). Most people think they could write a book ("if they only had the time") but few people think they could record a song. But regardless, there's still the challenge of getting music heard, and I suspect that from minimum 500-CD orders of indie albums from the CD era, the majority are sitting in boxes in people's basements, garages and attics.
Rd6n6 5y ago
There were many more musicians able to make a middle class income from their work back then. The publishers were famously awful, but the industry as a whole was more accessible if you wanted to do it full time

kevingadd 5y ago

It's in part because advertising still drives visibility which drives sales, and all the main discovery mediums are centralized and sell ad placements to the highest bidder. Combine that with the typical algorithmic promotion algorithm, where Amazon etc want to show you things they think you're likely to buy, so they mostly sell you things that are already top sellers.

JeremyReimer 5y ago

The publishing industry was disrupted by technology in 2007 when Amazon released the Kindle. It took a few years, but for a while, independent book authors were rivalling the "Big Five" publishers in terms of both sales volume and books sold. Part of this was driven by the big publishers' response to indies: they raised the price of their own eBooks to protect their hardcover market. They even illegally colluded with each other, along with Apple, to force these higher prices across the industry. But they were sued and lost, and the result was a lowering of big publisher eBook prices across the board. On the independent side, the problem was that too many people were publishing too many books. It was impossible to keep up, and there was no good system for finding the "best" independent authors, since tastes are so subjective and the vast majority of independent authors didn't have any money to spend on marketing anyway. So that leads us to today, where the "Big Four" (trying to become the Big Three) still have access to their promotional machinery, which includes retail bookstores. There are a very few insanely successful independent authors, and a veeeeeery long tail of folks that have no way of getting noticed in the crowd. Still, the sales volume of traditional publishing and independent publishing remains about equivalent even today (it's hard to get exact numbers because Amazon doesn't like giving them out, but apps like KindleSpy offer a broad estimate) It's just that the latter is spread out among many more authors.

mcphage 5y ago
> and the result was a lowering of big publisher eBook prices across the board Did it? I must have missed that bit. As far as I can tell, the only result of the case against the publishers & Apple has been government enforced Amazon control of the ebook market.
- shakna 5y ago
  It was normal, for a time, for eBooks to be more expensive than their physical counterparts. A "convenience fee", if you like. Whilst that can still happen, it is no longer the _norm_.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

throw_m239339 5y ago

> You don't need a record label you don't need a book publisher, you can, if people want to consume your content just write your book and have people just send you money via patreon or one time donations. Yes you do need the biggest possible label. All the big artists today (post 2000), they might have started building their audience on the internet organically , but at some point one absolutely needs a label that has all the connections, budget for advertising, touring, featuring, ...to grow as an artist, nothing has changed on that regard. What collapsed is the record industry, which virtually doesn't exist anymore, save from vinyl records maybe. The people that are useless on the other hand are the middlemen like Spotify and co, they serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Better distribute your music freely on Youtube instead and grow your audience there, or do live shows on Twitch. This is a technologist forum, but people here needs to remember that just because you have a product to sell doesn't mean it will sell, no matter how good that product is, you often need to hire people dedicated to selling that product to clients. Music is no different.

999900000999 5y ago
Tech N9ne doesn't have a label. Most of the music I listen to is independently released. I actually enjoy supporting artist directly vs having a label steal half of what they make.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_N9ne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_N9ne According to wikipedia, Tech N9ne has been on many labels before, including majors such as Warner Bros. What is your exemple supposed to demonstrate? At some point, during his career, this artist benefited from being on a major label.
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    He got dropped though. Meaning that you really don't need a label to succeed. Many artists do better after going indee.

Larrikin 5y ago

All of my friends that are truly veracious readers prefer physical books. I've wasted a good bit of money gifting kindles. Vinyl has some hold outs, but after music went digital on CDs the next step to digital distribution was inevitable since ultimately music listening is an interaction that is for your ears. Many readers prefer turning pages on top of the visual experience for some reason, which I'm sure has been an impediment for bypassing publishers

joe-collins 5y ago
Vinyl doesn't merely have holdouts, but it's actually outselling CDs, now. (Granted, all physical media remains a tiny fraction of the recorded music market.) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/vinyl-records-outsell-cds-in-us-for-first-time-since-1980s https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/vinyl-records-... I figure this is mostly the trendy bandwagon at work, but from those I know who partake in such, having a highly visible piece of cover art is another motivating factor behind its resurgence.
richardatlarge 5y ago
I read all my books on my iPhone. Who needs a kindle? I used to have a massive library of books. But now in NZ, ebooks are a dream, as print edition prices are a nightmare
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  That's really interesting... where do most of the books in NZ come from? The US has relatively low prices for print books (sometimes cheaper than eBook equivalents), but that might be a quirk of the US market.
webmaven 5y ago
> All of my friends that are truly veracious readers prefer physical books. I've wasted a good bit of money gifting kindles. Interesting. I'm a voracious reader (several novels every week), and while I suppose reading a paper book is a bit nicer on average, there is really no substitute for being able to tote around hundreds of books (both read and unread) in an ereader. There are certainly exceptions. Graphic novels and large format art books don't work too well as ebooks. Poetry can benefit from being typeset in a fixed format (line-wrap weirdness is jarring). But anything that is mostly prose that I'd otherwise be reading as a mass-market paperback might as well be an ebook instead.

rackjack 5y ago

There are too many books and too many songs. The problem is no longer accessing them, it is finding them in the first place. Generally they need marketing to be discovered. This is where big name publishers come in. If you find a way to disrupt the recommendation industry you will be ahead of even Google.

dhosek 5y ago

I was thinking about this conundrum a bit during my MFA when I met Wesley Stace and he mentioned something about there being a stigma against self-publishing literature that doesn't exist for self-releasing music. I think part of it is barrier to entry. Any schmuck with access to a computer with a word processor could write something that looks like a book and put it on Smashwords, etc. and claim to have published something. For music, it gets a lot harder: There's a higher cost to being able to get an MP3 available on the music services, not just on the part of the middle men who will gladly take your money to put things up (it's been a while since I've been in the music game so I don't know how big a role these folks play nowadays), but also just for the act of recording which requires the non-trivial purchase or rental of recording equipment, not to mention the training to be able to produce something that's not embarrassing (although the latter has not stopped more than a few people from releasing stuff like that anyway). Most people think they could write a book ("if they only had the time") but few people think they could record a song. But regardless, there's still the challenge of getting music heard, and I suspect that from minimum 500-CD orders of indie albums from the CD era, the majority are sitting in boxes in people's basements, garages and attics.

Rd6n6 5y ago

There were many more musicians able to make a middle class income from their work back then. The publishers were famously awful, but the industry as a whole was more accessible if you wanted to do it full time