Record sales are tanking, and there's no hope in sight: How it all went wrong

[sir doris]

I think the filler tracks are much more common on the "Teenie Boppers" types albums, young girls and boys who look pretty but can't really sing, don't play instruments and can't write their own music (until maybe their 2nd album when they write their own fillers). For Example; American/ Pop Idle winners, cheesie boy band, manufactuered types, where the fillers generally include a good dose of well known covers

More serious bands with a musical direction and a reputation genrally don't rely on fillers.

So I think it's important who your are talking about with regard to fillers, sure some 11year old girls might like Boy Band Zones cover of "rocking around the christmas tree" but I'm sure most will be able to identify it as a filler.

 

[Davros]

little interview with the guy from 9 inch nails
on how the record companies ripped him + his fans off
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html

record company exec on why his cd costs $10 more than other cd's :

"Basically it's because we know you've got a core audience that's gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever"."

 

[sir doris]

Re: Napster

For me the best thing about Napster was the ability to listen to new bands I had previously never heard of, or at least not listened to.

When there was all those servers with fast T1 and T3 connections with thousands of tunes on, they were generally put there by one or two people (sys admins in large companies/ uni's?). Meaning there would be loads of tracks of a similar style. I used to use it to check out albums before I'd buy, but also browsing these servers to find other similar music and artists.

The years I used Napster I bought more CD's (music, not blank ) than any others.

Since Napster was first limited and then closed I virtually stopped buying Music.

 

[Frank]

Bad marketeers and managers have some things in common:

They think that it's their sole accomplishment that products are successful, and that actual knowledge of the product only hampers their creativity to make that happen.

 

[Dresden]

Good. These companies deserve to sink for having the audacity to charge upwards of 15 USD for a CD. Hopefully, the shock of their industry blowing up in their faces will fuel them to produce better products. Meaning malarkey like "Holla Back Girl" stays pursed between the lips of a certain blonde who will remain nameless.....

Honestly, the entire filler argument is a prime example of this. Artists figure their name alone will skyrocket sales, and most of the time it does, so essentially they can produce the equivilent of shit on a cd and mindless drones will continue to buy it. I'm relatively certain utilities like Napster and other P2P programs wouldn't even exist in the first place if artists actually took the time to ensure the product they're producing is actually worth our money, instead of people selectively picking out certain aspects of the product, which has become the case now.

 

[_xxx_]

Your assumption is that talentless thrashing is the only thing that can be filler.

No, where did you read that? I'm talking about a song structure and harmonic build-up etc.

Gwen Stefani above is a great example for a record with 1-2 potential hits and a bunch of purely senseless fillers.

In comparison, you can slap say a Quake3 level together in 15 minutes, it will be a valid level and will work but it will be totally unbalanced half-arsed crap. Everyone in the know will imediately know what happened. About like that.

There are actually quite a few CD's out there with no fillers, though it is a minority.

 

[Skrying]

Good. These companies deserve to sink for having the audacity to charge upwards of 15 USD for a CD. Hopefully, the shock of their industry blowing up in their faces will fuel them to produce better products. Meaning malarkey like "Holla Back Girl" stays pursed between the lips of a certain blonde who will remain nameless.....

I love Gwen.

 

[_xxx_]

I love Gwen.

But you love Gwen herself, not her "music" hopefully.

 

[Skrying]

But you love Gwen herself, not her "music" hopefully.

Love knows no difference.

 

[Corwin_B]

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of assholes...

Nowadays, I only buy "old" CDs, at lower prices. I don't pirate music (nor software or movies), but I won't accept the price they charge for CDs. 13-14€ is my absolute limit, with anything under 10€ being an impulse buy. I also don't like the hassle of DRMed music.

Of course, some majors are trying to develop "alternate" sources of revenue, for example government subsidies : here in France, we pay a tax on each and every digital blank medium (CDs, DVDs, HDDs...) which goes to a consortium that redistributes it. That stuff is flawed on many levels :
1) this is a presumption of guilt. When I buy a couple of blank CDs for burning holiday pictures, I pay this "pirate tax"
2) this tax does not allow you to download or distribute copyrighted material
3) the redistribution is biased toward the bigger "artists" and labels, whereas a justification for this tax was to remunerate smaller labels
4) there is no business exemption from this tax, if you buy blank DVDs to backup logs and applications at work, you give money to Britney Spears

 

[_xxx_]

We have that tax in Germany as well, definitely a blatant, shameless ripoff

 

[3dilettante]

No, where did you read that? I'm talking about a song structure and harmonic build-up etc.

I misread your statement.
When you were discussing the idea of a bunch of parts/riffs slapped together, I thought you were talking in the sense of randomly throwing notes together.

That being said, your definition is based in part on a qualitative judgement.
The intent of the makers of the album is not physically tied to that judgement.
With the necessary experience, most instances are probably obvious, unless the artist likes making vapid music.

Gwen Stefani above is a great example for a record with 1-2 potential hits and a bunch of purely senseless fillers.

In comparison, you can slap say a Quake3 level together in 15 minutes, it will be a valid level and will work but it will be totally unbalanced half-arsed crap. Everyone in the know will imediately know what happened. About like that.

Or you can spend a day on a map and it never gels together.
In your Quake 3 example, there is no overarching contractual deal that demands a salable product. If you make a less than stellar map, you can throw it away and nobody will care.
There is no requirement that a Quake map that nobody asked for or cares about be released with all due speed, nor does anyone require the map be X megabytes or have Y corridors.

For commercial production of a product, which is what the music industry does, there comes a time where an artist needs something to go in track 11, even if that is undesirable.
It may be something that has been worked on, but the elements are not quite where they should be.
That track is still filler, even if it is passable artistically.

There are actually quite a few CD's out there with no fillers, though it is a minority.

It's hard to maintain creativity to fit the retail concept of a good buy.

I will add that this is still orthogonal to my initial point, since even those CDs with no fillers are not worthy of a customer's full album purchase price if that customer only wants the song on track 5.

 

[DJ12]

Meaning malarkey like "Holla Back Girl" stays pursed between the lips of a certain blonde who will remain nameless.....

Compared to that yodelling shit, Holla back girl is a classic.

 

[_xxx_]

I will add that this is still orthogonal to my initial point, since even those CDs with no fillers are not worthy of a customer's full album purchase price if that customer only wants the song on track 5.

Never argued that, just putting it in my "creative" perspective as a long-time musician and fan, regardless of the commercial side.

 

[_xxx_]

Compared to that yodelling shit, Holla back girl is a classic.

Comparing to that yodel stuff, even my farts are a classic

BTW, this yodel "song" *shudder* could indeed be an example of something that came out of some random pattern generator or something like that.

 

[Dresden]

I love Gwen.

Sig time...

 

[StefanS]

We have that tax in Germany as well, definitely a blatant, shameless ripoff

Same thing here in Austria. But there's a simple solution to that, buy your CDRs, DVD-Rs etc. from online retailers from Luxemburg. Ain't the EU single market, great.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Fake Steve Jobs - "The music nobs have finally figured out what we're doing."

 

[Farid]

Fake Steve Jobs - "The music nobs have finally figured out what we're doing."

It's written very simplistically but then that's what it reports, a simple situation.

Indeed, music majors got themselves trapped by Apple when they helped making iTunes the de-facto standard for online music sales.

Now, the next step for Apple would be to do without the middlemen and publish artists on its own. Low-cost record production, low budget videos available via podcasts or Youtube likes, internet (or not) radio promoting the track... All the while giving a bigger cut ofthe money to the artists while Apple gets a bigger cut as well.

The digital communication age will be rough for the Majors, that's for sure.

 

[3dilettante]

Wouldn't they run into some legal troubles in the UK?

The Beatles' own company Apple (records) already sued Apple (Computer) once after iTunes, since they said it breached an agreement that Apple (Computer) could use the Apple (tm) name if it didn't go into music.

I'm unaware if the settlement between the two companies opened the door for Apple (???) to actually become a label.