{"id":126,"date":"2013-04-08T16:55:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T20:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/Wordpress\/?p=126"},"modified":"2013-04-08T22:22:58","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T02:22:58","slug":"the-big-sleep-and-the-audio-industry-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"The Big Sleep and the Music Industry… Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of articles have been written about the fall of the music industry, but there’s a story I tell clients when the conversation turns to it.\u00a0 I finally went back and researched the two articles I talk about.\u00a0 This is Part Two.<\/p>\n

In the five years that passed\u00a0since the 1995 article I referenced in Part One<\/a>, the recording industry was hell bent\u00a0and singularly focused on\u00a0establishing\u00a0a new, higher quality\u00a0format for music that would replace the CD and maintain\u00a0the traditional album configuration.<\/p>\n

\"MIX<\/a>In December of 2000, Mix<\/a> Magazine dedicated an entire\u00a0issue to this new format;\u00a0DVD-Audio (A).\u00a0 The DVD-A standard was 5.1 (five speakers and a subwoofer) with 24 bit resolution\u00a0(the existing CD\u00a0used 16 bit audio\u00a0and two speakers).<\/p>\n

I reference one of the several articles in this issue (Paul Verna, “DVD-Audio Arrives!”, Mix<\/span>, December 2000, pp. 37-44.).<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0“DVD<\/span>-Audio is finally ready for prime time; the Warner Music Group released its initial batch of DVD-A discs on November 7, 2000.\u00a0 Those releases – on the Warner Bros., Atlantic, Elektra, Teldec and Erato labels- carry a suggested list price of $24.95, packaged in jewel boxes and clearly labeled as DVD-Audio titles.\u00a0 More Warner releases, including titles on the Nonesuch, Giant and Rhino catalog imprint are set for a December 2000 and January 2001 release.\u00a0 DVD-A players (prices range) from the low hundreds of dollars to $1,200 and up.\u00a0 Most of the DVD-Audio players in the US incorporate the encryption technology mandated by the recording industry (RIAA)\u00a0and some include a watermarking chip that is designed to protect music copyrights.”<\/p>\n

As consumers, we were mostly unaware of\u00a0some extremely important\u00a0issues that either led up to, or\u00a0paralleled the announcement.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. For four years<\/em>, the music industry had been locked in a serious battle with the movie industry concerning this\u00a0format.\u00a0 After all, films were already\u00a0produced in\u00a0Dolby\u00a05.1. \u00a0It was\u00a0basically equal in quality.\u00a0\u00a0But, from a patent standpoint it didn’t financially benefit the music companies.<\/li>\n
  2. Sadly, over time, the product the music industry\u00a0had begun\u00a0marketing wasn’t music.\u00a0 Music was just the advertising jingle for their real product which was the delivery medium.\u00a0 Every time a new\u00a0format was introduced, the industry\u00a0banked on significant revenue as\u00a0consumers upgraded\u00a0their existing\u00a0music catalogs.\u00a0 Since we owned Frampton Comes Alive on vinyl, we would buy it on Cassette, CD and then again on DVD-A.<\/li>\n
  3. Not surprisingly, the DVD-A announcement was DOA.\u00a0 In February of 2001 ( TWO MONTHS AFTER THIS\u00a0MIX\u00a0ARTICLE), the file sharing site Napster experienced\u00a0it’s peak historical usage with over 25 million users and 80 million songs shared.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    By July of 2001, the RIAA got the courts to shut down Napster, but the iceberg had already gouged the ship from\u00a0bow to stern.\u00a0 It turns out that consumers didn’t care about improved quality OR owning media.\u00a0 The music industry lost site of the\u00a0real product…music.\u00a0 Incredibly, the industry at that time had no plan<\/em> to take advantage of downloading technology.\u00a0 Despite what is now obvious, they literally didn’t see it coming.\u00a0 Their resultant solution was to bring legal action against consumers and providers of illegal downloads.\u00a0 And make no mistake, this was<\/em> illegal.\u00a0 As a result,\u00a0iTunes is now\u00a0the largest record label in the world with\u00a0estimated 2013 revenues of 13 billion dollars.\u00a0 No wonder the recording industry has been\u00a0so reluctant to release their catalogs!<\/p>\n

    Of the eight record labels mentioned in the article, only four still exist.\u00a0 Ironically, an enitre industry whose business model was based on the fact that their consumers could hear… didn’t listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Hundreds of articles have been written about the fall of the music industry, but there’s a story I tell clients when the conversation turns to it.\u00a0 I finally went back and researched the two articles I talk about.\u00a0 This is Part Two. In the five years that passed\u00a0since the 1995 article I referenced in Part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11,10,13,12,9],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-trends","tag-audio","tag-music","tag-music-industry","tag-recording","tag-trends"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}