Less new music is breaking now in America than ever

[SixStringGeek]

According to this article:

http://musiciancoaching.com/music-busin ... ry-part-3/

Clearly the ease of making and distributing music does not benefit “breaking” music. Breaking music requires mass exposure which requires luck or money or both. I can say with great authority that less new music is breaking now in America than any other time in history. Technology has not helped more great music rise to the top, it has inhibited it.

Kinda discouraging for us aspiring basement artists.

[KEVORKIAN]

According to this article:

http://musiciancoaching.com/music-busin ... ry-part-3/

Clearly the ease of making and distributing music does not benefit “breaking” music. Breaking music requires mass exposure which requires luck or money or both. I can say with great authority that less new music is breaking now in America than any other time in history. Technology has not helped more great music rise to the top, it has inhibited it.

Kinda discouraging for us aspiring basement artists.

Definitely... although what means "breaking"???

In my book, for music to "break" would mean that a number of promotional and commercial industry wheels have turned for an artist and that the public has responded to this effort with their dollars.

Record companies stopped backing and nurturing artists ages ago and in recent years have given up on radio almost completely. MTV doesn't show videos so where does one even "break" an artist anymore?

Technology and piracy has plenty to do with record companies losing money, but record companies began this process of destruction long before Napster arose.

Seems like a transference of blame is happening in the industry now where the Record co.s are blaming piracy for their own bad business.

[SixStringGeek]

The article defined "breaking" as an artist cracking the 10,000 unit sales barrier for the first time.

[KEVORKIAN]

The article defined "breaking" as an artist cracking the 10,000 unit sales barrier for the first time.

Right... My wording was misleading as I meant to be rhetorical with that.

I read through the artical before I posted and what struck me was the 10k sales figure is more than simply "hey look they sold a bunch of units" and really represents a concerted effort on the part of the industry to nurture and market music. Such efforts are almost non-existant for any artists that are not carbon copies of the most current trend-of-the-day, contest winner, or established star.

So I'm reluctant to blame technology for this lack of vision that is fueled primarily by greedy corporations.

[David Polich]

Lots of reasons less new music is breaking - one of them being
that there's simply too much new music. The world is awash in
new music. Everyone and anyone can put out music for download.
Anyone can get on i-Tunes. Anyone can upload something to
YouTube.

See, this was one of the better things about things 25 years ago
or more. The record companies still controlled the game and
essentially restricted who had a chance to reach the mass market.
It cost 200 dollars an hour or more to record an album. Advances
often ran around half a million bucks. Now we can record an album
for a fraction of what it used to cost, in our own home. But
releasing an album has become passe. People just don't care if you
put out a CD. It's not the achievement it used to be.

I'm sitting here watching America's Got Talent and confirming
for myself that, love them or hate them, these "contest" shows are
where new music stars can be broken the fastest and to the widest
audiences.

[newrigel]

Every recording artist was once an amateur... just because your on a label doesn't necessarily give you the green light to world dominance. It's the A&R that labels put into artist to ram them down your throat and fortunately, it's getting figured out by the listeners now and things are going underground. I listened to most of my metal albums as a kid from specialty shops... you couldn't acquire anything from a mainstream record store. Like I have said before, the CD's and media are just ways of getting your stuff heard, to make money... you must tour and be a performing musician regardless if your a major or not.