It's Not Just The Cost Of Music Distribution That's Shrinking...

from the portable-music-studios dept

While much of the discussion on the changes facing the music and recording industry focuses on the fact that distribution costs drop ridiculously when moved online, it's perhaps just as important to recognize that the cost of creating music is dropping as well. More and more musicians are discovering that they can produce a top quality album on a laptop. The article even quotes a well known producer who says he now does some of his best work on his laptop on airplanes. Cutting the traditional recording studio out of the process is one more reason why musicians have even less of a need to go with a traditional record label while making it easier for them to create and distribute new music. While the music industry loves to say that if things continue down the current path no new music will be created, you have to take into account the effects of cheaper music production in combination with cheaper music distribution. A recent study showed that as music production costs decrease (even as distribution costs drop towards zero), even more music is likely to be produced. The problem for the recording industry, though, is that it's less likely to be produced through them.
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  1. identicon
    Jeremiah, 2 Oct 2003 @ 2:52pm

    Musical Creativity in a digital age...

    I've addressed this trend on my site, and continue to have discussions with my peers in the "biz". The consensus seems to be that overall, people think it's a good thing that the bar to entry is now so low, as it will provide a relatively level playing field for talent to blossom. Further, it seems people feel that the extreme behavior of record labels has stifled genuine artists, and made the label environment highly unattractive to musicians.
    In essence, it's the fact that *anyone* can produce a CD that will make the truly talented stand out even clearer from the pack.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Daniel Childs, 5 Apr 2007 @ 11:27am

    Music

    Do you know the manufacturing cost of CDs, cassettes, and file downloading?

    link to this | view in thread ]


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