How [people love to kick] the Music Business
(via threedotdash)
This is a really interesting article. If the music industry would just grow up and use the internet for all it’s advantages, they’d do a lot better, I think. Shutting down Muxtape? What a terrible idea. I can’t tell you how many times I heard a sweet song on someone’s playlist and clicked the link to Amazon to buy it.
Perhaps the major labels are just scared of the fact that independent musicians might not need them anymore. If you do it right on the internet you can do DIY.
Go on then, do it right. Seriously, good luck if you can. Labels clearly have plenty of faults, but there’s a lot of boring-but-necessary stuff that’s a real pain to have to do independently, even outside the ‘stumping up a load of cash’ part. I guess it depends what the definition of an independent musician is, and how much of a living they want/ need to make from their work. DIY is totally possible, in that all of the required tools/ indie organisations are out there, but you still have to be (a) really smart to use them all to your advantage and (b) have plenty of smart people around you to help out, because it’s pretty time-consuming. And once you’ve assembled your crack team of smart individuals, all of whom take a cut… mighten you just as well be on a label?
ps was the RIAA who killed Muxtape, which isn’t quite the same as the labels, none of whom complained about it.
