December 27, 2005 8:08 AM PST
The Net is a boon for indie labels
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The New York Times
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losing that many sales to individuals because of piracy. Most of
those people would not have paid to by the CD anyway. They are
losing sales because of their heavy handed tactics, lack of any
really creative music, and failure to give people what they really
want. I now purchase a large share of my music independently.
Quite frankly, I pretty much try to avoid anything that supports
the RIAA.
this can only be good for everyone but the major recording studios and the riaa, and they can all whither away as far as i'm concerned. i love indy music, and only regret that the orginal mp3.com, where i purchased lots of music during its heyday, was a casualty of the wars with the riaa (mp3.com overstepped its bounds when it tried to provide other artist's copyrighted music to its own customers). i'm sorry, cnet, owner of mp3.com today, but it pales in comparison to what it was then. perhaps you'll revisit that and restore its original luster? :-)
mark d.
We've created an Indie artist directory (free of course) so artists can get exposure and get paid, without having to part with their coin!
Check out http://www.webradiousa.com and look for the Indie Artist diretory as an example. There are many others.
I can't wait until the record industry is extinct. They've been abusive for so long they don't even know they are.
Hopefully the RIAA will read this article about record sales and independent music. According to the article, record sales are down 8 percent this year and I think that file sharing has hit its all-time lowest, so can we draw causality from that, well no. It is time for the record companies to try and learn again that it was not file sharing that decreased sales, but lack of innovation in distribution models.
According to the same article, ITunes sales are up 150 percent and even with those songs included in the statistics, album sales are still down about 5 percent. The article blames the emergence of independent music acts and I have to agree. With the advent of the internet, consumers no longer have to settle for the trash that the record companies put out on the local record stores shelves.
The consumer can now seek out music and two good sites for searching for indie music with free downloads are Soundclick and Purevolume. Both sites have an abundance of free music available to download, sometimes even full albums, and even contain bios of artists and allow you to see the artists upcoming tour schedule. I have found numerous bands this way and many times have sampled some music and then bought the CD from the website.
Hopefully the record companies will stop shoving stuff down our throats and realize that there are now other avenues for people to discover music other than radio or record stores. Once they realize this then maybe they will start to produce quality and not try to raise prices on albums in the brick and mortar and raise the prices of songs on ITunes.