"5 Beloved Websites That Are Ruining the Music Industry"

[kane_magus]

I don't follow the music industry with any regularity so I don't know if any of this stuff is actually news to anyone who does. While it seems to be less about specific websites and more about archaic, cruddy business practices in general, it still sounds pretty dire to a layman like me. If the music industry is anything like the video game industry, it's probably in drastic need of an industry crash too.

(EDIT) Also, after reading some of the comments under the article, I'm not sure how much of the article is actually valid and how much of it is just the author talking out of their ass. Cracked comments tend to be better on the whole than the comments on most other sites, but still... they're Internet comments, so take it all with a grain of salt. (/EDIT)

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Not sure if I'd agree with a lot of the comments. I don't really agree that youtube is ruining music, since as the comments point out, it's free exposure/advertising. I think google is being a bit of a dick with it I guess, but at the same time it's otherwise free hosting.

One thing I do find myself disagreeing with in the comments is the seeming large chunk of people that basically were saying "musicians get paid shit." that there's no money in it. Those that use to make music before the music industry basically lived a small step above poverty if at all, etc. All that kinda stuff.

The thing is, musicians can make a LOT of money these days. A lot more than the tiny 0.1% that actually make money I mean. The problem is the vast majority of them have all the profits they'll ever make sucked out of them via contracts.

If music really was something that couldn't pay well, you wouldn't have all these parasitic industries propped up around musicians that eat away their revenue. (And there's more than just music labels that act like parasites in that industry.)

But all these extra hands have plenty of money thanks to musicians, so obviously there's lots of money involved. There's just a complicated system set up to make sure the musicians themselves get as little as possible.