Going digital has hurt the music!

By Pendulum, posted July 26, 2010

Since the advent of digital downloads, the overall quality and consistency of the music has gone down. Too many average or poorly produced tunes that you need to weed through! We discuss the issues around this, and what needs to be done!

The price of digital dance music downloads needs to go UP!

What? Am I crazy? Well, maybe, but that has nothing to do with this article. Why should stores charge more for digital downloads? Easy, to make up for the fact that they would no longer be selling as many tunes.

Why would they be selling less tunes? Well, this is the crux of my post: There's too many under produced, unoriginal tracks being sold online. If, like me, you're a DJ or electronic dance music enthusiast, then you have no doubt had the displeasure of spending hours on Beatport trying to weed through endless amounts of poor quality tunes.

With the switch to selling tunes digitally rather than on vinyl or CD several years back, something big happened. The cost of physical production was removed. No longer did record labels have to pay to have their music printed, nor did the online stores have to pay a stocking fee. Suddenly selling music became all about profit, with the major expenses no longer an issue. It's the long-term overall affect it has had on the quality of the music that is the issue.

So what effect has going digital had on the music? One needs to understand the gradual process involved. Let's look at it from a major label's perspective. They no longer need to pay to have vinyl printed. All they do is upload their mp3 or wav files to their distributor or directly to the online stores, and voila, it's ready to be sold. Sadly, the selling price of digital downloads is so low that the profit margin is somewhat less than with vinyl. So, in order for the label to remain equally as profitable as it was before, it needs to sell more copies of its tracks. Sure, moving to digital meant that more people could be exposed to, and have access to the music. But this isn't enough. Labels need to sell more music to stay profitable. And the way labels went about it, was to sign more music to sell. This means current artists would be producing more music more frequently, or that new, undiscovered artists would be signed up to sell their productions.

It's all too common these days to see an artist do really well with one tune. It sells like hot-cakes, so, not even a couple of months later, that artist releases another, very similar sounding track. This process repeats itself until eventually people grow tired of the sound. In the mean time, that artist has been busting out a swag of similar sounding tracks. Look at the likes of Activa and Sean Tyas. Their sound grew very popular and so they were unleashing tracks at an inconceivable rate. Sadly aside from the first couple of releases, the rest were fairly unimaginative. What mattered was that they sold.

Had there been less pressure to release so many tunes to keep the income stream flowing, then perhaps more time could be spent on upping the creativity and producing something truly unique and memorable.

What follows next is the so-called halo-effect. A certain 'sound' becomes well-known and popular. What manifests next is a series of 'copy-cat' artists and tunes that borrow very heavily, if not totally from the original, high selling release. What we get are numerous tracks that sound very similar, all of them released in quick succession so that they hit stores while that 'sound' is still popular. Again, due to the need to get the tracks out quickly and consistently, the quality and originality of the tunes suffered.

When vinyl was king, it cost so much to do a run of 2000 records, that the label had to be 100% certain the track was worth putting on to vinyl. Track submissions would be heavily scrutinised before being signed by a label. They needed to know that they would make their money back. Typically, most releases on vinyl were unique, imaginative, and sold really well.

So, what happens next? We get to where we are today. I like to call this the second-halo-effect. Sadly this one really hurts the music the most. Due to the fact that the 'copy cat' tunes have been getting hammered out now for several years, many new, young producers coming into the scene are only being exposed to those lesser quality tunes. Thus, their inspiration is somewhat uninspired music. What follows is even more music that really misses the point. Today Beatport (and other stores) is littered with tracks that, while technically fairly good, lack any real emotion or connection. Most end up an array of weak melodic layers that verge on euro-dance or cheesy progressive house. The 'trance' is gone. And these tracks get signed because labels need to sell more tracks.

It gets even worse though. With the advent of digital-only record labels, young, aspiring producers and DJs have been able to start their own labels for very little or no up-front costs. They then sign budding producers to their labels and release their tracks. The tracks are often poorly mixed, poorly mastered (if at all) and lack a lot of compositional quality. The online stores aren't going to reject them, because more tunes means more sales. I must make one noteworthy exception to the negative aspects of small digital labels. Every budding artist should have the opportunity to have their music heard and to be able to sell it. But I don't think the big, online stores are the right place for it. I think these budding artists should work with bigger labels to refine their sound before adding their tunes to the mix. Anyway, more on my ideas for the situation below.

What we've ended up with is that the big labels have slowly, over time dropped in quality and consistency, while completely new labels have appeared that are also very low in quality. There are still some incredible tracks released, but they're definitely spread very thin amongst a sea of average tunes.

So what can be done? It needs to be attacked from two points. One, record labels (the big guys) need to pull back on the amount of tunes they're releasing and stop signing so many less than adequate tunes. They need to enforce a higher standard of quality and originality. Two, the online stores need to raise their standards, ensuring only high quality material is released. To make up for the fact that labels and stores would be selling less volume, the price needs to go up. Double or triple the current price. If the average quality of tunes goes up to match that of the more rare high quality tunes of today, then the higher price is worth it. We need less copy-cat material, and more well though out, emotively connected compositions.

But what of the young, aspiring guys who will no longer have online stores as an outlet to showcase their early productions? I feel a new platform needs to be created. I have had good chats with fellow DJ Rossco, who's idea was to create a new store-like platform for releasing and showcasing new talent for free. To be honest, this idea is worthy of several separate posts. So I'll finish with this: Up the price of music. Stop signing and releasing so many sub-par releases. Keep the stores for high quality music. Create a new platform for showcasing new talent.

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Comments...

Signum said at at 01:53 PM on July 26, 2010...

quality post! couldnt agree more. its called a 'release' for that reason: its a money spinner because its what people want to hear at that time. eventually it does lose its appeal but there is still so much of those generic tunes coming out. we have touched on this topic previously on the site in one of rossco's articles, digital media outlets = easy exposure = death of creativity and originality.

poochey said at at 06:35 PM on July 26, 2010...

I was thinking about this and i think a fix might be for the label to charge say $100 stocking fee per song and say if you sell 100 copies of said song or $100 worth of copies then you get your $100 refunded on top of your profits.
That way the artists will be more selective about which songs they want to sell. And in the end even if cheaper music labels appear that will be ok because the ones that charge the premium to artists will have higher quality music and consumers will go there.
Another option would be that paying the $100 would get your song in the premium section of the search results and you still get the refund if you sell the correct amount but the song stays in the premium section.
This takes out the middle man of the record label being selective about what artists to invest money in and instead makes artists think about what songs they want to invest their money in.
I'm not a DJ and I'm not in the buisness but I think something needs to change.
Feedback and ideas anyone?

Pendulum said at at 07:53 AM on July 27, 2010...

So are you saying that the store should pay the stocking fee? Or the artist. I reckon the store should pay it. That way it's not up to the artist, but the store and the label. If stores have to pay the fee, they will only sign the good tunes. Rossco has some great ideas about this actually.. awaiting his comments!

DerMystik said at at 01:22 PM on July 27, 2010...

That solution would work great IF.. today's piracy wasn't so aggressive, if we got piracy with the lower rate prices, no one would be selling anything if the prices go even higher.

MikeBlades said at at 04:34 PM on July 27, 2010...

as always mr scott, your post provide me with many things to think about and ponder....you are opening the eyes of those less in touch with the real world....good work

Pendulum said at at 05:02 PM on July 27, 2010...

Piracy is a massive issue. However we must look at the psychological impact of so many poor quality tunes being released - in effect it lowers the value of all music, making it feel less 'criminal' if we do steal/download it. However the guilt would rise if the only stuff being released was pure quality and the price was higher.

IMHO the lesser quality tunes getting released now should be up for FREE anyway, on a separate free store, as mentioned in my post.

Thanks Mike. Glad you like the article!