The Breaking Point

I am an avid blog reader of the music industry. Before I even thought I was reading blogs, I was enjoying them. The original blogs are reviews. Thats what blogging is right? A review of a certain point, a product, or even a review of how people dress. Well I loved reading music reviews, editorial reviews in magazines, and even reviews in the comment section of what people thought of that review. All that was what blogging was back in the day. Now its a market, with an industry, with people making a job out of it. I don't know the exact figures, but I'm pretty sure its competitive with newspapers and magazines going out of business. Which brings me to my point, I'm here to review a collection of blogs I've read over the past 2 years that have a similar topic, but is missing something. They all say that the record industry is failing miserably losing 20 some million dollars every year. They are all missing the breaking point.

When a business loses money, they look to find a way to keep their doors open and if they can't find it they close the doors. I wonder if people finally realize they can make their own coffee (or cawfee, however you pronounce it), would Starbucks close their doors? They closed 600 of them, but if people stopped giving them money, then what would their breaking point be? Would Starbucks close all of their doors? Or would they finally go back to their roots and make coffee thats actually coffee? Will KFC ever make non genetically mutated chickens if people learned how to genetically mutate chickens themselves? I mean people already know how to make music on their own, how to get it for free, how to burn and bootleg it, and even how to get free promotions from fans. What is this breaking point that will come of this industry? I said it before, I'll say it again, downsize to Indie labels or DIY if you want to work business and music, which is difficult as hell. Now when I say "downsizing" I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean there are people who do one thing then retire, and they should not be getting more than a quarter of a percent of royalties. Thats why I like Indies, because from what I've seen everybody is a family working together. The majors pay a lot of people and here is some stats I got from Coolfer.com, from their Tuesday Business link section, and their other blogs.

"Digital distributor The Orchard reported a loss of $800,000″

"Napster has an accumulated deficit of $199 million."

Thats just this week on their Q3 earnings. Every week though, they state who was the #1 artist this week on Billboard and compare sales to this time last year. Sales are almost always lower than the previous year. At this trend will their be a year it just stops? Nobody buys music anymore and people who go to shows have been hindered by the rise of gas and ticket prices. I can go on about this forever, about how the major industry's are failing, if their going to collapse, how Indies are increasingly becoming a much better option, how even though Michael Jackson looks like an ugly woman he still does better music than most people, and how this recession is messing everything up (I won't get into politics because I get enough of it in life), but I'll just say that every business has a breaking point. Ex, Tower Records and Simon Delivers. WHAT IS THE RECORD BUSINESS' BREAKING POINT?

From the mind of Keveeno

The Breaking Point