NY Times Opinion Piece on the Record Biz
There’s an interesting Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times entitled “Spinning Into Oblivion.” Written by Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato, two guys who used to own a record store in Manhattan, the column blames the decline of the CD on the “shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America” (referring to those entities’ knee-jerk resistance to online music distribution). Whether or not you agree with this assessment, it makes for compelling reading. Check it out.
April 6th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I agree with your assessment of the sad music situation…. and it’s killing not only the music store business, but also the musicians and composers as well.
The concurrent action of the FCC (in 1996) in allowing radio station ownership to be controlled by a few greedy groups, squashed the chances of air play exposure for new artists and new material. These radio station owners found that in charging big bucks for air play (like selling commercial time) they had a whole new source of income. This meant that the record companies were no longer willing to take an expensive chance on releasing new untried talent and material…. making it even harder for new groups and new material to get exposed. Also the consolidation of radio stations squashed the diversity of formats available to listeners in many markets…. while feeding the paid-for music to their various stations via ‘cyber-jocks’ doing voice tracking in a completely different city. …. their audience is evaporating, and going to the ipod and the Internet. No wonder radio is dying too!
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