Record Labels Pivot Point: Saturday Night Fever
December 15, 2009
I don’t know much about the record industry or the music business. I know that certain segments squabble. Once in a while a record mogul gets killed. That’s business is the US of A, I suppose.
I found “Understanding The Decline And Fall Of The Major Record Labels” interesting. The idea that stuck with me after I finished reading the TechDirt article was that
Having reached the peak of the CD boom in 1999, the record industry had become a nearly $15-billion-a-year juggernaut, but under the pressure for more growth they collapsed, and, in the process, a vicious cycle of expectations had been set that strained the artists, the fans, the culture, and their systems to the point of breaking. Since record industry was unable to deliver new music with “consistent tactical excellence,” they began to fray at the edges. Disruptive technologies were released, an epidemic of file-sharing proceeded, and, at this critical juncture, vested interests of music executives struggled and competed to achieve repetitive consumption through obsolescence. But these executives were too late, as the record industry, by externalizing the blame for their decline in sales, had already started to show symptoms of stage three, Denial of Risk and Peril.
This snippet originated in a Hypebot post by Kyle Bylin.
But another interesting comment appeared in the comments to the TechDirt article. I quote a comment from Mr. Panik:
News papers became obsessed with profits at the expense of the “editorial” content. Auto makers put profit ahead of quality. Health care became wealth care. TV, music, movies have all been selling shoddy but charging customers premium prices. Do not get me started on education…. Universities are stealing the students research, hoping to make a profit with out compensating the producer. Flipping houses? Selling broken software? The food we get may be killing us? Just for profit? Lets hope that the “Best Government That Money Can Buy” will step in and save us.
I found the statement intuitively on target, and it applies to other information sectors. In my opinion, the culprit in 2010 will be Eric Schmidt dressed in John Travolta’s costume for the dance competition in Saturday Night Fever. History repeats itself in my opinion.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
I wish to disclose to the American Film Institute that I was not paid to write this article or craft this awful comparison. Eric Schmidt is a better dancer than John Travolta in my opinion.
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