Hey Salvador Santana and his band are touring places like Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California now through November. He has a really unique sound and one of the other interns at umgd told me he was great live. You should check him out http://www.myspace.com/salvadorsantana

Oh wow, I better buy a ticket to America asap!

Wow I think we're getting higher-evolved spammers now. They're practically admitting it's spam! Maybe someday they'll figure out that this is only going to put a bad taste in people's mouths concerning slappy santa or whatever this is. Most likely by that point they'll be in the unemployment line. But, hey, no one ever accused the labels of intelligence.

They're not so dumb. The principle behind spam is the same as that behind bulk-rate mass mailings and cold-call telephone solicitations: wide exposure for very low outlay. It costs so little to saturate a wide target audience that even if 99% of that audience rejects it out of hand, the remaining 1% who can actually be parted from their money (you know, the morons) will let the record company recoup the cost easily. (And we wonder why so much pop culture seems to be produced for idiots.)

You're right, though, that they seem to have shifted away from pretending that they're jes' plain folks.

There is an interesting aticle about Rick Rubin in the New York Times Magazine from a few weeks back. He talks about the sorry state of the music industry and how he is trying to improve things as the new co-president of Columbia by focusing on the quality of the art.

But he also has started an aggressive "word of mouth" campaign which has interns going into chatrooms to talk up the label's acts. I'm sure we'll see more and more of this, since the labels have basically given up on radio and Rolling Stone.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190223399-dlQrmI0L/f0Le+N3hvAsJQ&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

But the thing is schleuse they're not selling impulse purchases. They think they are (because they're idiot labels for idiot music fans) but they're actually selling something much more important. They're selling role models, idols, belief systems. To a music fan music is what makes you alive! It teaches you about the world, tells you about everything that nobody else would. It connects you with the innermost thoughts and emotions of people that you will never get to meet; brilliant, fascinating people like Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Eminem and Sam Cooke. These dipsh!t Universal lackies treat it like they're selling a f*ckin chocolate bar. I said it before, I'll say it again: They deserve their bankruptcy 100%.

actually jonmarck, for me, CD's are impulse purchases. and i only see musicians as a source of music. I don't idolize them for anything other than their ability as musicians. even if i love their music to bits, there's a good chance that i dislike them and everything they stand for. a good musician is, as best, only slightly more likely than your average joe to be worthy of admiration for who they are as a person. that's just what i think anyway... or maybe it's the musicians that i listen to haha.

I buy CD's impulsively but I don't select them impulsively. I spend a good deal of time researching the albums I buy, and sometimes I pick something up just out of the blue, just to give it a shot (I recently did this with a Shelby Lynne compilation that a country singer recommended to me). Still, maybe the CD's are impulse purchases, but the MUSIC never is. I never buy into music EMOTIONALLY by impulse, I become aware of an artist's greatness through their talent, creativity and insight. Not because of their street team.

By the way, good Rick Rubin article. I've been saying subscription is the only way out for the industry for the past few years. It's good to hear he and Geffen feel the same way (even if Geffen's a slimeball). Makes me wonder why dinosaurs like Barnett haven't been thrown out yet.

jonmarck, I ain't defending the practice, believe me. And I probably shouldn't have implied that the music industry can be credited with savvy business practice. What they can be "credited" with (note the scare quotes) is bottom-line thinking, which is really more about covering your ass than anything else.

However, I submit to you that you're a hell of a lot more wise and discriminating about your music than the average...customer.

Entertaining article. Rubin’s an outside-the-box thinker, which I respect. The type of guy I’d love to sit down and talk music with. Or go golfing with.

jonmarck – how is a subscription service supposed to save the industry when people are still going to get music for free through p2p? This “walkman-like” device that he speaks of seems like nothing more than just glorified radio.

Well I think the teen market is shot because they'll mainly always want it for free and they don't care about the major inconveniences incurred in P2P. However those 25 and up will greatly prefer a subscription service because you're getting the actual official product (rather than an often sub-standard bootleg, which most of the time isn't even labelled properly!), a decent quality listen (still MP3 but at a reasonable rip) and it will actually be legally endorsed, which becomes more of an issue the older you get (especially if you have kids). Middle-aged folks don't want to have to deal with the legal hassles of borderline theft, they'd rather just pay 10 bucks a month, same as they do with cable tv, same as they do for internet (though both are much more expensive), and get reliable, hassle-free service. Plus, don't forget, teens have parents, and subscription plans that cover a whole household won't even take the (dead) teen market into account.

Also, once this is embraced by the industry (it'll take a couple years, my prediction for the past year and a half has been mid-2009) the juggernaut will be unstoppable. EVERYONE will be interested in music again because it'll be so easy. You can have songs streamed to your car, download terminals in HMV, wireless transfer hubs in major cities. We're talking about an age where, for the right subscription price and player, anyone can listen to anything at any time. And can you consider the benefits for indie artists? Talk about ubiquitous distribution.

Side Note: My album's almost done. It'll be between 8-10 tracks (depending on how much I can get done in the next couple weeks). Most of the tracks are already in the bag. A couple need extra tweaks.

Great jonmarck !
So you're ready to send it to RR ?

it's difficult to say what will happen to the music industry. it the whole thing goes online (subscription/P2P/whatever) then there's a good chance that albums will be no more. the only reason albums existed in the first place is that it's just too inefficient to sell songs one at a time when they come on a physical medium like a CD/record. if everything were digital, it's no longer inefficient. i would be sad if this happened. i think that if it did, i would hear much less music. instead of downloading every song that an artist recorded in a recording session (what probably would have been an album), i would only download the hits. it's a shame, because the other stuff is certainly far from bad on most decent albums. maybe it's just me though. i am fairly lazy

but is the CD industry dieing? i don't think so. there are still many, many, many people buying CD's. i'm in CD stores often and they're always packed. i know that i'm far from the only one who enjoys owning the "real thing". come on, what's more satisfying than reading the sleeve on the train home, itching for that first listen.

oh well. i know that the record companies are still progressively making more and more money each year. but even though it's still increasing, it might be increasing at a decreasing rate. that's not something that i'm sure of. anyways, i hope p2p kills CD's, i hope i'm not around for it...

Actually Moeboid CD sales have dropped faster than Clinton's pants at a sorority. Check out the figures, the losses have been astronomical. The oldest record store in Canada (a 5 minute walk from my house) just closed its doors this June. If it weren't for DVD's HMV would've been gone long ago.

I wouldn't mourn the loss of the album. It's time for things to change. We've used the album format for so long that it's lost a lot of its inspiration. We've done all we can with it! Besides, whenever something is taken away something new comes to take its place. The new ubiquitous, subscriber based format will bring with it a whole new type of music and a whole new way of enjoying that music. Think about how Sgt. Pepper used the album format to an extent that no one else even thought of. Similarly artists will be using this new system in thrilling new ways we never would've imagined.

Oh another thing, major labels are all quickly going bankrupt. It's no surprise that we've gone from a dozen at the beginning of the 90's to soon to be 3 (once Warners and EMI merge). They're losing money by the truckload. They're also losing their jobs. The recorded music industry has shrunk ridiculously quickly over the last 5 years. There's a reason why music is so bland and boring nowadays. No one has the resources (or courage) to make anything exciting! Call this decade the great purge of major label evil.

I worked at an HMV (the third largest in Canada) back in 2001, during a time when record stores were beginning to feel the impact on their bottom-line from file-sharing, P2P, etc.

Looking back on it, I remember it being such a frantic time - managers and district managers hired, for a few days or weeks they'd flex their managerial muscle and make really ridiculous changes which solved absolutely nothing, and then were fired just as quickly. A desperate company trying anything to fight a losing battle.

At any given time, the store had 70+ staff (incl. management, floor staff, shippers/receivers, DJs), and it got to the point where it was such a brutal atmosphere, 20 employees quit within a two-week span, my ex-girlfriend and I being among those that left. I'm surprised that store is still around actually.

well i've done a bit of research, and i've round some pretty interesting results. first of all, there is a separate article in wikipedia on file sharing in canada. it tells me that canada has the most file sharers per capita, and that the number of file sharers is steadily rising. in the USA, this is not the case. i also found an interesting article on the effects of file sharing. the link is mentioned below. the article is based in america, and is dated 2004. Since 2004, things have probably changed slightly, and judging by wikipedia, there is significant variation between countries, meaning that this may not represent the effects of file sharing globally as they are today. anyway, their conclusion was that file sharing was having an insignificant effect on both record sales and the economy is "indistinguishable from zero". the article is an interesting read. they explain how it is possible for file sharing to generate sales, as well as diminish them. anyways, as i stated earlier, this is only relevant to america in 2004. evidence suggests that the situation in canada is likely to be quite a bit worse.

as for the loss of albums... i don't know what to say about that really. you say we've done all we can with the album. i'm failing miserably to think of a possible system with any creative advantages over the album. i don't think it's *time* for a change, i think that it's possible that in the future, a change could possibly be necessary. having said that, after doing my research, i can't see anything like this happening in the near future.

here's the article
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

The stats in that article only date as recently as 2002. Heck, things were still smooth sailing then, even considering they lost nearly 15% in sales in one year. Things have fallen much much farther. It's really no secret that major labels aren't selling half as much product nowadays as they were in 2001. And that article is about P2P effects on music sales. P2P hasn't stopped people from buying music. Bullsh!t like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears have stopped people from buying music. They think all there is are plastic poptarts, and who wants to spend money on that?! That's why they embrace the American Idol fantasy so willingly (when really we should be up in arms). It's what they understand the music industry to be.

The stats in that article only date as recently as 2002. Heck, things were still smooth sailing then, even considering they lost nearly 15% in sales in one year. Things have fallen much much farther. It's really no secret that major labels aren't selling half as much product nowadays as they were in 2001. And that article is about P2P effects on music sales. P2P hasn't stopped people from buying music. Bullsh!t like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears have stopped people from buying music. They think all there is are plastic poptarts, and who wants to spend money on that?! That's why they embrace the American Idol fantasy so willingly (when really we should be up in arms). It's what they understand the music industry to be.

Check this out: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15137581/the_record_industrys_decline

bah, double post

i read the article, as well as a few others (some excellent ones). as much as it sounds like we were arguing, i actually agree with the vast majority of things that you are saying. yes, the music industry has lost alot of sales, but it's not because of p2p sharing (which was what i was trying to say). and i think you're right about terrible music being a contributing factor. most of what i have read concludes that popular albums (i'll assume that this is rarely *good* music) have lost sales, where as less popular ones have gained sales. obviously this is due to the extra exposure offered to those lesser known albums. but i think that there's more to it than that.

i'm guessing that the type of person who downloads a lesser known album is likely to be one doing research on a particular band/album, in order to decide whether to buy it. on the other hand, it's much less likely that someone downloading a popular song is doing research (because it's likely that they would have heard the song already). it's more likely that their motive for downloading is simply to own the song.

if we assume that fans of decent music will still buy albums, and that with p2p, fans get to hear the album before they buy it, then it's more important than ever before that the music is actually good music. this is something i thought when i was deciding what price to pay for radiohead's new album. how can i put a price on an album that i haven't heard?

i hope all of that made sense. just a side note, i really agree with some of the other possible reasons for why the sale of CD's have dropped. things like DVD's growing popularity. i work for a company that make high end loudspeakers. apparently sitting down at home and listening to music on a good hi-fi system used to be relatively common where as it's not anymore. at my age, i wouldn't know. the only time people really listen to music these days is in the car, while on the computer, or on their ipod. the car audio industry must be booming btw... the number of people who ask me whether the company that i work for do car audio is amazing...

Maybe I'm dumb but who is Salvador Santana ?

i have absolutely no idea, and to be quite honest, finding out is far from top of the priority list.

He's the cousin of the brother in law of the bassist of the singer of Carlos Santana

Believe it or not, Salvador is Carlos' son.

Which raises two points:

1. I don't trust Carlos Santana. He worked with Rob frickin' Thomas, and he has his own line of women's shoes. Let me repeat that: line of women's shoes.

2. If you were spamming a forum for music fans to drum up support for Salvador, wouldn't his famous daddy be THE FIRST THING YOU WOULD MENTION?