Cacophonaut

SHOUT IN MY BOX.
GO ON. IT TICKLES.

I listen to Sounds, that is, numbers encoded on a medium decoded by a machine and reproduced by a magnetic coil and a cone. This is their only requisite, the type of Sound matters not. It could be pop Sound, jazz Sound or punk Sound, the list is endless and genre is dead in any case. I am from Manchester. I study English Literature, I like art and interesting things. I like arguing with people. I wish there were a lastfm for art. I also write and produce songs which at some point will be available on some website or other. Feel free to chat to me, reccomend me something or ask for a reccomendation. If you wanna friend request me, I wont add you unless you have talked to me first. I'm not interested in being part of your collection. Don't stand up to quick, run too slow or breathe too much carbon monoxide.

ambient avant-garde black metal blues breakcore classic rock classical composers contemporary classical electronic experimental folk folk punk hip hop hip-hop idm indie indie rock instrumental jazz minimalism post-rock punk rap rock singer-songwriter

"In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses."


The internet has changed the way the world consumes music, this is an undeniable fact. However, the internet has also changed many other industries. It has most probably indelibly altered more than it has left unscathed, it is, in fact, the most radical change to commercial enterprise in the history of the world.
In light of this change, industries have adapted like the apes which, some millions of years ago, were considering the prospect of coming down from the trees. The music industry, however, stubbornly refuses to do so. Instead it clings to old formulas, as though if it clings hard enough they might mean something again, but the fact remains that the amount of people illegally downloading their product numbers in the hundreds of millions, and that many people cant be simply criminalised, because to criminalise, you have to marginalise, and you simply cannot marginalise a majority, and you certainly shouldn't criminalise your customers. Its bad business. New technology has always changed markets, and the companies that survived the change were the ones prepared to adapt to the change.
And a comet is coming. In fact, its already here, and its called the internet. It represents, for millions of people, a new way to make a living, a new format for distribution. It has been said that if your company does not have a website, it does not exist, and the best companies are websites. Google and Ebay have grown more in the short life of the internet than most companies did over the whole twentieth century. The major-label music industry is afraid, though, that the grossly immense profits it has grown accustomed to will dwindle and diminish if it embraces this new development, and whether or not you realise it, because of this the behemoths are rapidly becoming old news. The "big four" (Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner) are dying. But they are still dinosaurs, and dinosaurs have a lot of weight to throw around, even if they have little thought behind the throwing. And my are they throwing it. With attack dogs like the RIAA and outdated (and morally dubious) intellectual copyright laws behind them they sue people in the thousands, meanwhile ensuring the lawsuits attain press coverage, in an attempt to scare the public out of their "thieving" habbits. They lobby politicians to their cause to maintain the status quo and keep these laws alive.
But it doesn't matter what they do, because, as a result of their "scare tactics", they are now widely distrusted by the people they rely on for income, and that is seriously bad for business. Their eventual demise will leave a gap which will eventually be filled by some bright, cutting egde indie label with a clever business model that takes advatage of the opportunities offered by the internet. Untill then, however, people need to take action to either starve the major labels of their cashflow and cease to buy their CD's (only around 10% of the profits of which actually go to the artists anyway) while continuing to support non RIAA indie labels, or even better; take political action to amend the erronious laws which maintain their weakening stranglehold on both artists and the consumer. Change will happen, but its up to the consumer to create it. The customer is always right.