evolve or die

i'd agree with you there shinya , new laws and new ways of thinking are needed and quickly . personally i buy i'd wager 90% of the music i play, and get 10% from mates , blogs, etc. Thats not out of any real sense of honesty its mainly that in 3-4 digital shops ill find most of the music i want , and it tends to be harder to find things in a bootleggy way . maybe i aint looking in right places and mac's dont like soulseek ! in a way this is the way all music purchasing has been done. Most people bought music coz of each of access and choice , bootlegging was mainly done by the 'heads' and you had to know where to go to get what you wanted.

the main problem is now , the new generation of web users - en masse - know where to look. Not only that but bootlegging is so much easier than tapes or cd was. The future for me is music is gonna be free. We dont pay for TV , for radio , for youtube, why will people pay for music in the new digital age ? Because it was the way of the past ? Do kids care about music purchasing history ? do house djs care about live drummers protesting about drum machines hurting their profession ? or when vinyl came out , alot of live musicians went apeshit - said it would ruing their livelihood ? did it ? did it fuck , it made more people listen to more music and go to see the bands they were listening too

Personally speaking i see that same thing happening again. Once again the music process is changing |& evolving . Coupled with the arrival of the digital age, you could say we're in a revolutinary period even. Lets say the music becomes free - which i believe it will - the question is what happens to the artists ? to the labels ? the ones who comes up with new ways of working this new frontier will win. for the label , managing an artist , licensing, publishing, and other new ideas are needed .For the artist things like more gigs, merchandise , sponsorship, licensing, soundtracks, dealing direct , are all increasing . think Theo Parrish's deal with Adidas, Groove Armada's with Barcardi, or James Murhpy with Nike. Would these have happened 5-10 years ago ? new oppurtunities are out there....

I think this is a exciting time, its a time for new ideas and new ways forward. The winners will embrace change and adapt and thrive in it , while the losers will moan and whinge and talk about the old days . The music industry won't wait around for them though , you can be certain of that !

So does this mean that all releases on Stereotonic Records will be free Trev?

they'll be made available for free on this site & Scribble too , yep . We'll also be making them available for sale digitally on all usual sites though too, mainly for distribution reasons though.

"The future for me is music is gonna be free. We dont pay for TV , for radio , for youtube, why will people pay for music in the new digital age ?"

We pay Tv licences, most people pay for digital tv and all these, plus youtube earn huge amounts from advertising revenue. To say that music should be free - and thus musicians doing everything for free is akin to expecting directors, actors, producers etc working for free on tv and radio. never ever going to happen. Cinema, theatre, art (in print, paint etc) all generate earnings for those involved, so I don't see why music should be any different.

For Youtube, yes Youtube itself making money out of AD, but Youtube IS NOT the one making contents. You forgot that thousands of people spent so much of their own money and time and theri skill and technique to make unique video, without expecting any reward. Just want to be seen by many and show what he/she can do to the world, and bit of praise.

Web space/blog hosting service making money, but you dont pay for reading someone's website/blog. And site owner/blog writer is not getting paid, actually he sometimes pay to web hosting service. He is not getting any money for making original contents, but losing. the time and knowledge he used writting his blog wont be rewarded. Still you wanna write blog and want to be read by many..

So Youtube etc actualyl showing there is somethins new here, production/creation withtou expecting cash rewards.

I dont think anyone gets into music production these days with the intention of making money, much like the comparisson you made Shinya about You tube, most of the time people want to make music to get it out there to be appreciated by other like minded people although I would argue that in order for labels etc to attract the calibre of talent that they want to be associated with, and, it is their intention to give the music away that they would seriously need to be able to offer the artsists other incentive to sign with them in terms of promotion, gigs etc.

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We pay Tv licences, most people pay for digital tv and all these, plus youtube earn huge amounts from advertising revenue. To say that music should be free - and thus musicians doing everything for free is akin to expecting directors, actors, producers etc working for free on tv and radio. never ever going to happen. Cinema, theatre, art (in print, paint etc) all generate earnings for those involved, so I don't see why music should be any different ''

your missing my point. Im not saying music 'should' be free. Im saying people wont pay for it . There's a difference. As a label owner this is a fuckin disaster , but c'est la vie we all need to get on with it, because i dont see it going any other way. I see the artist having a much bigger future than labels do . Artists wont be doing things for free, once they get to a certain level. If anything they'll be more in demand than ever before. They just need to view music as a promotional tool to create that demand . Loads of artists/creatives work this way. For example i was at a talk once whereby a video director made a video for the Streets for free. They was no budget for it . But the video led to him getting major work for Citreon doing TV
commercials . Overall he reckoned he was in a better postion than he would have been if he'd not done the music video and went straight to the ad company as 'just another director'

yup i took you up wrong. it's true a lot of people starting off in the tv/film industry do things for free, but if it works - like it did for that director - the reward is massive.

Shinya, for a lot of people what they put up on youtube - and similarly with blogs - is just a hobby, yes there are more avenues for what they do but it's not like people didn't have hobbies like that in the past, be it making little films or doing fanzines (the modern day equivalent being blogs). These people didn't expect cash rewards, so it's not really something new. More people may do it now just because it's easier, what with the availability of equipment etc.