Creative Caffeine: Nashville Recording Studio

Bands concerned for the ongoing commercial viability of albums are adding to the pressures on iTunes, says Brian Boyd

The previously unremarkable rap-rocker Kid Rock had a huge worldwide hit this summer with the single All Summer Long. The album it came from, Rock’n'Roll Jesus, has now sold more than two million copies.

It didn’t escape the attention of his record label, Warners, that Kid Rock’s career-high sales have been amassed without the single or album being available on Apple’s iTunes music store.

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iTunes under threat as bands take their business elsewhere – Telegraph

“I see an artist pictured with her best friend. The friend is her manager and webmaster. The caption congratulates them for a Gold Click Award from Amazon.com for 500,000 play events.

“The two gals don’t mention the RIAA, Best Buy or any label. They are thanking Facebook. They are thirteen years old.”

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Rocking or reeling? Record labels adapt to a world of online music – CNN.com

It’s no secret that the music industry has not made an ideal transition into the digital era.

Album sales are falling, P2P file sharing is rife, and a plethora of new artists are using the Internet as a platform for gaining international exposure.

With the introduction of MySpace Music, three major record labels — Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — are hoping to launch a counter-strike to the technological developments and online activities that have rocked their industry.

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/25/music.debate/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Many Metallica fans are overjoyed at the newest offering from the band – awesome music, insane solos, killer riffs, everything is there! Now there’s just one problem – digital distortion present on the record makes even the best speakers sound like they’ve just blown up! Apparently, most of the brick wall limiting applied before it went to mastering.  What idiots!

Original Digg:
Digg – Metallica & Death Magnetic – Loudness War Claims Another

It’s been a depressing summer for the delusional record industry. We’re seeing a total disconnect between labels’ unrealistic, old-school revenue expectations and what the market can bear. On the streaming-music front, the sad reality is that advertising revenue may never fully support the music industry wishful-thinking profit margins.

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How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself – Advertising Age – The Media Guy

BSODs (blue screen of death)  have been plaguing NIN on their current tour. In fact, one has been popping up on the giant display behind them at just about every concert. So what’s the deal? Will Trent be forced to fire his tech guy? Hardly. The truth is that it is all part of the act. The BSOD pops up for a split second near the end of the song The Great Destroyer, and there are videos after the break from two separate concerts to prove it. We all know Trent is a Mac man—so this is obviously a subliminal jab at Windows. I’m sure the nerds in the audience get a kick out of it.

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Fake Fail: BSOD Repeatedly Strikes Nine Inch Nails Concerts

Slipknot vocalist and frontman Corey Taylor says it’s time for the music industry to stop taking legal action against downloaders. He feels it is the labels themselves who are to blame for online piracy, since the quality of released music is so bad, no-one wants to buy it.

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Slipknot Frontman Says Labels Cause Piracy | TorrentFreak

 While the niche may still be small measured against overall sales of recorded music, the surge of interest in vinyl — and, particularly, its rising cachet among young listeners — is providing a rare glimmer of hope in a hemorrhaging industry.

“Even if the industry doesn’t do all that well going forward, we could really carve this out to be a nice profitable niche,” said Bill Gagnon, a senior vice president at EMI Catalog Marketing, who is in charge of vinyl releases. He said that people who buy vinyl nowadays are charmed by the format’s earthy authenticity.

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Digg – Another Spin for Vinyl Records

Online music sales continue to skyrocket at the expense of CDs. iTunes continues to be the leader of the pack, too, not only in online sales, but music sales overall. But a small rebellion is brewing against iTunes as artists become disgruntled with the hit they’re taking on overall album sales thanks to the now-wildly-popular method of cherry-picking favorite tracks for download.

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Album-loving artists blame iTunes for changed music tastes

Another birthday for the CD has come and gone and yet the damn things just won’t die. On Aug. 17th, 1982, the Compact Disc was born into an age of rampant consumerism that was the 1980s. Big hair was in, big vinyl and the big snarls of tape from cassettes was out.

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CD Turns 26 and It Still Won’t Die | Maximum PC