Warner Music is a joke of a company. They barely put out music anymore. They pay for lavish digs and executives who do not even work. Their top producers only work on hit records for artists on other labels. And their stock price is in the shitter. Their "leaders" all made hit records in the 80s or 90s and now spend their time in The Hamptons or whatever the fuck they do. They really only have a few bands left and they are either old as dirt and retiring soon or leaving for 360 deals with Live nation.
Of course marketing music is a lot different these days. MTV doesn't play music videos and is planning to program even less music next season. Clear Channel runs terrestrial radio.
And, Oh Yeah. People don't fucking buy CDs anymore, let alone record albums. People still buy CDs if they are given a good reason, but mostly consumers are at least sampling music digitally. Listeners find good music on The Internet.
And since MTV doesn't play music videos and other stations like VH1 only show bands that even your grandmother thinks are a bunch of pussies, where can you watch music videos?
Youtube.
So Warner decides they are going to ban their artists from Youtube. Why? They are looking out for the royalties of the artist. Oh Sure.
Warner said""We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide," Warner said in a statement."
What
The
Fuck
?
How much compensation did artists receive when MTV used to play their videos all day? Someone correct me if I'm wrong or way off base here. But I'm pretty sure that record labels begged to get on MTV and even paid for chance to get their videos on the TV. Not the other way around. Why? Because they understood the value of the promotion. When videos were in heavy rotation on MTV, consumers went out and bought the recordings.
Now if Youtube is where most people can watch music videos these days, doesn't it make sense to put your video out there as a promotional vehicle?
Plus, Warner already got paid by Youtibe and is still getting paid. They made money when Google bought Youtube and they have a stake in advertising revenue. The stake might not be very high, but they are lucky to get anything. They should be thankful anyone wants to watch their shitty videos in the first place. And I'm sure sure many fans have bought some of their shitty CDs or at least been interested after seeing the videos online. If not, that is Warner's fucking problem for having shitty music no one wants to buy.
One would think if internet is where the ears and eyeballs are these days that music executives would leverage it in the same way they do radio and music television. But what the fuck do I know? I'm not some executive that is running a multibillion dollar multinational corporation into the ground.
For the music executives and other idiots in the music industry who refuse to come to terms with reality, I guess it's just:
Time to Pretend
No comments:
Post a Comment