Record company exec Danny Goldberg says ‘nothing can be done in the short term’ to rebuild industry profits
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
With the recording industry in freefall, the manager of one of the most respected bands in rock announced last month a new sort of record label, perhaps more akin to a venture capital company.
Brian Message represents Radiohead. But now with Polyphonic, a new company he’s helping to create, new artists will be signed and given funding but then will record their own music and choose outside contractors to handle their publicity, merchandising and touring.
According to the NY Times,
Instead of receiving an advance and then possibly reaping royalties later if they have a hit, musicians will share in all the profits from their music and touring. In another departure from tradition in the music business, they will also maintain ownership of their own copyrights and master recordings — meaning they and their heirs can keep earning money from their music.
Meanwhile, Nielsen reports that sales of physical albums fell off , while individual digital tracks rose 27 percent. That follows news from earlier this year that indicates that teenagers are not only buying fewer CD’s (nothing too radical there), but also fewer digital downloads of music, prompting a market researcher to remark, “ These declines could be happening due to a lack of excitement among teens about the music available, but it could also reflect a larger shift in the ways teens interact with music, given that so much music is now available whenever and wherever they want it.”
Intrigued, I asked one of the veterans of the music industry, Danny Goldberg, what he makes of what’s happening in the industry he’s worked in for his entire adult life. He said these developments are part and parcel of the radically different environment in the music industry.
