industry

by Cosmo Lee There is a very long press release out, which I will paraphrase thus: Candlelight is working worldwide with Blake Judd’s Battle Kommand Records. This is kind of a big deal, as Candlelight has extensive US, Canadian, and European distribution. Blake retains control of A&R;, while Candlelight does the heavy lifting of marketing […]

by Cosmo Lee For all the attention given to P2P networks, the music industry seems curiously indifferent to illegal download blogs. Perhaps their impact is relatively small compared to P2P. Or perhaps resistance is futile. That arcade game comes to mind where one knocks down frogs that pop up randomly. Squash one blog, and three […]

by Cosmo Lee Century Media is selling a 2009 calendar called “Maidens of Metal.” It’s supposed to be “sexy.” (You can see the calendar images here.) I’m not surprised the label would do such a thing, and I appreciate the female form as much as anyone – but this gives me pause. Perhaps one could […]

by Cosmo Lee An addendum to the previous post about record label survival and album pricing: gas stations make higher profits at lower prices. “We’re happy, our customers are happy,” says Jinger Duryea, president of C.N. Brown, which owns 108 gas stations in Maine and New Hampshire. “It’s not costing as much to buy the […]

by Cosmo Lee Record labels aren’t obsolete yet. In fact, they probably never will be. Products sell better with publicity and marketing behind them. That comes with money. Labels aggregate money in ways that individual bands can’t. One can’t download an album if one doesn’t know it exists. Bands usually don’t have the resources to […]

“Virtual vinyl” screenshot Today Is the Day’s Steve Austin recently discussed the possibility of animated online artwork replacing physical album artwork, and I wondered why labels hadn’t explored that yet. Well, the day has come. For Cradle of Filth’s Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder, Roadrunner has set up a website of “virtual vinyl.” It’s supposed […]

by Cosmo Lee Speaking of government funding, Earache’s blog has a great entry about how the label (and also Creation Records) started with the help of Margaret Thatcher. During her regime, the UK government set up an “enterprise allowance scheme,” which gave money to people to start businesses. The goal was to get people off […]

Corporation Pull-In Nachtmystium and Wolves in the Throne Room are playing a free show at the Knitting Factory in LA tomorrow (RSVP required – see here). The reason it’s free is sponsorship by Scion and Vice magazine. In this era of corporate-branded everything, including metal – e.g., the annual Jägermeister tour (which is schizophrenically inconsistent […]

by Cosmo Lee The comments about MP3 downloading on the previous post got me thinking. “Free” is everyone’s preferred price for music. But nothing ever truly comes free. Illegal downloading, while free of monetary cost, has other costs (“search costs,” in economics-speak). There are risks, however small, like prosecution and viruses. There’s lack of control […]

by Cosmo Lee Aside from giving money to record stores, what economic difference is there between buying a CD used and downloading it illegally? If one buys and keeps a CD, is it OK to download it illegally? If one buys a CD but loses/sells it, is it OK to download it illegally? If one […]