Recession, Killer of Music?

by Mel Clarke. Published April 26, 2009.

 This economic downturn we’re currently facing – Are we calling it a recession yet? Okay, recession.

This recession we’re currently facing is certainly taking an effect on almost every aspect of life. We’re counting our pennies, we’re taking out our savings and hiding it under our beds in hope that one day, some greedy bank won’t find our hiding spot and knick it from under our eyes.

But how is the music industry doing?

There has been much heated discussion over this topic. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say directly what this prognosis is for such a diverse area. In general, yes, the music industry is facing a decline in record sales. But is this to blame in our weakening dollar, or is this to blame for the all encompassing internet God, who gives us music (illegally), for free?

Lets piece this out, and I certainly want to hear your comments on this one, because it’s always great to get different opinions.

 

The Music Festival:

The state of the music festival is apparently in deep decline. With the lack of acts willing to sign to a bill due to cutting costs on the festival in the first case is causing a vicious circle.

Music festivals tend to attract a whole lot of money in different instances. Money is going out through signing acts, but then coming in again through sponsors. Unfortunately, with the money going out and lack of sponsors willing to spend money, the festival is caught up and unable to produce the kind of acts they want, which causes the dwindling crowds.

Problem: without music festivals, not only is there a lack of social device which creates a whole new music appreciation, there’s also a lack of concerts and promotional events surrounding releases of bands albums, thus causing a decline in music sales.

 

Cds/Mp3

With Mp3 taking over the world and iTunes being readily available to anyone wishing to purchase music, there’s generally not that much of a worry. Oh wait, of course, there’s the illegal thing. With so much illegal downloading its hard to see who exactly is downloading the music, making it even harder for the music industry and the big wigs at the record companies to pinpoint their demographic. Through this, naturally mp3 and cd sales have declined dramatically, but that was just something that was bound to happen and has been about eight years in the works.

Now, with the lack of music being legally bought, there is once again a lack of funding for touring which also works in another circle, effectively ruining any refreshing chances of music sales.

 

Merchandise:

While some bands may approach the lack of cd sales with a greater increase in merchandising (Good job Trent Reznor!), there is no space to encourage this without the aforementioned income produced throughout the other musical venues.

This leaves the music industry in a bit of a pickle. While it’s still early days yet, there is obviously a trend in decreasing music.

However, tough times also call for encouragement. In many other situations where an economic crisis (or at least, a tough time for sales in general) it seems as though the general public finds solice in music, appreciates it for its social abilities, as well as encouraging happy thought. With this, I can only hope that the rest of the world decides to forget its troubles, purchase a great old album, and spend the time they have enjoying one of the things that still exists regardless of sales, and negative activity: the joy of music.

So what do you think? Are you going to keep purchasing cds? Cut back and do some illegal deeds downloading? Or are you going to encourage economic growth within the music industry and spend some of your stimulus package on some music festival tickets?

It was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Features. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.