{"id":11340,"date":"2010-06-10T07:39:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T12:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11340"},"modified":"2010-06-10T07:39:18","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T12:39:18","slug":"i-smell-bailout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11340","title":{"rendered":"I Smell Bailout!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never cared much for Radiohead – but you gotta hand it to lead mope Thom Yorke; he nailed that whole “end of an era” thing long before anyone else:<\/a><\/p>\n

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is warning the music industry is on the brink of collapse, insisting young musicians should resist signing record deals because the major labels will “completely fold” within months.<\/p>\n

The British rockers broke away from their longtime label, EMI, in 2007 and went on to embrace the new digital era with the release their seventh album, In Rainbows, which they offered up over the internet and allowed fans to choose the price.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These days music is pretty much a give-away; the money is in the touring and live appearances – the things that can’t be put up on BitTorrent.<\/p>\n

That’s why in some ways it’s better never to have been signed in the first place.\u00a0 Getting signed meant getting an “advance” from the record company.\u00a0 The advance had to pay for recording, videos and touring, and had to be paid back out of touring revenues and royalties…<\/p>\n

…if any.<\/p>\n

And if you were one of the 90-odd percent of bands whose albums never got airplay or significant sales, and whose live touring careers never took off, that meant you were in debt from the beginning of your “career” which, if you were one of those 90-odd percent of bands that never took off, was going to be short; labels in the seventies would drop artists that didn’t turn a profit after two albums; by the nineties, one album was all a new artist got.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, many artists that never got signed to “the big time” but stuck with touring and built thriving local and regional followings – including recording and selling their own CDs – are doing fairly well.\u00a0 Sometimes really <\/em>well.<\/p>\n

And they’re the lucky ones:<\/p>\n

Yorke has now issued a warning to upcoming artists, urging them not to sign traditional record deals because they would be tying themselves to “the sinking ship”…He says, “It will be only a matter of time – months rather than years – before the music business establishment completely folds. (It will be) no great loss to the world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Expect the Federal Trade Commission to advocate socializing the music industry any day now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never cared much for Radiohead – but you gotta hand it to lead mope Thom Yorke; he nailed that whole “end of an era” thing long before anyone else: Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is warning the music industry is on the brink of collapse, insisting young musicians should resist signing record deals because the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11361,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340\/revisions\/11361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}