With the New Year barely upon us you can but wonder what is in store for the record business. Mmm, records and stores, you don’t hear those two words together much nowadays. One thing is painfully obvious is that record sales continue to drop year after year and together with the miserable state of the economy you wonder if even the mergers of the last few years will make any difference to an industry in free fall. An industry in free fall in an economy that isn’t going to save them. I can’t see the government being there to bail the record industry out of a hole largely of their own boring!
Dismal, maybe even closed for business is the sign in many record company doorways for this year. And who will pull them out of this mess? Once you could have said ‘the next big thing’ but where is that coming from in an industry that cares much for the moment and has long passed on the longevity of the artist. They have passed on artist development in preference to the quick buck, the quick buck they thought was going to save them. That quick buck got them in to this mess in the first place but it’s unlikely you’ll find any one of them admit to their own failings. When record companies merged it was to cut overheads but no one mentioned the economy to these people, the ones who always thought themselves recession proof.
I could see it starting to change ten years ago but I never expected to see what it has become. For every American Idol instant success story there are a million instant failures. Tempt them with a dollar and still they come running, a public still desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame. A short term public chasing a short term industry.
