Welcome to the future, thanks for coming

Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail has posted his analysis of 2006 music sales and boy does it look grim. The chart he posted is particularly interesting because it doesn't just graph total sales, but rather the number of hit albums, Gold, Platinum, Multi-Platinum, and Diamond. Overall, it's the worst year for hit album sales since 1983, and there has been a precipitous decline since 2001.

In Bob Lefsetz's predictions for 2007, his first prediction is that CD sales will continue to tank. He puts a positive spin on the situation by comparing the collapse of album sales and the rise of the digital music era to the collapse of the use film and the rise of digital cameras. The result of course is that people take many more pictures digitally than they ever did with film - Lefsetz argues that people will own far more music digitally than they ever did when they bought CDs.

Speaking from personal experience, this is certainly the case, but I think his analogy is a bit flawed. Music must be listened to and more is not always better - I have tons of music that I never get to listen to, although I like to have the option to do so if I should choose.

All of this runs parallel to the larger trend happening in media more generally, by the likes of blogs, YouTube, etc - power being redistributed to the many from the few. With the collapse of blockbusters and major label leverage, the power of independent artists, producers, and small record labels increases in comparison. We're experiencing a leveling of the playing field that represents a huge opportunity for many people to step up and stake their claim.

A big question mark still remains: how to monetize recorded music if you can't sell CDs and piracy is rampant. YouTube is apparently worth billions of dollars and it was built largely on the back of copyrighted material - so why can't file sharing be monetized in a similar fashion? There are a number of factors - one is that there is no big centralized place like YouTube to monetize with advertising, and the other is that RIAA and other old-school stalwarts are so stuck in the past that they can't see the fact that the future is already here.

I could be wrong, but I sincerely believe that people don't want to steal music from artists. Most people don't perceive file sharing and piracy as stealing from artists as much as stealing from record labels. And record labels have become "the man" in a bad sense, huge impersonal corporations with no soul and no commitment to the artistic development of their acts.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Plenty of independent artists and small record labels are hurt by file sharing as well, which is why it is important to find ways for musicians to get paid for what they do. I think if people had a sense that when they bought a CD or a file from Apple's store that MOST of the music was going to the artist, they'd be more inclined to do so than if they feel like they're supporting a corporate infrastructure.

Ultimately I think the people who completely demonize file sharing fail to see the ways it helps artists, and the people who are complete proponents fail to see the ways it sincerely hurts them by not supporting a key part of their artistic output. However, there is a middle ground that includes DRMless files sold for reasonable prices distributed in a manner that has low overhead, a system built to help the artists as much as possible.

It's time for artists to realize that the state of the recording industry is such that record sales are not going to be the cash cow they once were. Loyal fans and consistent touring are the ways to make money as a musician right now, a situation that jazz musicians had to face up to as a reality a long time ago.