Saturday, July 04, 2015

Tech is not your friend, part eleventy

A piece called Sleeping Through A Revolution, by Jonathan Taplin, who is a professor at USC, and the producer of a bunch of great movies— Mean Streets, To Die For, The Last Waltz. He's not big on this new artist-impoverishing digital paradise, and the corporate propaganda about the “inevitability” of its present form.

Since the introduction of Napster in 2000, global recorded music revenues have fallen from $21 billion to $7 billion per year. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen from $65 billion in 2000 to $18 billion in 2011. Book publisher operating profits have fallen by 40 percent, and the revenue from DVD sales of movies and TV (of the top 100 titles) has fallen from $7 billion to $2.3 billion. 
The astonishing fact of the precipitous declines in revenue has nothing to do with the idea that people are listening to less music or watching fewer movies and TV shows. In fact, all surveys point to the opposite. Consumption of all forms of media is rising. So where did the money go? Two places: into the pockets of Digital Monopolists and Digital Thieves.

Musicians are generally pretty politically aware, except about their own business as it relates to tech. Do hit the link above and read the whole piece. It can be depressing reading this stuff, but the first step is realizing you have a problem. The current thing is not sustainable. When we're aware that we have a problem, we can start looking for, and getting behind, people who are in a position to make their voices heard on the subject.

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