Downloading...

shops havent, everyone is feeling the strain, banging tunes have had to close one of their stores,

it'll take time but people will soon realise what downloading is doing (or in this case will have done) to the scene and industry

look at apu in town..

rob when have i ever said there will be no music?

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like ive sed before though, we werent discussing the mainstream commercial side of the industry

interesting debate

As someone unaffiliated to the music industry, I am not sure how the economics of dance music are driven. Obviously, there are records that are made with an eye strongly on commercial profit via single and album sales.

Equally, there is underground DJ material that must be at least partly produced for use in DJ sets, to promote the producer, etc., and which appeal to such a narrow audience that their commercial success must be minimal (directly - the financial incentive coming from door and bar takings in clubs).

Presumably music downloads will hit the commercial end of the scene MUCH harder than the underground, as has already been stated. It may even help the underground scene, as artists get their material known more easily and tallent can rise to the top, instilling some competition to the largely "old boys' network" corruption of the current scene.

I might be talking shite though, and the commercial element might be so pervasive at all levels that the scene will go downhill at all levels.

Mark (maitland) might be able to shed some light, among others - do you ( and other producers on here ) make tracks for profit ( directly, via record sales ) or not?

Harry

I would love to see some statistics on this and formulate a model - my PHD thesis is in here somewhere

Harry

in my opinion i think its the other way round

because so so few units are shifted on each release in the "dj" scene compared to the "commerical" end of the market the profits are a lot less low obviously. If you think a tune costs on average about £6, people that have to make money out of that include the artist, the ditributer, the label and the shop, now a record travels from artist - label - dist - shop and each transistion apart from the first requires VAT ontop as well so you can imagine the tiny profits made per tune.

because of the tiny profits made most of the it goes into paying for the next release (packaging, pressing, artists etc etc) so not a lot of profit is made at all

so as say for half the people that normally buy the release on average downlaod it instead without paying for it, you have a big fuckin problem, you cant afford to pay for the next releease and therefore have to go in debt, and so on and so on

obivioulsy not all labels work like that but probably all of the smaller ones andquite a lot of the supposed "big guns" would work like that

those are my thoughts anyway

It isn't the total profit that is important in that case, it is the relation between profit and cost, aka the profit margin. Cos a low production run has low costs, too

I don't have knowledge to comment beyond that, with regards profit margins on dance vs mainstream music.

You seem to have missed the point of my post: that the club and DJ scene of dance music is more based on "live performance" profit
(club takings, bar, etc etc etc), which is not replaced by downloads, than the mainstream sector, which is largely driven by single sales.

wonder how many of these producers have liscenced programmes?

my mistake i meant profit margin just didnt explain myself

on average you would expect the production costs and the profit to be proportional

production costs and profit margin are (ceteris paribus) unrelated. That is a big assumption though - it assumes constant prices (probably fair, given the size of the market) and constant costs WRT changes in scale of production. This is where I would think you would be right - larger scale production runs pulling costs per unit down, etc.

Harry

My mate is doing an accountancy degree and is thinking of doing her final year dissertation on piracy and the effect it has on the music industry and profit margins.

Have already printed out a copy of this thread for her to get a feel of what real people think

But if anyone has any data or info to back this up or any info on where to get it from then it would be much appreciated. THANKS GUYS................KNOW YOU WANT TO

I download all the time but I also buy a single if I like it