Does anybody think its a problem when mostly only "DJS" are buying the music

[clubman5]

problem is DJ are buying the music, and the music fans arent buying it, they are stealing it by downloading it, and stuff

I go to a place that sells dance music, something like Satellite records, and I will agree with you edubz, people arent out and buying like they used to!

BUT, then I go to Tower records on Broadway, and they have people in there buying like crazy! Hip Hop, R & B, Contemporary, Jazz, Rock, Classical, Country Western, etc!

You tell me, what makes the difference?

[skylab]

I dont think buying enough dance music isnt the only problem either. Dance music isnt the only genre being effected by the downloading craze. There is something else missing and its not that people are downloading. Of course it does do some damage to the genre by downloading but its basically doing damage the all genres as well.

[clubman5]

I dont think buying enough dance music isnt the only problem either. Dance music isnt the only genre being effected by the downloading craze. There is something else missing and its not that people are downloading. Of course it does do some damage to the genre by downloading but its basically doing damage the all genres as well.

Then the music labels should setup download sites! In this age of everything is SOOOO EXPENSIVE, of course, there are going to be those who will look to save money and download, even if it is sonically inferior to buying factory made CD,s at this point in time!

But you do know that in time, a short time at that, downloads will become as good as a CD is now! Remember when CD,s sounded terrible compared to a vinyl record? And the CD format has improved dramatically, no?

Companies are going to have to find and develop new ways to do buisiness in the New Age World! If they want to survive.

It can be done.

[silverbull]

Or how about the song that first got me into house music in 1990 "TEARS". See thats a song that is perfect on how house music use to have emotional songs and meaning, unlike some of this other shit thats being sold as "VOCALS". And then my fave is when a fan hears some dj use an accapella over a track and instantly thinks thats the track they have to run and download and when they get it, is probably the wrong name anyhow. The best thing to do is something like what westendrecords.com does, it allows you to download tracks from thier website for 99 cents to like 1.99 .

[edubz]

I dont think buying enough dance music isnt the only problem either. Dance music isnt the only genre being effected by the downloading craze. There is something else missing and its not that people are downloading. Of course it does do some damage to the genre by downloading but its basically doing damage the all genres as well.

it is the people downloading...

look at it this way.

dance is a small market.

You have all these "music fans" that GOTTA have the newest shit. BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY they go on their file sharing P2P programs, and download all this dance stuff. They gotta have it, but they wont buy it... take downloading away from them, and what are they going to do? Buy mixed DJ cd's...

Now, how is this not hurting the genre? For one, the music becomes stale. A good track, becomes played out quick because everybody has already got it... it plays in the club, and its like, yeah, I got this on my ipod....

also, these same people want music, yet they dont want to support the small market of producers who make it.

like I said, its not a problem when only DJ buy music, its a problem when the music fans DONT buy the music and download instead.

hip hop gets their money from shows, alot of radio play,ect,ect... a dance producer cant make money like that unless they DJ also.

[mtmartin]

When vinyl was the main format, how many artist albums/producer went platinum IF ANY?

the community doesn't support it! point blank

this is CLUB music that wea re talking about... LOOKING AT THE BIG PIC. the percentage of people that are going out tonight and hunting down that dope peace division records is extremely small don't you think?

unless they are djs of course...but "civilians" LOL just don't give a fuck about it ENOUGH TO MAKE IT APPEALING ON A MASS LEVEL....

I don't see the p2p obliviating the house scene...

LACK OF GENERAL AUDIENCE WILL

NOT EXPOSING IT TO A YOUNGER GENERATION WILL

otherwise we better be content with playing the bedroom dj or "look at this cool record i got" game

it is the people downloading...

look at it this way.

dance is a small market.

You have all these "music fans" that GOTTA have the newest shit. BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY they go on their file sharing P2P programs, and download all this dance stuff.

Now, how is this not hurting the genre? For one, the music becomes stale. A good track, becomes played out quick because everybody has already got it... it plays in the club, and its like, yeah, I got this on my ipod....

also, these same people want music, yet they dont want to support the small market of producers who make it.

like I said, its not a problem when only DJ buy music, its a problem when the music fans DONT buy the music and download instead.

hip hop gets their money from shows, alot of radio play,ect,ect... a dance producer cant make money like that unless they DJ also.

[edubz]

When vinyl was the main format, how many artist albums/producer went platinum IF ANY?

the community doesn't support it! point blank

this is CLUB music that wea re talking about... LOOKING AT THE BIG PIC. the percentage of people that are going out tonight and hunting down that dope peace division records is extremely small don't you think?

unless they are djs of course...but "civilians" LOL just don't give a fuck about it ENOUGH TO MAKE IT APPEALING ON A MASS LEVEL....

I don't see the p2p obliviating the house scene...

LACK OF GENERAL AUDIENCE WILL

NOT EXPOSING IT TO A YOUNGER GENERATION WILL

otherwise we better be content with playing the bedroom dj or "look at this cool record i got" game

its not about going platnium its about the so called death of dance music so many people talk about.

alex mayers made a good point.

http://jjazproject.brinkster.net/archive/digital.asp

During the early-mid 1990s, club-goers and radio-mix-show-listeners would hear unreleased tracks months, even up to a year before they saw a release. Even a large majority of the material that was released was so underground that most people wouldn’t know where to find it. They would have to pick out specific identifying qualities of the track in an effort to track it down (“oh, you know, that track with the Elmo-sounding voice on it!†or “it sounded like a male vocal, but maybe it had been pitched way, wayy down – I don’t even know!!â€).

Today, after dancing to a record in a club, you can get home as the sun is rising, flip on your computer, connect to your favorite file-sharing program and, without much difficulty, find and download that track. But the process of producing and releasing records hasn’t quite caught up to that speed yet. By the time a record sees a proper release, people have already been dancing to it in the clubs, hearing it in online DJ mixes and downloading it to their iPods for the past six months. At this point, very few people really feel the need to actually buy that record to support the label and the artist and to ensure that the quality music they love will continue to be available.

now I remember going to sound factory in the late 1990's and hearing songs that me and my friends would go crazy trying to find out the names of......., I even had a friend who actually tried to called Sound factory to find out the name of a song..true story! Those were the better days!

the fact is that now, that thrill is gone, because that song can be downloaded by alot of people, shared, and basically its life span has been cut short.

All of a sudden, dance music seems so boring....

[wavewhore]

From my standpoint as a DJ & producer, I'm not sure that most of the general public was ever directly pursuing dancefloor tracks like a DJ would anyway.

However, the digital revolution has impacted labels in a big way and most of the smaller independent labels are just barely covering their costs on vinyl releases primarily because it has become much easier for people to share music so less DJ's actually buy the record...

[clubman5]

From my standpoint as a DJ & producer, I'm not sure that most of the general public was ever directly pursuing dancefloor tracks like a DJ would anyway.

However, the digital revolution has impacted labels in a big way and most of the smaller independent labels are just barely covering their costs on vinyl releases primarily because it has become much easier for people to share music so less DJ's actually buy the record...

Yeah, but this thread isnt just talking about vinyl sales. Music sales is what we are talking about, they people arent buying CD,s either! Everyone is downloading these days!

DJ,s always bought the most dance music, save for the few who get so much mail they dont have to, but dance music, when we had airwave freindly hits DID sell well!

Alyus-Follow me! Started off at the underground level, wound up with airplay, everyone sings it, everyone bought it! Still playable, still very well know and liked!

Shit like this! This is whats lacking today!

[silverbull]

or how bout this for starters that a serious thread on a club messageboard gets less read then a nonsense topic. Shows ya what the mindset of certain people are.

Yeah i didnt mean only vinyl and stuff like that i meant complete sales, yes i get stuff for free,cds,promos, and i thank everyone who gives or sends me something. But theres also a lot of stuff that comes out that i have to buy cause i want the complete package of vinyl or cd, as well as digitally download certain songs from certain websites for a small price.

[skylab]

ok you guys are not getting my point... yes because dance music is so small compaired to pop or hiphop that it does take a big hit from downloading but pop and hiphop are taking the same percentage hit as dance music. The downloading is being targeted as if its the only thing stopping dance music from rising. Maybe its the music itself that isnt as good as it use to be? Maybe dance music doesn't have enough media? Or the fact that its so linked with drugs could make parents not want their kids to listen to it? There are so many things thats making it fall and downloading of course is just one.

[clubman5]

ok you guys are not getting my point... yes because dance music is so small compaired to pop or hiphop that it does take a big hit from downloading but pop and hiphop are taking the same percentage hit as dance music. The downloading is being targeted as if its the only thing stopping dance music from rising. Maybe its the music itself that isnt as good as it use to be? Maybe dance music doesn't have enough media? Or the fact that its so linked with drugs could make parents not want their kids to listen to it? There are so many things thats making it fall and downloading of course is just one.

I get you well enough! Your point is my point! It did in fact used to be the other way around! Hip Hop was the underdog, the sound of the inner city by the inner city for the inner city! Hip Hop is todays pop!

Dance music in all its forms, Disco, Freestyle, High Energy, Nu Wave, all of them had Gold and Platinum hits, and all sold really well! Donna Summer songs didnt do well? You had an image to go with these songs. Diana Ross? Michael Jacksons Thriller album? Even house sold well, when house had music that crossed over from the clubs to the airwaves! And onto MTV!

You want to sell? You must have commercial success! In order to have commercial success, you must make music people want to hear, then go out and buy! And you also need artists with public visibility,and images! We are an image driven society!

[scoobeedoo01]

If you shop in a record shop, the buyer for the store is your screener if the store has a bad buyer you are listening to bad music they chose, if they have good buyers that know what works for you, they get it for you from the distributor. If a record store buys bad vinyl and you shop there you get stuck with bad music...

[scoobeedoo01]

Satisfaction is in like a wendys commercial or burger king commercial.. Huge leap for dance music being made with a shitty track.. alot of people hear dance music every day and love it (in car commercials and everything they are trying to sell you) but when they get to the clubs they dont like it because they dont know how to dance.. Someone should make a club dancing instructional video they would make millions..

Its wierd over the past 6 months we have alot of people who have opened there minds to dance music that would never have left the hip hop room in the past.. as hip hop beats get funkier it makes it easier to make people like funky house / funky tribal music

[edubz]

or how bout this for starters that a serious thread on a club messageboard gets less read then a nonsense topic. Shows ya what the mindset of certain people are.

Yeah i didnt mean only vinyl and stuff like that i meant complete sales, yes i get stuff for free,cds,promos, and i thank everyone who gives or sends me something. But theres also a lot of stuff that comes out that i have to buy cause i want the complete package of vinyl or cd, as well as digitally download certain songs from certain websites for a small price.

take this example...

there are people out there who dont DJ, yet probably have more music on their hard drives then some DJ's.

The thing that irks me is, these people want, need, and have to have the lastest tracks, or what ever the DJ played at the club, yet they wont pay 1 dollar to ever download a track.

the problem as to why hip hop is more popular then dance TODAY is because dance has lost its marketability..

you dont think the labels know, that people download? They are not going to pay anyone to do it, because its just not marketable.... its downloadable.

so basically dance music is a dead genre. The death of dance music is true, it has happened. sure, people will always make dance, but I notice the lack of quality music these days as compared to the pre-downloading days.

[scoobeedoo01]

If you are paying a $1 for a download the artist is probably getting the same amount of money from that purchase as they would from somebody purchasing a $11 record..alot of the overhead of production distribution labeling and packaging are removed.The artist gets very little money from the actual sale, they make all their money on production.. As a Club person we pay over $3000 a year to ascap for the right to play recorded music in the club.. some of the clubs that hols 3000 people are paying like $50g's a year to play music in their clubs..This gets divided up between every label imaginable.. The bigger your venue the more you pay.. If you have bands playing its even more..

[edubz]

If you are paying a $1 for a download the artist is probably getting the same amount of money from that purchase as they would from somebody purchasing a $11 record..alot of the overhead of production distribution labeling and packaging are removed.The artist gets very little money from the actual sale, they make all their money on production.. As a Club person we pay over $3000 a year to ascap for the right to play recorded music in the club.. some of the clubs that hols 3000 people are paying like $50g's a year to play music in their clubs..This gets divided up between every label imaginable.. The bigger your venue the more you pay.. If you have bands playing its even more..

paying acap? this is new....

first off, you going on the assumption that every record cut and played is register with ASCAP, it this is just not the case.

why are you favoring one society over another? I am just curious as if someone registered all their works with BMI, they would not see 1 cent of all this money supposedly going to them.. there is this huge debate on which society is better to have your work register under.

If you are paying a $1 for a download the artist is probably getting the same amount of money from that purchase as they would from somebody purchasing a $11 record..alot of the overhead of production distribution labeling and packaging are removed.The artist gets very little money from the actual sale, they make all their money on production.. As a Club person we pay over $3000 a year to ascap for the right to play recorded music in the club.. some of the clubs that hols 3000 people are paying like $50g's a year to play music in their clubs..This gets divided up between every label imaginable.. The bigger your venue the more you pay.. If you have bands playing its even more..

another thing I am surprised nobody has mentioned is the mixed CD.

with all these people downloading whole tracks, nobody is buying mixed CD's. This causes an even bigger problem with the marketing of dance music as no major labels are going to want to release any form of marketable media to the masses in a mixed CD form...

with all the people downloading, whos going to feel the need to buy a mixed cd, when they have the whole tracks on their Ipod.

also, sales can help. it depends on how your deal is cut. Your bot going to signed to a major label, so the packages cost that have ripped off artist for years is bypassed, with digital downloads, more money then on vinyl because if you are your own business, there is no one else to pay.

[scoobeedoo01]

I play almost all non hip hop music.. Ascap covers most big labels.. i play only vinyl when I play live i hate the way cd's feel and sound.

ascap and bmi are the same thing.. you pay one or the other.. The mixed cd is a huge issue that nobody menitions , whe you put out a licensed mix all the artist get paid what they ask for .. If its not licensed give it away free

[edubz]

I play almost all non hip hop music.. Ascap covers most big labels.. i play only vinyl when I play live i hate the way cd's feel and sound.

ascap and bmi are the same thing.. you pay one or the other.. The mixed cd is a huge issue that nobody menitions , whe you put out a licensed mix all the artist get paid what they ask for .. If its not licensed give it away free

acap and bmi are NOT the same thing.

for one you can not be members of both, you need to be with one or the other..

BMI is a much better artist friendly organization. They pay out at a greater percentage than ASCAP. BMI is a not-for-profit organization. ASCAP is a for-profit company that will take out more from royalty checks. BMI founders were once members of ASCAP.

ASCAP had its bad days where it would not support black musicians. BMI has more black musicians because of ASCAPs racist history, things have changed, but history doesn't...

ASCAP has had to fight charges of violating anti-trust regulations for well over 60 years now. BMI was founded when ASCAP lost an antitrust suit which prevented ASCAP from being the sole clearing-house of performance licenses. The broadcast industry, the folks who had to pay the creators of music the royalties ASCAP collects, then founded their own society to negotiate the rates with themselves, and BMI was born.

[housejunkie81]

It's definately a problem and killing the quality of music but what can you do

[djkevinj]

I may be the minority here, but personally I think it's not worth buying CDs for what they cost in megastores when I get tired of listening to the same track (or the same mix, for that matter) very fast. I can only listen to a track (or a mix) a few times - I want to hear new shit all the time! That reminds me of a few months back when every other mix CD contained Deep Dish's "Say Hello" - to this day I feel like vomiting whenever I come across it...

There are so few tracks that I admire years and years after - "Sandstorm" is still my absolute all time favorite. But that's probably because of that incredible night in Dady-Os in Cancun the description of which belongs in the "Drama" forum...

SANDSTORM I WANNA VOMIT NOW. SOME GIRL ASKED ME TO PLAY THIS ONCE AND I ALMOST YELLED AT HER

[djkevinj]

I think its all the darn downloading of music and so far nothing can be done about it. Those law suits have stoped people from downloading but def not in the dance industry cuase its those big labels that work with the riaa to file those law suits not these small house labels. We have these digital downloads and even though they are dirt cheap people still wont buy em. Even the people that spend all this money going to clubs every week, week in week out wont spend 1 bux for a track that they love because they know they can get it for free. Some of the tracks that these clubs kids long to hear and they swear for years that they love they track they didn't pay for it and they still would never pay for it. So until they find a way to stop downloading for free only the real big producers will make some kind of money. Until then i'll continue to just give out all my tracks for free.