I just read this fascinating article in New York magazine on the music industry. The main thrust of the article is that while novelists were the cultural icons of the first fifty years of the twentieth century, rock stars were the icons of the second. Michael Wolff says now that only a few companies control radio, music became homogenised. Then with the advent of file sharing, the market has splintered, and become more like the book industry.
If he is correct, rather than talking about the possibility of techno becoming mainstream, the reality may be that the other genres of music will fracture into sub genres and begin to sell in comparable volumes to techno. Hope comes from the fact that while there are few blockbuster novelists, there is a solid catalogue of mid-list novels for those with a more rarified taste. There will be more respect for those that produce quality in lower volumes when marketing becomes less effective. The article refers to the Wall Street Journal's story a few months ago that precisely accounted for the $2.2 million launch costs of a singer named Carly Hennessy, who went on to sell 378 CDs. http://www.nymag.com/page.cfm?page_id=6099 Hugo ##################################################################################### This e-mail message has been scanned for Viruses and Content and cleared by MailMarshal For more information please visit www.marshalsoftware.com ##################################################################################### --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
