Has anyone seen or know of any studies of who actually buys the underground stuff,,meaning the demographic????
The reason I ask is because locally I've seen a decline in NON d.j.'s buying records. If that's true elsewhere can the underground industry survive with just d.j. purchases? Either way I think it will be very important to find actually WHO buys our stuff! Ja'Maul Redmond PERKINS & WILL 1100 South Tryon Street, Suite 300 Charlotte, North Carolina 28203 -----Original Message----- From: Cyclone Louise Wehner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 10:51 PM To: 313 Detroit Subject: Re: (313) dying business? [was: RE: Nu Era on Twisted Funk] Not dying, but changing. I know I've said it before but the impact of file sharing has been profound - added to the economic uncertainty. You can talk to any label boss, from Simon Dunmore (Defected/Stealth) to Luke Solomon (Classic) to Meat Katie (and breaks are big and all that) and you'll get that view. People just have different views on how to go from here, what is the solution? I would say the majors have lost 2/3 of their staff - Universal Music shed something like 75 percent in anticipation of losses - and there will be more downsizing. OK, so many peepz here could care less about majors but the smaller labels are hurting too. Classic got burnt big time when their distributor went under! I think there is a perception that house music was dull in 2003 with the likes of Basement Jaxx saying as such in interviews but there was plenty of great underground stuff, as we know, but not great sales. DJ Sneak says he had trouble finding a UK label deal for his album 'cause labels were scared - and he's had that huge Fix That Sink hit so he would be a viable prospect, you'd imagine. The media backed the rock revival thing - on the basis of everyone liking Coldplay, I don't know - but it's more that the market has diversified and actually I think it's become easier for kids to like rock and dance and urban, there's more hybridisation happening, too. In Australia there have been several sell-out tours and I reckon people are saving money on records by downloading and using it to attend live shows. >> ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- >> From: "Odeluga, Ken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> >> >Pleased to see that it's clearly going to be popular (judging >> from the >> >responses I got and the number of places which are going to stock >> it - >> >around the world). Is this *really* a dying business?! >> >> i know from talking to a couple detroit house cats that their records >> are all pressed at one place and that theres pretty much a long line >> to get stuff pressed up. stuff seems to be selling out pretty quick >> too. so who knows. > > > I think there's mixed indicators. While you have the death of some > major distributors this year, I read an article in the Metro the other > day (granted, not the most reliable source) that vinyl sales have > increased in 2003 (I think in the UK) for the first time in however > many years. The article atributed it to a renewed interest in > guitar-based music in teenagers, which I thought was a pretty strange > explanation! More than anything, I think there's been a lot of hurt in > techno, and a lot of health in house, broken beat (Goya *must* be > doing great), downtempo stuff and underground hip hip. This doesn't > *necessarilly* say anything about the quality of the releases, of > course. I know some of the best techno labels seem to be fighting an > uphill battle to move records, but I think that's probably a result of > lots of people who have been into techno losing interest in shopping > for it as their tastes generally diverge into other things. I know I > stopped looking for a while, and certainly stopped buying, but as the > momentum has been picking back up in techno, so has my purchasing. > > Tristan > ======= > http://www.phonopsia.co.uk > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
