Brendan and Nikolaos - Single sales have certainly been increasing, with record single sales occuring in the UK this year. These single sales are typically taken into account for total album sales figures, with 10 singles representing 1 ablum, and still don't alone account for the overall decrease in album sales. Due to space limitations, however, I intentionally didn't address ways in which artists could continue to derive income from the sale of music. I completely agree with you though that direct online distribution, with record labels as intermediaries, can benefit artists.

-- BradleyMullins - 06 Dec 2009

How much of that 38M net loss in album sales is due to a change in the way music can be purchased? Many now buy only a popular single on iTunes, whereas they would have shelled out the premium for the entire album before. I'm just curious. Even if singles sales account for a substantial portion of that lost revenue, I'm not sure it really affects your argument, which I think is well done.

-- BrendanMulligan - 06 Dec 2009

Bradley, Interesting thoughts. I tend to believe that record labels will be phased out of the digital environment as unnecessary intermediaries. Today, what appears to be taking their place is the role of online distributors of music such as itunes, amazon, etc. I am not sure for how long this sort of intermediary will continue to thrive, but I think that for the time being, artists are interested in distributing their music through these major channels. In this context, I found this site (http://www.tunecore.com/) particularly interesting for "artists without labels" as it allows them to reach the aforementioned channels, and simultaneously retain all rights and profits to their work.

-- NikolaosVolanis - 05 Dec 2009

Bradley, here's the talk I was referring to -- http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2009/november2009/music-lawyers

-- AllanOng - 03 Dec 2009

Bradley, I read this paper sometime in November, but did not comment and I don't recall if this version is the same one I read. This paper was a lot of fun to read. About file sharing of music, this talk I attended by Adam Schlesinger who wrote the song "That Thing You Do" and he says that one doesn't even need to download a song anymore to listen to it, because when we have a craving to listen to a song, all we have to do is to head to Youtube, listen to it a few times, and then the craving is gone. He (don't remember if it was he himself or his lawyer who said it?) even thinks that no one really downloads songs from ITunes anymore, and those who do are those who got their parent's credit card. He says that, as you state here in your essay, money is made on licensing (Adam, or his lawyer, said that he was really happy that "That Thing You Do" was played 12 times in the movie, because he was paid each time the song was played) and on live performances (one of them said that the reason why people are willing to continue paying a lot for concert tickets is because they don't need to buy CDs anymore). So basically, it seems that your arguments on how artists can earn money where CD sales are low seems to be how Adam is thinking he can earn his living. I'm thinking that another way for musicians to earn money is by getting hired to perform in movies or on TV? I'm not sure to what extent this applies in the U.S. (crossing over from music to modeling to acting happens a lot where I'm from), but maybe to an extent in the U.S. as well like Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce in Dreamgirls?

-- AllanOng - 03 Dec 2009