More on the state of the music business

Shit comes in threes.

Harp magazine quit publishing. Then No Depression.

Today Folio reported that Resonance, what Folio called a "small, well-regarded independent music magazine," called it quits.

I didn't read Harp or Resonance, but the other day I blogged about No Depression, a magazine I found about a year ago; I would devour the each issue of the magazine cover to cover a couple of times. And I pretty much said the music industry has to figure out how to market, but that mags (or is the hip terminology, 'zines??) are still valuable to the industry.

The music industry has to come to terms with the new business model that includes the digital world. So do magazines like No Depression, and all the rest. Low advertising, paper and printing costs, postage, and a few other reasons are all the standard reasons why magazines are going out of business. The Web seems to be the answer, but Resonance was finally putting its edition online, and that didn't work. I'm not sure why, except a quick glance at their site showed that they basically took their magazine, turned it into a giant pdf, and made that the content. The online world won't have none of that.

First and foremost publishers have to prove to the labels that they are needed, but that's not easy. What they need are hard numbers. I can't give hard numbers off the top of my head, but because of magazines like No Depression (and Performing Songwriter and American Songwriter) I actually went out and bought CDs of artists I read about in their pages. And I will continue to buy more CDs because I like the quality I get, but I'm never paying full retail price because they're way overpriced and I'm too smart of shopper to pay that. I'll buy on sale or used. CDs are not going to go away anytime, soon. Times are still in a transitional phase, so there are still uses for CDs as revenue generators--even in ways not yet thought of, but the labels have to figure this out, too. How about this, A&R head of your major label:

CDS ARE OVERPRICED, YOU'RE JUST RIPPING OF THE PUBLIC, WE KNOW IT, AND THE TRUE LOW COST OF A CD MAKES IT IDEAL FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES.

There, do you think they'll get that? No, they won't. Blind, deaf, and dumb. And richer beyond belief. You actually can have too much money. It changes you. But that's a topic for a different blog. No wonder people steal music.


My Tour Filter is packed with bands I'm tracking. I'm a huge Lucinda Williams, Cowboy Junkies, and Steve Earle fan, just for starters, all of whom I've seen in concert a couple of times. There's where you're money is, or good chunk of it. I keep saying it, too: ticket sales, t-shirts, beer. There's where you're money is going to come from. (Of course, when I write that, I think, the labels and promoters will jack up the price of admission to the point where Major League Baseball has gotten, where you can't afford to go. Greed, greed, greed.)

But I'd drive a hundred miles to see Chris Knight, who I first heard about in No Depression. You can't tell me there aren't others like me. Maybe not huge numbers to fill a stadium like, oh, say Faith Hill and her Hollywood hillbilly husband, Tim McGraw, but that's the size of your market. Too effing bad if you don't like it. The world is changing, and you got to get creative. Labels and magazines both....