C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear (St Croix Valley Press 04-26-07)

You’ve probably all read the hand-wringing articles about CD sales being off 20%. Typically, music executives blame the downloading generation for their losses. What’s not said is that the structure of the music business is radically changing and the executives are running scared. Many of the new album releases no longer come from the Big Four record companies (EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group) but from a growing community of independent labels.

Some groups skip making CDs altogether and post their music directly onto the Internet. It might be wiser for the industry to stop attacking potential buyers and get serious about promoting new music. This reminds me of how Detroit once attempted to browbeat us into buying American cars claiming the Japanese were “invading.” When the Japanese demonstrated that they could build superior cars in the States, the auto companies had to compete or die. So don’t run out to buy Led Zeppelin Sings Sinatra IV unless it was already on your wishlist.
The world of music is changing, not dying. In fact, the number of groups and genres to choose from is exploding. It might seem easier to see declining CD sales as more evidence of the apocalypse than to figure out how to participate in the new world. Warning: the next section deals with computers. Go to www.allmusic.com and plug in any group you like, no matter how embarrassed you are that you still like them. The first page will show you similar artists you can investigate. Click on any name and you’ll be sent to their page, listing influences, albums, reviews and links to sites that sell used CDs. If you’re feeling digitally fit, you can go to a more exotic site, www.gnod.net.

Gnod will walk you through a series of questions that begin with three musicians you like and end with a printable summary of recommendations. Along the way you educate the database by selecting Like, Don’t Like or Don’t Know for each of their choices. Gnod, a German site modestly calling itself The Global Network of Dreams, will create a visual map representing the information gleaned from thousands of other fans. Plug a musician into the map and watch in realtime as names radiate out from the center, their distance representing how people who like your group have rated others. One more step. The Internet is a vast flea market and unlike the controversy surrounding downloading, no one is claiming that selling used CDs violates the rights of music companies to sell you songs you don’t want.

Go back to allmusic.com and see if there are any used CDs. Amazon’s z-shop is a reliable network of individual sellers. I recently zeroed in on an obscure sub-genre (“trip hop” circa 1994) and bought five used CDs of groups I had never heard of before (The Groove Armada, The Thievery Corporation, for example), all for about twenty dollars. To alter a famous line from Mark Twain: reports of the death of the music industry have been greatly exaggerated.