Inside the Music Business

This month's BC Business Magazine features an interview with music business insiders Sam Feldman, Bruce Allen, and Terry McBride about the current shape of the recording industry in Canada. The article by Chris Cannon asks some tough questions about the music and recording industry in Canada and abroad, the nature of the industry today and the effects of new media and technology upon the development of bands and new artists.

Our music choices today are much more varied and diverse than say twenty or thirty years ago, Terry McBride points out that the development of the CD itself forced the industry to release 60 min. recordings instead of the old 35 - 40 min formats from LP's, which in some ways had an effect of lowering the quality by giving the consumer more product than they wanted. CD's while possibly having a better sound created higher prices for the same product. Also the new format created the notion of "pull" rather than "push" . With CD's you could choose to listen to track 3 over and over again, and only listen to track 3, something that is much more awkward to do with a turntable or cassette. Old technology used the "push" marketing strategies where the big corporations would decide what would be produced and what would receive air play. The mass market mediums are no longer Radio and TV, but video games and the internet, which has changed everything.

The new world is now based on "pull" where the new millennial generation pulls content from the internet or from online stores, rather than being "pushed" upon us by the mass market mainly through radio.

Spin City - Article in BC Business Magazine - December 1st, 2008