THE GREAT MUSIC DEATH SPIRAL, PART 47

[defrog]

I’ve blogged before about how the music industry is in such bad shape that even MTV is going, “Dude, you don’t look so good.” The Economist has published an updated version of the 2007 music post-mortem, and sums it up brilliantly: basically, it’s the music labels’ own fault they’re losing money (which, by the way, some of us have been saying for a few years now), and if you thought 2007 was a bad year, there’s plenty more financial pain where that came from.

Anyway, there’s not much here that MTV didn’t mention already (and that’s the last time you will probably ever hear anyone say that about MTV), but it’s worth calling to yr attn for the opening anecdote alone:

In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

Ouch.

Pack yr ermines, Mary,

This is dF