21/10/2016 - Sparks fly at Womex panel on the future of the world music album.
I am glad to report that our panel went off with considerable success at this year's music expo in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It was not a debate but opinions on the question were polarised .
The session began with my short presentation where I blamed, in part, the demise of the album format on a failure of the industry to react to developing technology. My view is that since the arrival of recordable media, through to streaming, we have not had a handle on either technology or the legal situation that arose from the many new ways of using copyrighted material. Ultimately in the current environment of streaming and now stream ripping, making an album, is not a sound business model.
Pic Songwrights Publishers
Carolina Vallejo, the newest entrant to the music business on the panel appealed to the record collector, slow food fan and nostalgia in us, saying that she will continue to make albums for her artists. She disagreed with my proposition. "God is dead? art is dead? the album is dead?"she said, which was warmly received by the audience.
Former artist turned label owner, Ninder Johal conceded that album making was not a good investment, at the same time showing the samples of his own band's new CD. He however said that it was a question of that the consumer wants, saying that in the older demographic there was still demand of albums. He pointed out that concert promoters still ask for albums as an indication of the direction performers are taking.
The
representative of the digital business, Scott Cohen, strongly disagreed with my statements about the killing off of the business by technology. He said that the upturn in music sales revenue was proof that things are improving. He did not like the slide with a statistic comparing the huge number of stream plays needed for a songwriter to equal the salary of a Spotify employee, as presented in the introductory presentation. But he did agree that the album is over.
There followed a very lively discussion between panel and members of the audience, some of whom were label owners who said that they still support and want albums and that in some formats such as the vinyl album, releases are still profitable.
If I have to draw a conclusion it is that, as a format the album is dead, but in specialist genre, like world music there are still arguments in favour album releases, that are not only profit driven.
There is an audio recording of the proceedings is available online here >
Audio record of Panel
It certainly helps having an organised team behind events such as this and I want to thank and congratulate the Womex for their work and input.
Patrick Lee-Thorp
As yet no sync with the slides, but the audio is still interesting.
