Mauro and I discuss the record business as we sit outside the venue. The business is shrinking, but music thrives. There's lots of great music being made, maybe more than ever, but very little of it reaches a large or even a medium-sized audience. Mauro comments that, with digital production, the sheer number of CDs is simply overwhelming. There's no time or room for all those artists. Granted, with digital distribution, all of them might be available to download, avoiding the issues of physical objects. But there's still the problem of getting those who might be interested informed about what's out there for them.
We wonder about the big record companies costs. Recording costs for most of us have stayed level or even gone down. (Top-selling hip hop, R&B, and pop artists are the exception; their beat merchants, mixers, and producers charge a fortune for their golden touch.)
I would think the big percentage of costs is in marketing: in videos, billboards, radio play (still mainly paid for, I suspect), and advertising.
The business model has changed in recent years, too, as these marketing costs spiral upwards, due to all the clamoring competition. So the multinationals are forced to have a smaller roster. And when a major marketing push doesn't pan out, it's financially devastating. The problem is, it's music and human beings, not an unwavering formula like Coca-Cola or the Secret Sauce. It’s erratic, unpredictable, risky, and short-lived by nature. As the product mutates, this model of business is realized; companies are forced to repeatedly find more or less identical replacements. And then repeat the whole marketing cycle.
A whole audience and arena of music is purposely abandoned in this scenario. I suspect a new model will evolve to reach this massive, though dispersed and diverse, audience.
On the way back from dinner at a local Tandoori restaurant we pass a flock of British lassies out on the prowl. For provocative looks, they rival anything in Belgrade. These ones have probably just left the pub and are somewhat hammered. The Serb women seemed more alert and focused.
A photo in today's Daily Mirror, the tabloid given away at the hotel, accompanies a headline about the disputed rise in crime in UK cites- claiming there are no-go zones in city centers- it shows 5 babes just like the ones we passed on the street all laughing as they pass a drunk dude who is horizontal on the sidewalk. They all sport more or less identical cleavage and miniskirts.
