The State of A&R Today

It's not just the recording studios that are feeling the crunch of the "record it yourself, sell it yourself" model the music business works on these days. I admire the DIY ethic, if not always the results, for recording, but certainly, record companies had too much power for too long. Here's a bit excerpted from an article at LA Weekly.

When, at the turn of the millennium, the record industry fumbled the digital-distribution opportunity presented by the budding Internet, its profits plummeted, as the public lost interest in the suddenly clumsy compact disc (U.S. album sales shrank from 785 million in 2000 to 428 million in 2008, according to Nielsen Soundscan). Drastic layoffs followed — more than 5,000 industrywide between 2000 and 2007 — as buyouts and mergers reduced the major labels to a "Big 4" and significant brands like Arista, V2 and DreamWorks vanished altogether. A&R ranks withered accordingly: 127 A&R executives were let go or chose to leave their jobs during 2007 alone, according to business-contact source The A&R Registry.

The whole article is here:

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-02-11/music/a-r-star-makers-the-vanishing-gatekeepers/1