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“There aren’t many millionaires in this industry. In fact, even house and techno’s most successful artists are minority interests in the wider world, comfortably outsold by moderately popular rock bands.
Indeed some of the biggest labels in the house and techno scene, the ones that seem at the very top of the tree, only sell 3,000 or so 12-inches per release. Relatively speaking, that’s miniscule. It also tells us something we should already know: that despite the endless battles about authenticity within the dance scene, it’s practically all “underground”. If one label sells 3,000 pieces of vinyl per release and another 300 per release, neither are massively successful, and neither come even close to mass popularity. The truth is, throughout the dance scene, few are making a fortune and most are merely managing, or worse.
The most obvious reason why is that techno music just doesn’t resemble other more successful genres. There are few lyrics, even fewer traditionally structured songs, and not many personalities. The artists who do enjoy commercial success tend to sound markedly different from the house and techno music you hear in nightclubs, suggesting that there’s only so much of a market for sparse and repetitive electronic sounds. Secondly, techno is consumed and distributed in its own way. With some exceptions, it’s usually ill at ease with the album format that has dominated sales for so long.
But it may not be entirely true to say that external circumstances alone are restricting the popularity of the music. In 2008, one of the biggest disappointments about a scene that is producing a slew of records that are vibrant, interesting, and artistic on a weekly basis is that some labels persist in making it difficult for fans to hear them. Of course I’m talking about vinyl only labels.[…]
Even if the biggest labels in the scene sold three times as many units per release they wouldn’t come close to the sales of a major label or a well known band or hiphop artist. This scene is entirely underground for reasons that go way above and beyond format.”

Ronan Fitzgerald – The vinyl solution

Posted in de-dans on February 22nd, 2008 by de-dans | 5 Comments