Interview with Kosta Linardos, Editor of MixDown Magazine

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Next, we interviewed Kosta Linardos, editor of MixDown Magazine Australia. We asked Kosta similar questions to those we posed to Clint and Whitt. As we had hoped, he provided some really in-depth responses that varied from those of the musicians. In his opinion, there is very little the recording industry can do to make money online. He believes that record labels have ‘had it coming’ for a long time, and have outstayed their welcome as the long-standing ‘owners’ of commercial music.

This is similar to what Russell Rains, Director of the MBA Program in the Digital Media Management Program at St. Edward’s College in Austin Texas, discusses on the topic of “CD’s vs Digital Recordings” in a video posted on academic music blog Artisthouse.org. Rains claims that “the record industry killed itself”. He believes that the implementation of the container charge (where the record label takes 25% of the artist’s royalties to cover the alleged costs of making their CD’s and distributing them), and the fact that record labels had the cheek to sell CD’s essentially worth US$1 for US$17, is “nonsense”. In his opinion, with the decline of CD sales and revenue for record labels, “They have paid for that gluttony.” Kosta similarly believes it is ironic, yet positive, that the role of record labels and consumers have now been usurped.

According to Kosta, the advent of digital music is better for artists in that they are able to reach a wide audience without having to rely on record companies to handle marketing and distribution. If the demand for recording contracts lessens, the commercial side of music production (primarily, marketing) will slowly die out, resulting in an honesty and a rawness surrounding the music world that has not been seen before. No longer will record companies be able to pick a bunch of good-looking males and make them into instant stars; success will be based on talent, and this will be decided by the public, rather than the corporate companies. Kosta predicts that live music performance will become more and more prominent in the years to come, which will contribute to this sense of honesty, whilst providing artists with added credibility and a solid revenue. He gave an overall impression of approval at the way the music industry is heading.