Posts Tagged music industry
Admittedly, it’s far simpler to assess the terminal virus shared by record labels (see my previous post) than it is to predict what will rise to take their place. Given the Internet and 3G/4G iphones continue to be the lifelines for those in the connected generation, then I’m underplaying things to say there will be a vast interstellar galactic shift in music promotion and distribution ahead.
The record labels' warp drive has become warped
Tangible change is already well under way.
Today, the shift has moved away from labels making things happen to the individual taking the reins. The composer, artist, band, or arranger no longer needs to go to a professional studio: quite a decent digital recording can be made in the living room — on your time schedule.
Thanks to reasonably priced software and hardware products on the market, the alchemy that once could only be rented in a studio can be plugged in at home. NOTION Music products help hobbyists and professionals of all shapes, sizes, and genres cook up their own finished creations. Rumors here have it that our programmers are working on supporting VST effects and VSTi third-party libraries for an upcoming release of NOTION — for even more studio-esque magic right at your fingertips.
And big money isn’t necessarily needed for promotion and distribution. The global reach of the Internet and the inexpensive options to create and run a web site grant each individual a level playing field to promote their sounds – instantly, within minutes of the final mix. True, whether you peddle your own homemade CDs or sell downloads, the money isn’t the lump sum of the music industry’s glory days, but then every nickel in profit is yours.
According to Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis: “It’s a bad time for record labels…but musicians seem happier than ever. Artists today are able to record symphonies in their bedroom on a laptop and then distribute it more efficiently than any corporate multinational entity could.”
Or, another route many bands take is to promote their sound online for free, then leverage listener interest into high-paying live performances. This approach is the thin edge of the intergalactic flip-flop: once upon a time you used to play live for cheap to land lucrative recordings. Now you post comparatively inexpensive recordings to land lucrative live performances – and the whole process is without the expensive cut and artistic meddling of record label execs. And that, in my book, might just be a change for the better.
Certainly, the industry continues to boast an edge on large promotions, TV/movie placement, brick and mortar sales, radio play, and star-creation machinery. But the vultures are circling: they know they’ll be something left for them after the galaxy does its inevitable interstellar pirouette.
A Milky Way bar, anyone?
A call to the halls of Congress: as you bail out the banks and institutions that have been part of the problem, consider dropping a few million to another problem child, the U.S. pop-music industry. Once considered a stalwart up there with General Motors, the industry that cranked out those terribly terrific top ten tunes since mom and dad hit adolescence has now slipped into Alzheimer’s and can’t remember how to succeed.
Alas, about the only viability plan they can draw up is to circle the wagons in a siege mentality. Why? To fight off the Internet. (The only good Internet is a dead Internet.)
On second thought, perhaps Congress should allocate funds elsewhere: the dementia may have progressed too far. Speaking of how the record industry in America went on the rampage after Napster-esque web sites, Peter Jenner, former manager of Pink Floyd and The Clash, “It always seemed to all of us a really bad idea to sue your customers; to sue your fans.” His assessment on where the industry is on making a shift away from the past? “We’re fairly early on,” he says, along with: “but the ambulance is just around the corner.”
To read what’s out on the web, it appears a surprising number of brake mechanics have made their way into the music industry (see previous post). Surely, the web commentators say, we have a level-6 pandemic on our hands.
There are blog lamenters like djaroma out of Berlin [myspace]: “Listening to so much music this afternoon, longing for some new tunes, and all I hear is so predictable…everything is sort of related to some minimal style.”
An insider, Missy Elliott, rapper, cries out [contactmusic]: “I think the music industry is so gimmicky. Record labels are more caught up in trying to get (clones) of successful artists instead of looking for something unique.”
Even the classical/near-classical world is not immune from this pandemic. Take a review from Michael Huebner’s blog: “Every piece, except one, on this program started with tinkling, ambient piano…The predictability was numbing.”
Too little predictability and you put your audience into dismay. Too much predictability and listeners put you into dismay: they are not listening — or buying.
Pandemics eventually run their course, but not without leaving behind devastating damage. Can we be raising a whole generation of listeners who write off music as something trivial and inconsequential? It makes you want to run out and be a Jonas Salk to find the musical vaccine as soon as possible.
By the way, the first people to receive the Salk vaccine was in 1954, the same year Elvis’ first record (That’s All Right, Mama) hit the airwaves. Not one but two shots in the arm…
I’m certain I’m committing an unpardonable sin of prejudice, but if a car mechanic said he was a composer, then I’d turn and run to have my rotors and pads done at another shop.
[Sound effects: car speeding off into the distance]
I confess, in my prejudiced mind there’s just too much of a gap between the never-vary-from-the-book approach for a safe brake job and the never-the-same approach for good composing. And, alas, I don’t believe doses of sensitivity training or cultural immersion will cure me of this partiality.
Imagine this: either the tech does great brake jobs but has a shallow portfolio of tunes, or he can wow me with how well he tinkers and fiddles and experiments – which means he’s not coming near my brakes.
[Sound effects: a crowd murmurs in agreement]
Runaway Bride, Paramount Pictures
Of course, I’m using the mechanic merely as an emblem. They’re good with their hands and have every potential to be fine players (shades of the Gill character in Runaway Bride) and I’m certain there are gifted composers with oil-stained fingers. It’s the mindset I’m getting at that can invade any race, creed, or color of collar: a world view that forces the square peg that yields success in exacting industries into the round hole of music. Sort of, “We have this formula that has worked wonders in pushing microwave ovens. And now we’re moving to bring the same success to the recorded music industry.”
[Sound effects: a dramatic trumpet-section sting here.]
Given that repeatedly doing things the same way saves lives if you do brakes (and very commendable), but a killer if you do music (so should be avoided), then why is predictability in popular music so rampant these days? Makes you wonder…perhaps the besieged record labels could turn things around if they’d open a few brake shops.
[Sound effects: a car horn followed by a cha-ching.]
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