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The Way the Music Died
segfaultcoredump writes "Frontline just released a show entitled The Way the Music Died, an in-depth look at all that is wrong with the music industry. The show will be available for online viewing on May 29th. Their website includes the full text of all of the interviews done during the show, including a very interesting one with musical legend David Crosby, where he hits the reason the industry is having problems right on the head." Reader robl adds "This is a good sequel to the 2001 Frontline episode, The Merchants of Cool which showed how the music industry markets its wares to teenagers and how it hypes artists."
I was searching the page for quotes from people that I believe are the best ones to be asking for information. I don't see any artists on there that openly support free music. Why not? Those artists are the ones that you should be supporting... They are the ones that are comfortable enough with both themselves *and* their fanbase to believe that they can make it without having to worry about being backed solely by the money-grubbing conglomerates.
... The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died." Crosby also argues that the quality of music has suffered because of corporate interference. "It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath," he says.
David Crosby is a music legend known for his solo performances as well as his work with the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In this interview, he recounts how the music industry has changed over his career. "When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
I can tell you the way the music died... It died when the musicians became the money-grubbing motherfuckers that most of them were told to become. They want to make millions of dollars and they have the conglomerates brainwash their fans into thinking that it is acceptable! Music is now a business, of course it isn't run by the people that care. Why should it? People that care don't worry as much about the money. They worry about what matters... Pleasing the people that enjoy music. Everytime you plunk your change down for iTunes, CDs, DVDs, whatever, remember that a portion of that goes not only to supporting multimedia conglomerates that control everything it also goes to supporting DRM, lawsuits against others, and lavish parties where people enjoy laughing at you for buying their shitty music.
Music that is controlled by the conglomerates is now not created by the musicians it's created by the conglomerates. They decide what's going to be a hit and what's not. Billy Joel and his "cut it down to 3:05" bit. Do you really want to listen to music that is price-fixed, controlled, and owned by people that don't give a fuck about anything except how much Grey Goose they can drink out of ornate ice sculptures while crying about how much money they are losing because they refuse to ship as many CDs as they used to?
Treat ALL your customers like criminals = You fail.
Music is magic. It's been mankind's magic since the first caveman danced around his fire going "Ugga bugga, hugga bugga!" That was music, and he was happy. And we're still doing it, and it makes us happy.
;-)
I think he means European dance music is still doing that
iTunes is a good idea. It delivers the music to you cheap, pays us, doesn't cheat anybody, and it cuts out all middlemen -- very good
I don't think so, Mr. Crosby! Cuts out all middlemen? The RIAA are still there taking their fat chunk. The artists get a tiny chunk. Of course, if you're smart enough to release tracks directly to Apple (like Ben Folds has been doing lately), then you can get a lot more.. but most RIAA-promoted artists can't do this.
The music "industry" is a temporary phenomenon brought about by the original expense and difficulty of fabricating and distributing recorded music. As this expense drops to zero, we *should* go back to the way things used to be - professional musicians making a modest income providing live entertainment for live audiences. Unfortunately, people don't go out that much anymore (except to the mall) but electronic distribution can compensate. The music industry is dead; long live the music profession!
One of the quick ways of spotting this is to compare a song that you enjoy to its live performance. It should sound better live, but if the artist is just a commercial pre-packed product then they will probably sound like shit. -- Very true quote though.
... if music be fruit of love, play on
I was always wondering when somebody respectable and intelligent would note what the majority of America can't see: music today is CRAP. I don't care what my friends tell me, or what the TV tells me, there's no way around it. You don't get the studio mastery of the Beatles, nor do you get the sheer energy and excitement of Zeppelin.
I see two types of music industry, one marketing orientated type (MTV basically) that panders to people that don't actually like music. (they just like the imagery and style associated with thier particular flavour of pop, the 'Hip hop' guys like eminem, the 'punk' girls like pink etc).
The other type is that real music industry, where bands aren't marketed as a way of life. What is an Aphex Twin fan like? What kind of clothes should i wear if i like Amon Tobin or Sabres of paradise?
Seeing as I am firmly in the second group, I don't care very much what happens to the MTV industry. They never got any of my money, and they probably never will.
just my 2 centi-'S
That's right, I hate to say it, but recording killed music as it existed. Now, we have 2-3 minute soundbites that are played over and over in replication on thousands of cd players and computers. Gone are the complexities of performance. We've abandoned a culture of performers for a culture of listners.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Most everyone I talk to thinks that top 40 music on the radio sucks. I happen to agree (except for 50 cent, haha)
I think I'm one of the few lucky enough to have lived by and grown up with an excellent college music station. Through their various shows and DJs, I've been able to find out what type(s) of music I'm really into, rather than having the Big 5 tell me what I like.
The moral of the story is that if you dig a little deeper than what's on the surface, you can find the real gold. I believe Indie bands always prove to have much more talent and creativity than the producer-molded garbage you hear on top 40 stations.
That said, Epitonic is a great site to listen to cool songs and figure out how to break away from that mainstream cycle.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
I saw most of this show on TV last night. I found it interesting that they did NOT mention the Internet or P2P file sharing as a cause for poor music sales. Instead I think they nailed it when they said - More lax regulations on radio station ownership is to blame. Now that everything is Clearchannel, you can only play what they want. Artists used to get their big break by a local station playing their music. - Video is also to blame. You can't just sing any more, you have to look good too. They used Brittney Spears as a prime example--nice to look at but can't sing her way out of a paper bag.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Music will always live.
What is dying is the way big record companies make business (I know.. it's not disappeating any time soon, but anyways, it's dying slowly).
But around the world there will always be people willing to make music, perform music and freely share music.
We've known since the early 80s that video killed the radio star.
Read any good sonnets lately?
I suspect that there will be a "sea change" in the music industry as well as big paradigm shift. Things do tend to find their way even through the tumbles to the extreme. In the meantime, I'm glad I'm 46 because I grew up when great music, by and large, made it to the radio (yeah,yeah, I know, I'm a cranky old fart).
Keep smiling!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
1) I am encouraged by the amount and quality of home-recording equipment around these days. For $500 or less you can get decent microphones, and for another $500 you can get decent editing and processing software which surpasses last decade's state-of-the-art. To my mind, this gives me as a musician a whole lot of freedom to make music the way I want to.
... like government, or ethics?
2) However, I couldn't make a living like that, unless I were to be picked up by someone. And the point of the Frontline show is that the "someones" willing to pick up new artists are diminishing in number. In the long run, I believe that the problem will be solved by a shift in the market; after all, musicians receiving patronage has a long and glorious tradition.
3) But, in the short run, the situation stinks. What is interesting here is that we have gotten exactly what we wanted, so to speak. Music marketers discovered what types of music people were willing to pay for. The majority of us said "Yes" to 3 minute singles with catchy choruses repeated ad nauseum, sung on video by sexy-looking stars, and we said "No" to 20 minute explorations created by groups like Yes, Kansas, or Rush. Which raises an interesting point: if majority rule and utilitarian thought produces such obvious garbage in the music realm, what garbage can it produce in other areas
/ramble
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Finally a post where I can do some blatant self-promotion of a music site I've been working on. It's called cStream
http://www.cstream.com
Unlike most sites, we don't charge artists to post their music (i.e. like music.download.com, soundclick.com etc...) and we provide them with unlimited storage for their music. We don't believe in DRM, all our files are distributed as MP3s. After all DRM is not really effective if you can Buy. Rip. Burn MP3 from any music store with DRM (Buymusic, iTunes etc..). Thus DRM is a really weak level of protection for music.
We've only been open for a couple of months but already have a few hundred songs. We try to sell artists music and give them 50% of the revenue. Our problem is that because our music is independent music generally no one has heard it before. Because we only give away 30 seconds of the song in high quality our sales are fairly low.
We've been thinking about switching our model to providing full length lower quality copies of a song with the ability to purchase high quality versions of the song.
Read the article. He really does hit it right on the head.
"You know, you'd go to a meeting with a record company and it wouldn't be a guy there who knew that you had written a new song and thought that was cool. It would be a guy who knew that he had moved 40,000 pieces out of Dallas this month, and he had no idea, pieces of what? None."
"Look at it this way. A couple of years ago, somewhere between a fourth and a third of the record business was owned by a whiskey company, who shall remain nameless, but were notably inept at running a record company. And they sold it to a French water company, who shall also remain nameless, but knew even less. Now, those guys haven't a clue! [laughter] They haven't a clue. And they don't care about having a clue. They are trying to run it as if they're selling widgets, plastic-wrapped widgets that they can sell more of. And they want easily definable, easily accessible, easily creatable, controllable product that has a built-in die-out, so that they can create some more."
"It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath. It matters that she has cute tits, and that's all that matters."
"Now they're going in the tank, because the world has changed, and they did not change with it. They bit the poison pill, without realizing it, when they went digital. Once a thing is in digital domain, it can be copied as many times as you want. And there is no system that can keep it from being copied. You can devise the most clever one you want, and I will bring some little geek with a pen protector in his pocket into the room and he will fix it in a minute."
-- David Fucking Crosby
One 1987 Washington Post article reported that record executives believed that the price of a CD would eventually settle around $10.
Twenty years later, production costs have come down, but consumers are still complaining about the cost of CDs, which now are priced at upwards of $16. The industry's main lobbying arm, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), responds that prices have come down. According to an article published on the RIAA's Web site, "Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices ... rose nearly 60%. If CD prices had risen at the same rate as consumer prices over this period, the average retail price of a CD in 1996 would have been $33.86 instead of $12.75."
Anyone who has burned a CD on his computer for less than a dollar may still wonder why a product that is so cheap to manufacture could cost so much. The answer is that while the cost of physically producing a CD has dropped dramatically over two decades, the costs of marketing that album have grown tremendously. For example, in the early 1980s, music videos were an optional route for the industry to promote their artists. Now labels are expected to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing music videos for all of their major artists. Even marketing a major album to radio can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if an album is unlikely to get on radio or MTV, some labels have decided to launch costly television advertising campaigns to gain exposure for their artists.
However, the price of a CD isn't just paying for expensive marketing campaigns; it's also subsidizing releases by other artists that will never sell enough to make a profit. An artist at a major label may need to sell more than a million units before the venture ends up in the black. Most albums never sell anywhere near that. According to the RIAA, only 10 percent of albums ever achieve profitability.
Until music is considered and treated as an artform first and foremost, the commercial music industry will remain permanently broken as their priorities are transposed.
The early masters like Mozart and Beethoven were supported/sponsored by patrons thus freeing them to indulge their creativity and create truly legendary music that has outlasted their mortal lives and should last long after the members of commercial music industry sponsored music acts meet a similar fate....
If the big music conglomerates die, people will still continue to make music...
There's a lot of talented musicians and bands out there. Maybe they only play in bars and small venues; maybe they still have a day job; maybe you have to make a special detour to that out-of-the-way independent record store to find their records.
We can all live without music conglomerates and their lipsynching puppets.
I think the biggest problem with the music industry comes down to this: they are charging WAY too much for a single album-length Compact Disc.
At US$18 per disc, no wonder why music sales are down--people can't afford them! It's also created the financial incentive to try to get around these high prices, hence the rise of P2P sites. This is a classic case of an economic cartel that is being undermined. Also, for just a little bit more money you can buy a DVD movie, many of which not only have the movie but also additional featurettes out of the wazoo. Think about it: you can get the Extended Edition of the first two Lord of the Rings movies for around US$28 to US$30 at most retailers; it has so much stuff on four DVD's it would take you weeks to browse it all.
If the RIAA would just allow their member companies to price their CD's at US$11.95 per album-length CD the incentive to pirate music would drop drastically.
I'll be the last one to criticize him for smoking dope
Looks like you're the first in this forum at least. I don't see how his personal habits have anything to do with his credibility as an expert on the music industry.
Why don't you come up with some counter-points to his arguments, rather than just saying "He smokes dope, so he must be hallucinating all this stuff about the music industry..."
Probably more damaging is the fact that the music industry he's most familiar with is that of the 1970s, not that of the contemporary industry. Sure, he's involved, but as a veteran/player, not as an up-and-coming musician.
Quite the opposite, as a veteran he is in a perfect position to comment on how the industry has changed over the last 35 years. See, older people often accumulate, through experience, this thing called "wisdom".
that everyone is posting :
....
:-D
"the one reason the music industry died is . period." ??
and ALL of them are different reasons?
maybe its a combination of shitty music, greedy record companies, greedy musicians, drugs, cmdrtaco, drm, napster, filesharing in its many forms, mtv, britney spears, lack of innovation, disney, lawyers, riaa,
get the point? there's no 1 reason the recording industry is in the current state that it is.
and think about this...
Recording... INDUSTRY...
one more time...
Recording... INDUSTRY...
notice that second word:
INDUSTRY
They operate like a business would because they are a business and their main purpose is to make money. They may do it the sleazy way but hey thats BUSINESS.
Besides, there are plenty of indie bands (the mindset, not the genre) that work their ass off and distribute their own music and such. You just have to look harder because all that is advertised is the hot product from the Recording INDUSTRY.
Hey theres that word again...
rant over.. sorry for the caffeine overdose
Get paid to code OSS
It was a good show, the reasons they listed why the music industry is in such trouble:
CD sales in the 80's caused a massive boom in the industry because everyone was replacing their older records. This caused major industry corps to come in and gobble everyone up, because they wanted in on the action.
But the new corp culture revolved around quarterly reports and set schedules. So musicians are pressured to produce on a schedule to meet profit quotas. This doesn't make for good music.
MTV also changed the face of music. If you can get on MTV you get massive exposure. The problem with MTV though is that it's about image as much as it is about the music. So we end up with pop stars like Britney Spears who's pretty to look at but sounds like drek.
Clear Channel now owns a significant amount of radio stations and they will only accept so many new songs in a week. Record people now look for a "sellable" song that the stations will play(basically something just like they're playing already) because you want that mass exposure to hook people into buying your album. It's not about good music, it's about having a hit single.
From the David Crosby interview:
That's not a good thing, because it means that anybody that looks good in a well-shot video is suddenly at the top, whereas hugely talented people, who are great musicians, can barely get arrested.
Don't sell yourself short, David. You are hugely talented, and have no trouble getting arrested.
So what's preventing some of the big names (like Crosby) who "get it" from starting an iTunes-like service where they cut out the middlemen, and give 80% of the proceeds to fellow (up and coming) musicians?
I see a lot of posts saying the music industry is dying because today's music sucks and has no innovation. But if you actually look at history, that has always been the case. What has been the most popular has always been fairly tame, shallow music. The "good stuff" that is always remembered is rarely on the top of the charts. Go back and look at the actual music charts for the 60s, 70s and 80s. You'll find a huge amount of crap (in fact it is almost exclusively crap). That is because the most popular music is almost always easily digested pop songs. Today is no different. The most popular music is simple, easily digested, and easily forgettable, just like the "great music days" of whatever decade you want to pick. Today's music isn't any worse than yesterdays music, we just remember the good stuff from yesterday and see the crap of today.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I think its the difference between a "Show" and a "concert". People go to see Britney dancing an inticately correographed show, to the music of her album. People go to hear artists like Bob Dylan sing. People go to see Jimmy Buffet and the dead for the crowds. In the 70's we saw a rise of artists who wished to add "show" elements to their performances, Genesis, Pink Floyd, the Who, and probably reached its zenith with David Bowie. At which point it sort of broke, and acts that were as much about appearance, heavy metal pyrotechnics, hair bands, as they were about music, probably feuled by MTV tying images to music.
So give up your whining about it, realize your tastes are not the same as a 13 year old girls, and your fighting the same battle that a gourmet would convincing a 13 year old that great blue cheese is really better than Kraft individually wrapped slices.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I'm 33 and have newphews and nieces that are 16-22. We're basically a generation apart, but the sad thing is that I listen to the exact same music they do. Do I listen to the same music my parents do? No. Why? Because the music I listen to is very different.
But music hasn't evolved much since the 70's, so bands today sound like they did then. If it had evolved I'd hate the music my nieces and newphews like and they'd lament that I just didn't understand it.
A new video game I bought, Battlefield Vietnam, featured select tracks from songs from the early 70's. While playing it I was shocked at how good those songs were, not because I could recognize good music when I heard it(even though it was good), but because you could drop any one of those tracks on a modern alt/rock music station and it'd sound like any other song on the radio today. Music just hasn't evolved much in the past 30 years.
Now labels are expected to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing music videos for all of their major artists.
Really? Everybody I know says the artist pays for the music videos - the labels simply front them the money.
The truth is that as long as the RIAA can make the fistfuls of money they will continue to do so because they are a business. As soon as that business model become unfeasible, for them, not us, they will switch and find alternatives. Even with the piracy and decline in music purchasing they are still raking it in. There are too many 12 yr olds with disposable income that simply must have that latest Britney, NSync, or Avril album and will get it.
I also liked his comment that VH1 and MTV have unwittingly made music more about look and feel then about music. Most of my music dates back to before the 90's, with some notable exceptions.
Sir, there is a dragon outside with an armful of armor. He's inquiring if we offer free refills.
You just have to look a bit harder if you want to turn yourself on. (I won't link to audioscrobbler because they're having server problems atm and that would just be mean if I got modded up!). Most of my favourite music now is coming out of non-english speaking parts of the world - south america and the basque region are particularly juicy atm imho, and there's many more places producing great innovative music. speaking multiple languages is optional :) you just haven't heard any of it, most likely.. what i find incredible is if you go to these places you can buy "our" (usa/uk) music everywhere, and yet the most you get in a music store here is a pathetic little "world" section, that in no way reflects what the people there are actually listening to. why is this? are we (as a race of white caucasion middle class brits/americans) so close minded? what the %*^%& has gone wrong?! I was utterly bored with music until I discovered this. Seriously recommend others do the same. none of it would have been possible with free (in both senses) P2P networks. Right, i'm really tired and it took ages to write this but hope it inspires someone to go hunting.. listen to Cafe Tacuba, listen to Fermin Muguruza, heh well that's just where i started i dont' want to get into specific bands 'cos it's all a matter of taste but there's something for everyone with an open mind i swear :)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I think it's safer to say that mainstream music hasn't evolved as much in the past 30. There are lots of new or different styles of music, it's just that unless you listen to certain stations you probably aren't going to hear them above your regular rock/alternative stuff.
What this means is that it is the business of recording companies to engage in somewhat risky behavior - they bring in artists that may become a big hit and sponsor them. It doesn't always work out that way, but enough do that it covers the costs for everything they do.
This is essentially how a venture capital fund works as well - not everything may be a hit, but enough works out that it keeps everything going.
This does mean that there are a lot of expenses going through the system that need to be paid for. So, the one "hit" that they get pays for the other 9 that didn't quite make it but a lot of promotion was done for.
One big problem today is that such strategies aren't very well thought of. The executives are looking at this in a more risk-adverse way and this leads to not wanting to take chances. So, we have endless copies of things that have been a hit with the hope that this is less risky and more of a sure thing. This sort of thinking almost always leads to failure, and I think there are precedents for saying so.
To PBS' credit that they are posting what the press is saying about the show, even though most of it is quite negative.
--- What?
Here in Europe, it is truly heartbreaking. As I travel around, I find out how every european country has some great hits. But these are, at best, exported to a few neighbouring countries, e.g. inside scandinavia, or Germany-Austria etc. Instead, we get Bronx-rapper 'hits' shoveled down our throats with which we have absolutely NO cultural link. The chinese probably have great musicians, but if I forced you to listen to chinese music all day long... It just shows how the big labels put all their money on a few big cannons, and everything else just gets pushed aside. Listening on the net is great and all, but not everybody has time to do research and until I get ADSL in my car....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
> Not unless he bought Sony records. They released "Musicology" by "Prince" on April 20, 2004.
Yeah, they *released* it. They didn't produce it, they don't own the masters, they had no hand in any of it. They pressed and distributed the cd's on his terms, and that's all.
> Looks like the temporary independence was just another PR stunt, like the temporary name change.
The whole "symbol" era, while bizarre, was hardly a PR stunt. The whole thing started when Warner (his label at the time) wanted to put out more albums and he balked at it because a) he was getting increasingly frustrated with Warner's focus on "product" rather than music, and b) he's one of those guys who won't put out an album until everything's perfect. (This is the guy who, weeks away from releasing "The Black Album" suddenly decided that he didn't like it, scrapped the whole project) Warner knew that he had *tons* of stuff in the vaults and since they owned not only the masters of all of his unreleased material but the *rights to the man's name*, they started releasing Prince albums that weren't really Prince albums. It was his music, but it was just songs they threw together from whatever he had on tape. Basically, they were bootlegging his stuff. He got sick of it, released the Black Album, and ended his Warner contract. Warner threatened to (and may have, I'm fuzzy on the timeline) keep releasing more "Prince" records, so his only real choice was to change his name - which he did, in classic Prince style. Admittedly he could have said "This is why I'm doing this, people!", but he's always been more than willing to let the public speculate if it'll keep him from having to do an interview.
You got it. On the head. Last night i downloaded two full length albums, legally, in ogg vobis format, for nearly half the price of what amazon was selling the CD's for. Definately worth it.
The thing is, I think, people these days don't want to go and FIND innovation. They want it fed to them. They want to turn on the radio, tune it to whatever radio station is most convenient, and hear good, intersting, complex music. That's not going to happen, though. People's tastes are way too varied and eclectic to all enjoy the same kind of interesting music. I happen to like hardcore and klezmer/persian/greek music the best. A lot of my friends can't stand hardcore, and find the latter boring as all get-out. This is why bad music is so pervasive in our culture. It's not interesting, complex, or even musical by any means (since so much of it is canned in the case of pop superstars, or just down right simple in the case of blink 182 and all their sound alikes) because interesting and musically complex doesn't appeal to a wide audience.
Unfortunately, though, when the indy revolution hit hard a few years ago, the "Big 5" picked that up and repackaged it under spiffy new subsidiaries to stave off the perception of a monolithic record company. Now the term "Indy" is starting to apply to a particular sound, not as whiney as emo, but just as annoying, and with the same volumetric crap content.
If you ask me, the only answer to the music problem is a decentralized means of producing music, like ardour or, for the not-so-hungry college student, protools, and a centralized means of conveyance like CD Baby or audiolunchbox. Artists know how they want their music to sound. Record company hired slag producers do not.
The bottom line - in this day and age you can't be lazy when it comes to music. You have to be pro-active, seek out new genres and sounds, listen, enjoy, repeat. And support organizations that are trying to break out of the recording industry's mold. Buy from independent artists, and refuse to buy from major labels. Buy from local, family owned-and-operated record stores. OK, i'm done. I gotta gets to school.
cheese.
They played lots of different stuff. Each DJ had his own tastes and you knew that if you tuned in in the evening you would get hard rock. Afternoons were mostly unheard-of new artists. At 3AM you never knew what to expect - it was a free-for-all! Mornings were... well, I never got up before noon, so I don't know.
Wednesday at noon was the "Coffeebreak Concert" where they would get a local musician or a visiting celebrity to visit the studio, talk, and sing a few songs. Live, with only studio mics. It was sort of like MTV Unplugged, only less pretentious. I remember Melanie saying how she couldn't understand why people liked her - she sang flat. Yep, she did, but it was an honest flat. And we liked her.A friend of mine was a record store manager. He did it because he loved music. His apartment was always filled with LPs - literally - mostly culls and demos - and he just kept getting more. You know how some people pigeonhole others according to what they wear or what kind of car they drive or who their friends are? Rusty remembered you according to your musical tastes. Every time you entered his apartment, you knew going in that you ~must~ leave with an armful of records. Not just any records, but ones that he personally selected for you, and although many of them sucked, they were at least in the ballpark of the kind of stuff you liked. The point is that Rusty ran a record store because he loved music. It was in his blood.
I think that it's as hard for teenagers today to relate to that era as it was for the 70's teenagers to relate to their parents' tales of growing up during the Depression or WW-II. Unless you were there and lived the zeitgeist it's not the same.David Crosby did hit the nail on the head - it used to be about the music, not about the money.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Go to your local bars at about 9pm-11pm (and today is Friday -- Friday is great for this) and see some bands. (Obviously, not all bars have live music, so ask around if you don't know.) Some of them are pretty lame, but overall, they tend to be better than you'd expect, if you haven't done it before. They're almost always better than radio stuff.
Are they dying? I don't think so. Attendence does vary (at least here in ABQ). Sometimes a show will get flyered and well-publicized and there will be a couple hundred people there and the fire marshall will make the bar turn people away. And sometimes on a Tuesday night, once you exclude the band members and their girlfriends and the bartender, you'll see there's only three extra people there to drink and see the band. Most the time, it's somewhere in between.
Most of them are not making money, and they know it. They're doing it for fun. I've seen a few bands come and go, and the breakups seem to never be about, "Well, our marketing just wasn't successful." When I ask 'em why they broke up, it tends to be about the personal relationships. I get answers like, "Because Heather [the guitarist] has her head up her ass!" Okaaay.
There's a lot of variety (at least in my town). I still have just barely scratched the surface. I tend to just concentrate on one genre (metal) but even I sometimes get distracted. There's this one band I saw, that at first thought was a Rolling Stones tribute band. Then I realized the songs were original, so I decided they were a Rolling Stones parody. I snickered with amusement. Then I realized they were serious. About the third time I saw them, the true horror of the situation dawned on me: I was starting to get into 'em. D'oh! ;-)
Music will always be around, because some people enjoy making music and they don't care if they make money at it. They would like to, sure, but they have their day jobs. You can't kill something like that. It can be defeated in a market, but that doesn't really stop it. Just ask Microsoft about GNU/Linux developers...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Anyone who's tired of overhyped, overplayed cookie cutter music should try listening to KCRW. Even though they are an NPR affliate, you'd only know it because of the news at the top of the hour. They play many different kinds of music and things you probably haven't heard. There are so many new artists to discover and new music to hear, and KCRW is one of the few places where you can do just that. It's good music.
It's interesting that the complaints people are voicing here - corporate control, "only the shallow survive" artists, etc. are echoes of the complaints that were happening in the late 1950's and early 1960's, when a relative few record companies controlled most pop music. "Tin Pan Alley" in NYC spewed out buckets of pablum for the masses. FM radio was nothing but classical music, and the industry owned AM radio.
A relative few independent souls (on the west coast) listened to Wolfman Jack after midnight on XERB, a 50,000 watt station out of Tijuana - the equivalent of a pirate radio station - and/or black stations playing R&B, Soul, etc. As late as 1965 or thereabout I saw James Brown in a club that held a total of under 100 people, packed to the gills - I was the only white guy in there.
When the new stereo FM standard came out, a pioneering group of music lovers started pure music-oriented stations playing the acid rock, blues, etc. Often they were, like 100 watt stations that couldn't be heard more than a few miles away. They were the original venue for the whole San Francisco music scene - Airplane, the Dead, the Byrds, Charlie Musselwhite, the Blues Project, Buffalo Springfield, etc. Some of these bands also had AM radio play but many of these bands were never heard outside these independent stations. Without those stations, it's quite possible these bands would never have made it to the 'big time'. Many of these bands never got a big record deal, but made their money touring.
Their success encouraged new business-oriented folks, who invested in automated playing systems (new at the time), and combined the new "Rock" format with tech efficiency, leading to the modern "classic rock" format. And now, here we are, back where we were back then. This time, the FCC has worked to effectively block any avenues for independent artists to 'make it' via the new tech, the internet.
The solution will be a new "network effect" - a way for independent musicians and bands (and even poets!) to 'make it' via the new internet filesharing model. Perhaps a music rating system for indie artists who are depending on internet file sharing would help the better bands get more publicity and ear time, generating live gigs. Success will require musicians who have something new to say, and an audience who want to hear it. Somehow, people on the net need to provide concentrated support for one target after another to build some momentum.
Probably, some form of 'new music form for a new culture' synergy between artist and audience will have to occur to energize the path. So if you're really tired of Britney (nice girl, but gone 'way wrong), are you prepared to hear something newer and deeper? What might that be?
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Music sales are ultimately driven by quality. The music "industry" is heading down the road of destruction if they think they can promote themselves out of the abyss.
I've recently started teaching my son to play the guitar. He's had 6 years of experience and lessons and still couldn't play a decent lead. After looking through his music books (all popular rock bands) I figured it out.
Train Song by Phish - 10 chords
Last train Home by The Lost Prophets - 7 chords
Would by Alice in Chains - 7 chords
Cold Hard Bitch by Jet - 7 chords
Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow - 6 chords
No wonder they sounded the same (and boring) to me. On top of that the rock bands were over compressing the signal, great sustain but no musical dynamics. It was all stomp box distortion.
I started off by teaching him a few decent songs (although we had to work on technique, he had never had to do a string bend, hammer on, or pull off).
Dust in the Wind by KANSAS - (to learn to play clean)
Desperado by The Eagles - (to learn to play with feeling)
Stairway to Heaven - 23 chords
Roundabout by YES, 40-43 chords (its how you play it)
Clap by YES - 56 chords, and fast tempo
When I was learning to play you'd be laughed at for playing chord progressions and calling them songs, now people play big bucks to hear what oughta be an improved lead.
"C" was right, but he didn't take it far enough. I see the major labels limping along as the smaller companies with TALENTED MUSICIANS like GOTEE keep making a killing off each record they release because IT'S WORTH HEARING!
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
As a performing musician and someone who's worked in the business managing bands and promoting shows and running web sites for major label acts, I can't honestly say I feel the industry has fundamentally changed in the last 10-20 years. It has changed, but this industry has *always been based on exploitation*. The nature of that exploitation has traditionally revolved around institutions exploiting artists. The only thing that's different nowadays is that the labels and the media have merged into one and are working as a single unit, whereas in the past, they were more disparate.
What's wrong with the business can be summed up in three words:
Clear Channel
Ticketmaster
These two entities have almost single-handedly tied up the lion's share of performance and marketing of music. There's not any more exploitation or screwing over of musicians than they're used to be, but now the companies wield so much power & influence they can shut down popular acts that don't jive with their operating plan, and now they're more actively in the business of actually manufacturing formulaic product to foist on consumers.
Some things have changed in the business. Artists tend to make even less money proportionally and they have a harder time trying to find venues to play and promote their music. Monsters like Clear Channel won't put any controversial art in rotation, opting for shallow, characterless "boy bands" and "cute chicks". It appears your average person seems to eat the gruel they're feeding 'em but this undoubtedly is having an effect on music sales. People aren't excited about the art like they used to because there's very little art to it any more.
But there are still a lot of great bands out there. The problem is nobody knows about them because they have no radio stations to play their music and no decent clubs to book them. Without any means to promote their music, it's very hard to get started.
One equalizer to this problem could be the Internet, but as of yet, it hasn't matured as a competitive medium to the traditional music outlets. I'm one of those who really thinks that iTunes is overrated and a sham. Why pay the same price for more restrictive, lower-quality music? This is the same old business model that's been dumped on consumers: we'll give you what we think you want, not what you really want.
One good thing that's come out of all this is that in the last decade artists have come to accept that it's a necessity for them to control their own marketing and product distribution. The more artists that bypass traditional outlets, the more likely there can be some alternative to the totally boring product that corporate America is trying to force feed consumers.
But what's going on is just a symptom of a much larger sociological issue of art and creativity being considered unimportant, or secondary to the financial value of practicing such art.
Case in point: the other day CNN did a story on Madonna's new tour. The topic wasn't about her work. It was about how much money it's estimated she'll net from her tour and how powerful she is as a woman. The mainstream media seems to measure everything in dollars and this is undermining the basis of what art is really about. Even if you don't like Madonna, you have to cringe when you see the major media qualify artists exclusively in terms of their ability to make money.
There are many reasons the recording 'industry' is failing. Not the least of which is cost. Even at iTunes prices of $1/song, it would cost $1300 (assuming 3MB/song) to fill it. A fully loaded iPod with a 40 GB disk would be $13,000! So that's about 5 PCs, 1/2 a car, almost the cost of 1 year room/board/tuition for in state residents at UMass. That's not sane.
But look at it from the record company's perspective. Sell 1 million 40GB iPods, assume they are 1/2 full. That translates to $6.5 billion, gross.
It's all about the $$$. They can't see past that.
r
I think that right about now would be a good time to have some "new" thing. The new new wave, or whatever. The industry goes in cycles. Things get really dull, really boring, and then something happens, something new, exciting, and cool.
The new thing that happens really has to be new, exciting, and cool, not just marketed to be that way or whatever.
I think the difference today, as opposed to previously, is that not only does the new thing need to have a style, an approach to life, an attitude, etc..., not only does it have to be creative, exciting, innovative, and so forth, it also has to be innovative, creative, and "thinking outside the box" when it comes to how to get itself out to large numbers of people.
The old way of going through the record labels, finding that one "cool" person who is willing to give something different a try, finding that one cool label, or whatever - that isn't going to work anymore, most of those folks have probably been laid off.
So the media (or methods), the way you get the music out needs as much innovation as the music and genre itself. Perhaps iTunes has what it takes to do this; but until everyone owns an mp3 player or an Ipod, this might make it difficult.
And then there is the question of whether or not there really is such a thing as "talent". Is there any ONE person, whose "talent" is so far above and beyond all of the other hard-working, struggling artists that this person deserves to be placed on a pedestal like that?
It would probably take a 300-page book to explain everything I am going at here, but the relevant part to this discussion is that there needs to be "talent" at navigating this uncertain present and future with regards to "media" (i.e. CD, DVD, download, etc...). Without competent talent to navigate that, we are not going to see any more Hendrixes. But then again, that's another 300 page book.
The long and the short of it is that being an artist is very difficult if that's what you want to do. Maybe we won't have any more pop artists like we did in the past; maybe those times are over. Hendrix didn't need to die; Bon Scott didn't need to die; all of these folks didn't really need to do all of that cocaine and heroin and everything else; we know better now. We now know that cigarettes aren't all that cool anymore.
It's over. And judging from how the artists have been treated, and how "talent" is essentially being "punished" for being so talented, this might very well be a good thing. It's disturbing to see how talented people are treated by the record labels. You would think that in a free society such as America, this kind of nonsense would not be taking place. First and foremost is to respect yourself and those around you, and it seems to me that if one were to spread any message to millions and millions of people around the world it would be exactly that message - repect yourself and those around you.
Maybe the message that the world needs now is not one of style and popularity, but of self-respect and respect for other fellow human beings. Diversity and equality, education, not ignorance. So in a way, the shallowness of the nonsense is not altogether a bad thing, provided there is something else to occupy people's attention; something intelligent and interesting for people to absorb their minds in once they realize how shallow their "idols" really are.
There are a few individuals in the world, who are "talented". Then there are a few more individuals who understand talent enough to realize that it is a rare thing, and they respect this rare thing. (might I add that they also think that they are incredibly cool for realizing something that they think that only they themselves have the capacity to see...) But for the most part, a lot of the consumers don't really get this. There is so much "boilerplate" (i.e. dancing women, teenage heartbreak, fancy cars, spiky hair and guitars) that you will present a similar image to the world whether or not you are talented or not. The talent has