I came across this article on MSN today. I usually avoid their drivel ridden news headlines about "How to get a date" or "Should we clone people" or "How to be even further obsessed with movie stars"...you know, stuff that makes your I.Q. drop by simply reading the link. Instead, the article I chose to read was one about one of my favorite rantable topics - the music industry. And while the news was really nothing new to me, it was nice to know that someone in the mainstream with a voice was pinpointing the very problems that irk me so much about the Corporate Music Machine.
If you've visited my page before, you already know that I listen to a variety of Goth/Industrial/Electro/Synthpop/Trance, etc. and that I enjoy supporting bands of these genres. I have no love for pop music as it exists today. It's a genetically engineered, controlled experiment in record sales that gets siphoned through commercial radio while suits wait with buckets to catch the money on the other side of the conveyor belt. The big shots in charge have no interest in or concept of music as art, they are far more interested in the sound of money. I've pasted and commented on excerpts from the MSN article below. Read on to see just what I'm ranting about.
Hit Charade
The music industry's self-inflicted wounds.
By Mark Jenkins
2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it's not going away. The recorded-music industry's first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year's stars. Britney Spears' latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.
Hmmm....maybe it could be because people might actually be dog-tired of all the meaningless pop
rehash that she and other "superstars" have been putting out. How many supposed "I love you, I want you, dance with me screw me like a weasel in heat" kind of songs can a person with brain cells withstand?
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There's also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels' very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.
Corporate monopolies never respect or value diversity, and this is a prime example. When making money is an issue, (and it always is) expression,creativity and meaning take a back seat for the freshly steaming stagnance and lack of substance of an easily marketable product. McMusic with a side of fries.
In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA's assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.
Therefore, long live MP3.com and internet radio!
The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: "Home taping is killing music." The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, "C30, C60, C90, Go!''
By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. ( note history repeating itself) They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era's backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of 'N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.
And the industry jumps all over them and pumps their music into the radio, into TV commercials, and plasters their image on billboards. Why? Because they are pretty dolls that have an image that's easy to sell. There are more pictures of Britney Spears out on the internet than there are Frank Zappa albums. That terrifies me. These days, music is based more on image than substance, which I believe defies the purpose altogether. Music was made to be a form of communication and expression. How many pop musicians today are really SAYING SOMETHING?
(section snipped out)~ Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don't develop strong loyalties. They're less likely to investigate a breakthrough act's previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.
Some of them aren't fading fast enough for my taste.....
This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.
Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar's latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.
Ahem. Commercial radio. The seat of banality and over exposure. There's a radio station here in Chicago called "The Mix", which is an ironic name, as they seem to only play the same 10 songs over and over throughout the day.
In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren't yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn't even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn't an issue anymore.
Sadly, MTV has become the yuppie of the airwaves having sold out so horrendously. I find it pathetic that a station that was so innovative for it's time, has come around to broadcasting the equivalent of valium: mind numbing reality shows and programing as shallow as the average sitcom on network tv. Like the big record execs, they really don't care much about music anymore.
This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.
Thank you Clear Channel, for your middlemen who demand ridiculous prices of musicians so that no one aside from the people on your affiliated companies can ever get exposure. Thank you also for your regurgitated playlists which beat to death the same handful of songs until we get sick of them and drop the radio into a steaming bathtub. Please sell us what we want to hear....after all, you know what we want better than we do.
In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don't want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels' dwindling empires.
If the only people who can save the music industry are too busy choking themselves, then by all means let them. Eventually they will run out of air. Their empire is one of greed and control, plain and simple. Is it any wonder that some artists don't want to break into the big time when then see what kind of example has been set? Creative asphyxiation is not something most musicians will exchange for fame and cash. Real musicians make music because they have something to say and the talent to say it with a microphone or a guitar, AND they enjoy doing so. The money and fame are extras that happen along the way.
The music industry is has a strangehold on itself. By concerning itself more with money than what it produces, it has in my eyes, transformed art into little more than an advertising tool. I would no sooner listen to commercial radio than I would endure the weasely sales pitch of a telemarketer, and in both cases I'm being sold a load of shit that I don't feel like buying. As a listener though, I still have the upper hand - I can choose not to hear it. The music business indeed is stifling the market with vapid teen stars, trite lyrical content, and stale melodies, but in a way I hope it does suffocate.
Let it weaken, let it rot...it's killing itself and I'll be happy to watch it go down. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I feel that is no less true in the case of music these days. The monopoly can't hold out forever. Internet radio is a blessing in our day and age, although whether it or some other device will for sure be the next MTV has yet to be seen. For right now, it is the saving grace along with all the promoters, clubs, and smaller record labels who work so hard to bring new material to the forefront of the music scene.
I shouldn't have to say this to you, my visitors, but I urge you to go out and support underground and lesser known acts. If you hear about a band and think you might be interested in them, take the time to check out their website. Go to more shows and actually get there in time for the opening acts. So you're poor? That's no excuse. We're all poor. There's plenty of cheaper shows out there if you just look. Paw through the used CD's. Listen to internet radio....it's free!
The corporate pop vendors only have control as so far as we let them. We can turn off the radio and the tv. We can choose not to buy their premolded products and instead invest in the artistry of so many other deserving musicians. By supporting underground music, we are essentially flipping off the establishment that means to use us as a source for their pocketbooks. That said, stop reading this already and go listen to some good music.