Im gonna break from the Favorite Albums of the 2000’s series to talk abt a few topics…
First up. The music industry as we know it is a wrap.
Let’s take a moment to be honest about what is happening here.
if you are doing music in any professional capacity right now, make sure that you are doing it because you love the craft.
If you are doing music because you dream of fame and riches, do yourself a favor and stop.
If you’re a great singer and you’re gearing up for American Idol tryouts–save your energy and talent. That shit a TV show. Period. It IS NOT a singing competition.
The music industry has done itself in. The cold, hard facts of it all is that good music and musical talent count for jack shit these days. While there have ALWAYS been successful acts who are mostly style over substance in popular music, we are now in an era where marketability is the MAIN factor in getting over in the industry.
and 9 times out of 10, even THAT wont blow you up.
It doesnt matter anymore whether your music is good or if you have any talent. Even if you have the marketability, that will only get you so far.
Tastemakers run the music industry these days, both mainstream and underground. So no matter how good you are or are not, it will be for naught unless a person of influence of some sort co-signs you or takes you under their wing. Which is nothing new, but the bad part is that most of the current tastemakers are douchebags with awful taste in music and culture. More on that later.
Even if THAT happens, the public still has to buy into your hype and that, my friends, is a variable that NO ONE can control.
Now, let’s be square here. This is not coming from a place of bitterness or frustration. In no way am I tryna piss on your dreams, kids. Check out Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, he’s a mutli platinum artist and producer, he will tell you the somewhat the same thing here.
This is just the pure, hard reality of the industry climate right now. Me personally, I’m satisfied with the way my music career is progressing. I make the music I want and it stands or falls on its own merit. Whatever mistakes are made, I take responsibility and learn from the experience. I knew what I was getting into going in. I dont harbor dreams of limos, industry parties, and pretending to be annoyed by the paparazzi. I’m not that kind of person and I dont need that kind of validation.
But there are many cats out there who do need that, and DON’T know what they’re getting into. The dreamers are still out there, and they still believe in the Cinderella fairytale.
Now what DOES concern me is how the music industry will rebuild itself. While the old industry business model had huge flaws, it still had legitimate purpose.
While the underground cats were whooping it up a cpl years ago celebrating the fall of the major label system, they were missing the big picture. When one system fails, another system must take its place. As of yet, no one has presented a BETTER business model than the one we had before. Is there one? Of course. Has it been implemented or even proposed? Shit, no. Not even close.
The internet changed the game completely. Before that, a personal computer was mostly just a trinket only useful for business, science, and educational purposes. With the advent of the internet, social networking, and inexpensive professional audio/visual technology, making a studio quality record and package has become feasible for the everyman. The personal computer quickly became a staple of everyday life and it empowered and connected the unheard masses. Independent music used to have the stigma of inferior quality and presentation because the musicians involved did not have access to the tools that the pros had.
Now you can record your album on your laptop and have it sound pristine. You dont have to worry about rushing because you dont have money for blocks of studio time. You or your graphic artist friend can put up a website and design the packaging. With a few clicks, your album can be available for sale or free download all over the world for anyone who wants it. Fuck the major labels. Sweet, right?
Wrong.
With any professional craft, there is a bar of entry. A set of requirements or skill level you must meet in order to practice said craft on a professional level. If you play sports, you must prove yourself in smaller capacities before being allowed to play professionally. The major label standard used to be that bar of entry for musicians. With the new DIY ethic in music, that bar has been far lowered if not completely obliterated. Now almost ANYONE can have a record in the marketplace.
The problem here is that we now have a glut of highly visible, commercially available, independent music of wildly varying quality. So there’s alot of wack ass music to sort through. How do you find the good stuff? The die hards say, “GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS AND SEARCH!…”
Well, you could do that. But the thing that theyre missing is that the average person isnt that passionate about music. Sure, people LIKE music, they may even LOVE it, but its not a driving factor in their everyday lives. Teenagers may consume music voraciously, but they need music to be presented to them. The majors have that market sewed up. Adults have lives. Jobs, children, spouses, finances, career, homes, etc. Those lives cut down on the disposable income one has to go out and take a chance on buying a terrible record, or to splurge on music in general. Those lives also cut down on the time one has to devote to looking for the perfect beat.
This is why the major label system worked for so long. They have money. Lots of it. They have power and influence. The service that the major label system provided for the average music fan was this:
-Discover talented person
-Supply talented person with the best of what they needed to present their talent(studios, producers, songwriters, musicians, instruments, etc…)
-develop talented person to be presentable and understandable to the masses
-introduce talented person to the masses
-generate interest in talented person through promotion (concerts, television appearances, press, radio)
In short, the majors delivered the good shit to your doorstep…you didnt have to search for the new hot shit cuz it was on the radio, on TV, in magazines, at the local concert hall opening for your favorite artist…the poster is in the record store, the artist themselves are even in the record store…
All of that takes money and influence–which the majors have in abundance.
out of the millions of aspiring musicians, the major picked the best and brightest and said to you, “HEY! This cat is DOPE! Youre gonna love their music!…”. if you wanted a taste, all you had to do was turn on the radio or check out Ed Sullivan, or American Bandstand or Soul Train.
Now, let’s keep it one hunnid. There are many flaws and loopholes (too many to go into detail here) in that system that would allow a truly talented artist to get passed by or slip through the cracks or to allow some half-talent to blow up. But for the most part, that was a solid business model. Pick a talent, groom them, then tell the world about them.
It just so happened that the industry got extremely arrogant at the same time that the internet was coming to power. Music sales were at an all time high in the 90’s. The money was rolling in hand over fist. The majors decided to follow the money. They got rid of the record/music/creative people and hired a bunch of suits to mind the bottom line. The majors believed that they could sell water (wack ass artists) to a well (an easily manipulated herd mentality public). Two things shattered that dream. George W. Bush and Napster. With Dubya came an America that was vulnerable enough to allow 9/11 to happen, effectively ending the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era. Napster allowed listeners to not have to pay for the amazingly shitty records that the industry was pumping out. You could get the 2 or 3 jams off the albums and be done with it, saving yourself a bundle. it doesn’t help that the industry thought it was smart to eliminate singles a short time prior to the sea change in American lifestyle.
Even worse, now we face the mentality that “music is free”. Many people have become cynical to the point that they believe it is their RIGHT to get music without paying for it. They feel no shame in stealing music and do not attempt to fill the artist’s coffers in other ways. They ignore the fact that any artistic endeavors must be patronized in order to survive.
Fact: Manufacturing ANYTHING requires an investment.
Even if an artist is completely DIY, they must pay for:
-equipment/instruments
-musicians/featured guest artist appearances
-computer
-internet access
-software
-electricity
-distribution fees/expenses
-pressing CD’s and promotional materials
-living expenses (food, clothes, bills)
Snidely, these people say, “WELL, TOUR TO MAKE YOUR MONEY!”
L-O-fuckingL.
How do you tour when you cant afford to make a record? Who will book you if no one knows who you are? Who will pay for hotels, transportation, and food? Who will come to the shows???
Music is NOT free. The experience of ENJOYING MUSIC is free. The rest of it has a bill attached to it. Even going to a club to dance has a price tag.
Shit, it takes money to even LISTEN to music. You gotta get that mp3/CD player/computer from somewhere.
So. It’s over.
The majors are sitting still while everything burns down around them. Independent artists are just faces in a crowd. A really big fucking crowd.
So let’s say that you overcome these obstacles. You got records out. You play shows. You got buzz (read: co-signage from a tastemaker).
We still got that one variable. The public.
Easy, right? Give em good music and youre all set, right?
Wrong again.
Today’s 20 yr old was born in 1990. Which means that they’ve been raised listening to the rapidly devolving crud that passes for popular music all of their lives. The last musical movement of any real significance was grunge. Grunge was dead by 1995. After that, manufactured pop has dominated since then. After grunge, we got stuff like Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney Spears, and the like. That same manufactured vibe permeated all other genres of popular music. Hip-Hop relinquished its underground status, sold out, and became the pop music of the early millennium. R&B went pop. Country went pop. Jazz continued it downward spiral. No one cared about art anymore. Artists and execs only cared about numbers–and because of the internet, numbers became important to listeners, too.
So back to that 20 yr old. He dictates the direction the people with the money will go in because he consumes the most music, whether he paid for it or not. The problem is he has been raised listening to garbage (and I dont mean the band of the same name). His musical tastes are horrid because they are not based on musical quality. His musical tastes are shaped by conformity, sensationalism, spectacle, tabloid culture, branding, and cult of personality. This kind of kid is the one who ends up being the aforementioned tastemaker in the industry.
You want to win over the public with your original, skilled, and heartfelt music? Good luck, my friend.
And the underground doesn’t really exist anymore. The underground value system and aesthetics are basically the same as the mainstream now. The only difference between being underground and mainstream these days is number of records sold.
As far as numbers go, right now, even your big mainstream acts are only selling a few hundred thousand, AT BEST. There are only a handful or artists seeing platinum.
here are some figures from a recent Soundscan chart:
1 BOYLE*SUSAN I DREAMED A DREAM 136,566 -73 510,166 3,103,828
2 LADY GAGA FAME 82,148 -51 168,568 2,387,666
3 KEYS*ALICIA ELEMENT OF FREEDOM 79,801 -71 279,584 779,093
4 BLIGE*MARY J. STRONGER 62,181 -81 330,354 394,005
5 SWIFT*TAYLOR FEARLESS 59,701 -73 224,270 5,329,167
6 BIEBER*JUSTIN MY WORLD 51,837 -67 156,789 727,914
8 BLACK EYED PEAS E.N.D. (ENERGY NEVER DIES) 47,190 -55 104,050 1,786,825
9 LADY GAGA FAME MONSTER (8 TRK) 44,212 -62 115,482 570,475
11 GLEE CAST GLEE: THE MUSIC, V2 43,791 -57 101,920 429,206
12 YOUNG MONEY WE ARE YOUNG MONEY 43,195 -70 142,118 185,696
13 EMINEM RELAPSE 40,862 -68 127,625 1,735,358
14 RIHANNA RATED R 39,571 -56 90,727 498,595
15 BUBLE*MICHAEL CRAZY LOVE 35,021 -74 136,628 1,222,070
16 VARIOUS NOW 32 34,547 -63 93,133 674,654
17 UNDERWOOD*CARRIE PLAY ON 33,501 -78 152,873 1,183,086
18 GLEE CAST GLEE: THE MUSIC V1 32,105 -64 88,865 641,933
19 MAYER*JOHN BATTLE STUDIES 31,826 -65 90,342 698,068
20 LADY ANTEBELLUM LADY ANTEBELLUM 26,810 -68 83,874 1,351,745
21 THICKE*ROBIN SEX THERAPY: THE EXPERIENCE 25,820 -58 60,828 209,824
22 JACKSON*MICHAEL MICHAEL JACKSON’S THIS IS IT 25,254 -77 108,776 1,287,045
23 JAY-Z BLUEPRINT 3 24,830 -58 58,730 1,514,758
24 KINGS OF LEON ONLY BY THE NIGHT 22,794 -47 43,164 1,708,713
25 BROWN*ZAC BAND FOUNDATION 20,953 -66 62,264 1,456,148
27 NEW MOON (TWILIGHT) SOUNDTRACK 20,393 -76 83,491 964,575
30 JONES*NORAH FALL 19,525 -77 86,260 629,450
33 JACKSON*MICHAEL NUMBER ONES 17,958 -70 58,923 4,063,578
34 BOCELLI*ANDREA MY CHRISTMAS 17,768 -94 283,683 2,207,202
35 GUCCI MANE STATE VS. RADRIC DAVIS 17,704 -58 42,176 191,076
36 LAMBERT*ADAM FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT 17,236 -72 61,683 433,834
37 BROWN*CHRIS GRAFFITI 16,903 -72 60,364 232,908
40 SWIFT*TAYLOR TAYLOR SWIFT 15,858 -65 45,935 4,622,024
41 BEYONCE I AM…SASHA FIERCE 15,321 -56 35,184 2,658,822
42 50 CENT BEFORE I SELF-DESTRUCT 15,266 -47 28,950 349,153
43 SONGZ*TREY READY 15,130 -45 27,333 438,434
44 RUCKER*DARIUS LEARN TO LIVE 14,785 -70 49,586 1,240,902
45 CYRUS*MILEY TIME OF OUR LIVES EP 14,690 -78 67,653 1,212,336
46 NICKELBACK DARK HORSE 14,685 -59 35,456 2,533,617
So yeah, man. Its over. At least the way that we know it.
However, there is SOME hope. That hope lies in the ability of someone, whomever that may be, to promote GOOD music (there’s TONS of good music out there going completely unnoticed) again and creating a new retail model to make that good music attractive again. Promoting bad music is how we got here in the first place. That is how we lost the listener’s trust and good faith. Retail and industry would have to come together to make that good music affordable, interactive, and widely available.
The prices have to come down, point blank. CDs should be $5 dollars instead of $10 (it can happen…rmbr in the 90’s when CDs were $15?) and even LESS for digital copies (I’d say $3).
Digital copies need to have downloadable artwork, liner notes, and interactive content. Like what we did with Sinister Beauty, even though we may not have been the first to do that (*pops collar*, and I see some folks have followed suit).
People like vinyl for various reasons. So the industry is smart in bringing it back, but the prices need to come down on that, too. I’d say $10–$12 max.
Record stores are gone, but they need to come back. I suggest the mainstream/corporate stores carry ONLY the Soundscan top 200 and the top 20 in other genres(jazz, latin, dance, country, etc.). That way, they can have better control of inventory and returns. These mainstream stores should offer to special order ANYTHING that is commercially available. They should also sell any digital music that is available. There should be a checkout station for digital music where a customer can tell a cashier what they want, pay for it, then have the cashier upload the purchase to a reusable download card or USB that will allow the consumer to put the music and content(liners, pictures, etc.) on their computer OR have the content uploaded to their listening device right then and there if they choose. Even better, buy a digital album in the store and send it to any email address you choose.
There should be small specialty stores for mainstream and underground records in specific genres/niches. A store that does only metal, a store for only country, a store for only jazz, hip-hop, dance, etc…These store should carry the vinyl for the top selling releases and of course, do special orders. Diggin spots (aka used record stores) should handle mostly catalogue stuff, thus driving up traffic for them because the Top 200 stores wont have that inventory. This saves consumers the headache not knowing where to go for what they want and saves store owners from deciding what to stock. Again, both the mainstream and specialty stores need to be JUST big enough to fit shoppers and inventory comfortably. The only stores with size should be the diggin/catalogue stores. No more mega stores–too much overhead.
People will never tire of the hands on shopping experience. Its in the human nature to look and touch. So bringing record stores back in a SMART way can only help.
We need record people (aka A&R) again (see my next blog) on both a mainstream and underground level. Those label people who will seek out the good shit at shows, parties, online, and through submissions to sign, DEVELOP, and thoroughly promote artists that have the potential to build a long lasting career.
Its going to take people with vision, loot, and courage to make it happen…and I think it will happen.
I dont have all the answers, but I do believe these are starts to a new and successful industry model. Don’t completely destroy the old model, just modify it and eliminate the parts that don’t work.
Until then, people, all we can do is stop living by the old ways, stop believing in fairy tales, keep grinding, and continue to make, BUY, and spread the word about the best music we can.
I look forward to your comments.
Peace,
Scorp
