The RIAA, big broadcast radio and other similar types of organizations are not progressive in their goals and strategy. They are not working to increase themselves through broadening their art or expanding their listener base. They are organizations determined to hold onto the status quo. Their only concern is in widening the gap in market share between themselves and their competitors. Because all of the majors in both industries are part of conglomerates that do quite a bit more than market, play and sell music, the art of music occupies only a small percentage of their time and that time is growing smaller as they continue to lose money.
The result is an ever-increasing vacuum and who is going to fill it?
Right now, dozens if not hundreds of music blogs populate cyberspace. Webcasts, podcasts and video casts play in disorderly fashion. Independent labels and artists are spread across the spectrum.
The real benefit of commercial radio was in its unique combination of low cost and centralization. You flip on the radio and you hear songs in your car, at your house, at the beach. All of it is done with minimal cost and the free flow of information with little effort by the end user is attractive. Unlike radio, websites are more difficult to reach, but they have an unlimited range. A terrestrial radio station only reaches a small radius. A website can reach the entire globe. Additionally, while it might cost a little more in terms of connectivity for the end user, for the provider it costs nearly nothing whereas radio is a massive investment in time and money.
While that reach provides limitless possibility and diversity, it also creates a lot of confusion. I read probably 60 or so music blogs on a daily basis and it is almost impossible to give them all more than a cursory glace and that’s through the convenience an RSS aggregator.
Given that complexity, there is no reason to assume that this is the way information about music will be disseminated in the future. It’s honest, but it isn’t the way the average listener still finds music.
This is long and I’ve never made anyone jump, but this is the right time to do it to keep those of you who suffer from a very short attention span from rolling your eyes in boredom.
To complicate matters further, the scattered nature of music such as it is makes for a very difficult working environment for us musicians. It is hard to make money if you are a musician. In the 70’s, a band would play clubs and develop a following with the idea is that a label would discover them, see their potential and develop them to the point of maturity. This lasted until the last vestigaes of the old music industry died with the last of the big indie labels in the late 80’s. People who signed bands because they wanted to be a part of the discovery of the next Dylan or Springsteen got out and were replaced by bean counters who wanted to see increased profit margins and a market share that dominated the competition.
Art and commerce had always shared an uneasy truce, but commerce began to win out and popular music began to suffer.
Today, we are bordering on the reverse in an industry where, as Chris Rock once so astutely put it, it really is “Here today, gone TODAY!” In the indie world, where sales matter only because it determines the survival of the individual artists, there’s no way to truly benefit from a machine that was founded on the concept of nurturing talent AND making money. The incredbile advances in recording technology and the instant distribution model of the downloadable MP3 (not to mention the portable MP3 player) notwithstanding, to really be heard and really make an impact both critically and finacially, people still need to hear your music.
I’m often surprised by non-musicians who talk about music in sacred terms as if there is no money changing hands. There is a sense that the average artist is really only in this to fulfill the ultimate artistic desire of creating something from nothing. In the most basic sense, that may be true, but the reality is that we still have to feed ourselves, pay the rent and take care of our families. The idealism of driving around in a van and playing whatever the hell you want to 10 people every night that happens when you are in college gives way to a greater sense of both the need for advancing yourself as an artist and earning a living.
In the old model, the centralized nature of distribution may have been limiting, but it was focused and, when managed right, lucrative. Today, getting heard is harder than ever and you don’t have the support system of a company whose job it is to find your audience and promote you. Today, you are on your own. You make your own records in your home studio, pay for the costs of your tours, arrange and book gigs, promote yourself, manage your digital and offline distribution, keep track of blogs and review, update your website, MySpace, EPK presskit. There is a liberating freedom that comes from running your own business, but it also takes away from the time you would spend just making music and, most importantly, without the backing of a business that wants you to succeed, the rate of success is much smaller.
As a result, independent artists are increasingly choosing the part-time lifestyle of a musician at night and something else during the day. I’ve read several magazine articles about bands whose members use music to supplement their personal income rather than call it a full time career. Most have creative careers as recording engineers, graphic artists or *cough* web developers. It allows them the flexibility to travel and the free time to make music, while still paying the bills. But, that doesn’t seem like the path of popular music. Playing house concerts may be fine for acoustic artists and playing to 50 people at venues that hold 100 on a nightly basis is great for a side-gig, but any aspiring artist wants the ability to spend all his/her time making music assuming that earns them enough money to also eat.
Touring is one option for earning income, but shows don’t draw the kinds of crowds they used to and CD sales continue to lag. The reality is that there are more options available for a person’s entertainment dollar than there were 25 years ago. Just like cable networks and televised sports and move theaters, artists are left trying to survive in a world where every form of entertainment is in competition with each other for the allowance money of teenagers.
And lets be completely honest, that is what the music industry is, was and will always be about - where teens spend their money. The disposable income of the high school and college student has always been the primary revenue stream of the music industry. There are other pockets of record buyers out there, but if you really want to be huge, you have to get them young. Ask Hannah Montana, who just set the all-time record for ticket sales at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Adults don’t buy her records for themselves.
I’m as confused as the next person about what will come next. The federal government doesn’t seem to want to help, but when do they ever? They clamp down on internet radio while giving radio a slap on the wrist for payola. Satellite radio’s merger means less competition and narrowed playlists. Despite the explosion of blogs, podcats and the birth of the MySpace or YouTube star, there is still no easy way for the average music fan to find music.
Say what you will about the old model, but it wasn’t hard to find music you liked. You just went to the record store and asked for a recommendation from the guy who knew your tastes or listened to your favorite DJ on the radio. At the very worst, you might have to read one of the half dozen major music magazines for reviews or maybe check the album credits to follow your favorite producer or musician from one artist to the next.
Today, independent record stores are gone and CD sales in stores are giving way to downloads. Your favorite DJ is likely a chain smoking alcoholic doing drive time weather and traffic on a news station since Clear Channel went to regional programming directors who only know what music is most likely to increase their bottom line. There are hundreds of music blogs to sift through on a daily basis and no IMDB for music with a catalog database of liner notes.
All of that leaves the average consumer - particularly in this ADD society - bored and frustrated, which leaves musicians to scramble for a paycheck.
The void in the business is that lack of centralization. Someone will fill it. Whether that is good news or bad news for musicians and music fans depends of who does it and how it is done.