With EMI apparently about to go belly-up, and Warner Group pulling out of streaming sites (Which strikes me as an act of desperation), we seem to be approaching the endgame of their battle to retain dominance of the music industry.
This post, which exhorts the publishing industry not to go down the same route, explains where the music business went wrong, and how and why the adopted a business model dependent on maximising the sales of the smallest possible roster of artists, and why they determine which new artists will be ‘successes’ in advance by deciding who gets the multi-million pound hype campaign. But along came broadband internet, and it fatally undermined their model. Now someone can go to Spotify, listen to, say, the most recent album by, say, The Killers, and decide it’s not worth buying.
Some people have said that without the major labels and their advances the only recorded music will be cheap and nasty recordings made on laptops in people’s bedrooms. No way will people be able to put together ambitious albums with things like string sections. I point such people at Karnataka’s “The Gathering Light”. Go and listen to the song Moment in Time which the band have made streamable on last.fm. Great production, complete with string sections. Karnataka are not signed to a major label. They’re not even on an indie. “The Gathering Light” is self-released and self-financed. Yes, it cost a quite a bit of money to record, but nevertheless the band managed to raise the money, and didn’t need a record company advance to do it.
But in today’s music climate I cannot imagine an album like that being released on a major label. What will happen is that at some record company marketing meeting chaired by a cloth-eared MBA graduate, they’ll say something like “27.8 percent of our target demographic doesn’t like guitar solos, so all those solos will have to go”. Then it will be “If there are ten minute songs there’s a 17.9% chance the Tesco’s might refuse to sell it”. And so on. The end result will be something bland and homogeneous, sounding like a poor man’s Coldplay.
Music will survive the extinction of the dinosaurs, and in the past decade the mice and birds have been doing perfectly well in their shadow. The past decade may have been one of worst in history as far as the mainstream has been concerned, with record companies putting out nothing but overhyped cookie-cutter pabulum, but below the radar all sorts of music has been flourishing.
I completely agree – loads of artists are making great records with no record company – tools like twitter and facebook have created a direct link between artists and fans.
In fact its better to be niche and do what you want musically because people tend to respect your honesty.
No middle man required!!!
No, not too ranty at all. My main complaint is that you can’t get Karnataka (or Panic Room) on Spotify – does that imply that the streaming model doesn’t work for self-financed bands either?
What the music industry had been doing until the advent of Spotify etc, is the opposite of the ’30 day money-back guarantee’ concept. Don’t try before you buy, if you will. OK, you sometimes had a couple of singles or a bit of radio play to go on, but as radio has such a limited playlist anyway, then magazine reviews were often the best we could hope for in terms of road-testing the product.
Perhaps the downside (for the music industry and the artist) is that with the ability to hear the complete album without purchase, it has become all too clear that 90% of what I hear, I’m damned glad I didn’t commit money to. At least I can make my own mind up now, as to what is rubbish and what deserves attention, whereas it was up to the music moguls previously. The music industry has slowly become as redundant as estate agents would be if everyone opened their eyes.
Quite a few indie prog bands are making their music available on Spotify or Last FM (or from their own sites.) On balance, I think that if your music is strong enough, people are more likely to buy it if they can get to hear it first.
It’s possible to achieve a reasonable amount of income (or rather, turnover, as so much money goes into recording) by doing things independently. But making your living solely out of it…
We may end up with many more bands who are part-timers or ‘hobbyists’. If they’re good enough, that doesn’t matter at all.
@Abahachi – That’s something we’ll have to ask Panic Room and Karnataka – You coming to Panic Room at The Peel in Kingston on Saturday 27 March?
@BeastiePsy – Absolutely. Mainstream music over the past 15-20 years has been dominated by marketing, not art. All too often the image has been far, far more important than the actual music. Get a sycophantic music press to give their mediocre albums favourable reviews, if there’s better music out there make sure the general public doesn’t get to hear it. Look at the way it’s almost impossible for anything not on a major to get playlisted on daytime BBC radio, for instance.
you’ve not only made a very good point, but also introduced me to a new word. Result!
A lot of the bands I like aren’t on a major label, but self release to a modest and loyal fanbase. Most of them have day jobs too, it’s a labour of love rather than a way of making a living which is a pity. I’d certainly consider paying a subscription or something to my favourite ones to allow them to get back in the recording studio again and produce more of their wonderful music. New models will have to be made, who knows which direction it will go in?
While prog rock is not my usual scene musically, the point raised here is very valid.
I was listening to a composer speaking on Radio 4 this morning as I drove to work and he mentioned that a classical piece he wrote for an orchestra to use as its theme tune was rejected because “there was no discernable melody in the first two seconds” – which is apparently the maximum attention span of a US you-tube browser.