Is anybody going to care about "X&Y" next year at this time?

I doubt it.  You see everything mainstream dies a quick commercial death. 
That which is overhyped and overexposed better be sold quickly, because the
media and the people just can’t stand to pay attention.  Look at it this way…do
you care that Mark Felt was Deep Throat THIS WEEK?

It may be hard to believe, but the release of "Rumours" was not an over the
top media event.  The band didn’t play the "Today Show".  I mean how much
credibility does the "Today Show" HAVE?  There weren’t endless stories in the
mainstream press about how many copies the album was going to sell the first week.  As a matter of fact, sales were not even part of the mainstream press
equation.  To the degree there was mainstream press, it was about the MUSIC
(oh, and the romantic drama, which INSPIRED the music.)  By today’s standards, the
release of "Rumours" was positively UNDERGROUND!  If you were hip, you knew about it, but your parents didn’t come into your room, didn’t phone you up and ask
you what you thought of the record.  It wasn’t for them, it didn’t fly on their
radar.

But everything changed with MTV.  Suddenly, exposure became MULTIPLIED! 
There were at most sixty channels on cable systems.  EVERYBODY surfed past MTV,
the press was endless.  Suddenly, you could sell a lot more records MUCH more
quickly.  Which seemed like a good thing at the time.  But with hindsight, we
can see this overexposure killed acts.  Once the novelty wore off, once we saw
all those videos for "Thriller", it was just an endless repeat of the paradigm.
Everything was flavor of the moment.  Not that the business knew it.  The
business thought the boy bands were the ZENITH!  MILLIONS OF COPIES IN A WEEK!  But how many copies of "No Strings" are being sold THIS WEEK?  As the Eagles tour sold out arenas, the Backstreet Boys were starting over.  That boy band thing wasn’t about music, even though some of the tracks were good, it was about
MANIA!  About a younger generation coming of age with MONEY!  The fact that
the business expected this blockbuster trend to continue is hysterical. 
EVERYBODY knows once you hit puberty you look for something darker, different, you want something that represents your identity, something that everybody else
DOESN’T HAVE!  It’s about the group in middle school, in high school it’s about
INDIVIDUALITY!  If you want to sell bands to high school students they’ve got
to be real, credible and NOT MAINSTREAM!

But the business only believes in mainstream.  All the time.

But it’s not working.

Because none of these latter-day blockbusters, the ones that sold millions in
their time, still sell.  Kind of stopped in the early nineties.  With
Metallica’s Black Album and "Nevermind".  After that, the business as we knew it was history.  Music completely gave up the underground, it was only mainstream and bland ALL THE TIME!

So, the public has rejected the mainstream, blockbuster music business.  It
just doesn’t square with their identities.  They want to DISCOVER music.  That
speaks directly to THEM, not EVERYBODY!  And it’s the job of the label to
deliver this.  But the majors don’t want to do this, they just want to rant and
rave that everybody should come back to the old paradigm.  A paradigm based on
selling millions instantly.  And that’s all you can sell.  Because radio won’t
go from track to track, five singles deep, over two to three years like in the
old days.  Because, you see, the audience won’t TOLERATE IT!  They’ve been
overhyped on the album, they already know all the tracks, they won’t be
SPOONFED!  And, if something is shitty, they know it instantly, that’s what the Web
tells them.

The music business has become the movie business.  But, the movie business is
INHERENTLY different from the music business.  First of all, there are
multiple WINDOWS!  Theatrical, DVD, on demand, pay cable, basic cable, network,
syndication, each one generating more bucks.  In music you have the initial
release and then…NOTHING!  Furthermore, most movies you only want to see once, whereas great music you want to hear again and again.  But, the labels are only
making music you want to hear ONCE, if that.  The key is to make albums that
are playable and sell them without force…and keep making new ones.

Make no mistake, music is going underground.  The average person doesn’t know
what pitchformedia.com is, and that’s what’s great about the site.  It’s got
a RENEGADE feeling!  And read the reviews, there’s no corporate filter, it’s
not only positive, like in the kiss-ass major label hype world.  But,
pitchforkmedia is only the tip of the iceberg.  There’s myspace, and music blogs, and
individual sites.  The music is HARD TO FIND!  And that’s the way the audience
LIKES IT!  They want to keep the mainstream OUT!  And, since millions of
people aren’t into any one band, the mainstream media doesn’t care, which suits the new audience just fine.

The Eagles’ "Greatest Hits" and "Rumours" are still selling.  Whereas the
blockbusters of the last ten years are not.  And the reason is the old acts were
nurtured, were not overexposed, they belonged to the AUDIENCE, not the MEDIA! 
Sure, their handlers might not have known any better back in the day, but the
key in 2005 is NOT to overexpose.  It KILLS THE ACT!  Then again, the major
labels don’t care about the act.  They’re all about today, fuck tomorrow.

Everybody knows the new Coldplay album is out this week.  The Black Eyed Peas
were even on the aforementioned "Today Show".  The White Stripes were
featured in seemingly every publication known to man.  Hell, they even made the cover of the L.A. "Times" Sunday "Calendar" section.  How fucking hip can they BE
when the mainstream press embraces them so?  As a matter of fact, it’s a
NEGATIVE, a TURN-OFF!

So, the business is destroying itself.  Placing all its hopes in overhyped
mainstream fodder, which inherently has a short shelf-life because it’s so
overexposed.  Used to be, managers wouldn’t let this happen.  But, now the label
thinks it rules.  Fuck the managers along with the acts.  Great managers like
Cliff Burnstein and Irving Azoff don’t always say yes.  Have you seen Metallica
on TV recently?  In the press?  How about Christina Aguilera?  No, their
managers are letting the acts AIR OUT!  So the public doesn’t BURN OUT ON THEM
COMPLETELY!  So they can have long careers.  Look at Jewel for example.  Overhyped to high heaven, people HATE HER!  Did people hate singer-songwriter chicks thirty years ago with such a passion?  No, they didn’t even know who most of them WERE!!

Make no mistake, the problem isn’t with the audience, it’s with the BUSINESS!
A business out of touch with the kind of acts people want to consume and how
they want to consume them.  The public doesn’t want another blockbuster sold
on DualDisc, they’re clamoring for a band that they can talk about on the Web,
that they own, not TV, that they can’t get a ticket to see.  One that doesn’t
have one hit and play arenas.

Music fans know ALL of the above.  Which is why music itself is healthy. 
It’s just the major label game that’s in trouble.  And it’s the labels’ own damn
fault.