The edifice is cracking.  Those in power know.  If the end isn’t here, it’s coming.

Something happened in the record business about five years back.  It ceased being fun.

For thirty years, the music business has been driven by the major labels.  It’s been a top down affair.  The labels pick the acts, and those further down the food chain break and profit from them.

The labels were where you wanted to work.  To be close to the action.  The same way a political junkie wants to be in D.C., throngs of young people flocked to Los Angeles and New York to try and fight their way in.  And "fight" is the appropriate term.  You couldn’t even get a gig at the lowest rung, as a shop clerk at Tower Records, competition for a leg up was THAT intense.

If you went to work for a label, if you got inside, you dedicated your life, worked sometimes fourteen hours a day, expected phone calls on weekends, and DIDN’T CARE, because you believed that much, you were dedicating your life to making people happy, to fulfilling them, and you were having a BLAST doing it.  All in service to artists you revered who spoke from their heart, sometimes with their voices, oftentimes with their axes, frequently with both.

But then something changed.

I believe it was when Doug Morris hired Ron Shapiro to be his publicist fifteen years ago.  Suddenly, the executive became more important than the act.  To the point where Tommy Mottola was even revered in an episode of the "The Sopranos".  And then the whole thing fell apart.  Because the essence of the music explosion was forgotten.  That it was about irreverence, and change, questioning authority.  Breaking a record became as institutionalized as a military assault.  There was a way you did it.  And you shoehorned acts into the formula.  They had to be good-looking, they had to create top forty hits, you made expensive videos, paid radio to play the tracks.  But suddenly, the public stopped paying attention.

The labels felt they were ENTITLED to their success.  It was their RIGHT!  They picked acts, radio and MTV played them, and people BOUGHT THEM!

Things started to get bad for the concert promoters.  Because the acts the labels were developing…not many people wanted to see.

And the people stopped listening to radio.  Because there were too many commercials, and the same damn unadventurous songs were spun ad infinitum.

Then a new medium of exposure and distribution appeared on the horizon, the Internet, and it became clear, the contract had been broken, the public and the labels had diverged, the deal was OVER!

The touring business realized this first.  Everybody from the managers to the agents to the promoters.  First and foremost, a venue must be filled.  And promoters realized that some of these acts that were not on MTV or top forty radio, THEY were the future.  Whether it be old jam banders like Widespread Panic or new, developing regional acts that almost nobody had heard of, like the Arcade Fire.  As for those acts signed to major labels, they now realized that their money didn’t come from record royalties, but tour income.  Both ticket sales and merchandise.  They changed their focus.

And thus we got the great divide.

The only people who believe in the old game are the major labels and the old media institutions surrounding them.  Complicit TV and radio.

For years, the major labels blamed it on the audience.

But now they don’t even do that.  Despite the facade, despite the ravings of the RIAA, the major labels are VERY afraid.  And you could feel this tension at the MusicCares dinner.  It was like a high school reunion.  Everybody coming together for one last hurrah before they hit retirement and could no longer afford the trip back home.

Everybody was dressed up, except for the musicians.  People like road warrior/studio guru David Landau.  He wore his jeans.  He had to be loyal to his roots.  Because he couldn’t count on the major labels, he had to rely on his buddies, the musicians, to survive.