Quality
There’s a fascinating story by Tad Friend on movie marketing in the January 19th issue of the "New Yorker". It’s especially poignant in light of yesterday’s Oscar nominations. Why didn’t the best pictures get noms? Or, more importantly, does it matter what gets nominated, does it matter what consensus is on any piece of art today? Can there truly be any consensus?
Struggling musicians are frustrated that they don’t get a shot. That a label doesn’t sign them, that no one will give them a chance. The dirty little secret is it doesn’t matter how good you are, but whether the person putting up the money can successfully market you.
Let’s say you’re fifty years old and are the new Cat Stevens. Better yet, let’s say you’re twenty years old and are the new Cat Stevens. How is a company supposed to market you?
Top Forty radio is the predominant vehicle for major labels to expose new artists. These stations don’t play the music of fifty year olds. They’re not interested in it. That’s not their core demographic. They don’t care how good a record might be, it’s kind of like selling Depends to teenagers…they don’t see the need.
So you’re angry about this. You want your chance. But where is the avenue for you to get your chance? Top Forty reaches the most people, it’s been proven to sell the most records. Maybe you can get on NPR. But that audience is nowhere near as active. Still, if you’re left field enough, maybe you’ve got a chance. In other words, if Miley Cyrus is on NPR, she’s not going to see a sales spike. Unless it’s because parents are buying product for their kids. Everything is channels and marketing today.
Let’s go back to that twenty year old Cat Stevens. There can be a market for mellow music on Hot AC, adult-oriented stations. But Cat Stevens music is not exactly what the stations are presently looking for. So, even though you write the next "Morning Has Broken", the label is going to want you to work with Diane Warren, to make something more format-friendly. You’ll be up in arms. Complaining about your artistic integrity. But, chances are the label is right. You could cut a great record by yourself, but they wouldn’t know how to sell it.
Usually, you don’t either, which is one reason you want a deal with the major label. You can’t figure out how to break, they must have an idea. But they’re flummoxed too. The labels are not looking for the best music, just music they can sell.
As Mr. Friend puts it:
"It is often said in Hollywood that no one sets out to make a bad movie, but the truth is that people cheerfully set out to make bad movies all the time. It is more accurate to say that no one sets out to make a movie without having a particular audience in mind."
Disney is interested in acts it can promote on the Disney Channel. Which is watched primarily by the prepubescent set. It’s more important that you be cute and lovable than good. They know this. No one in Burbank truly believes the Jonas Brothers are the new Beatles, but there are three of them, increasing the odds kids can identify with the act, they’re cute and they can do the job. Furthermore, this same act stiffed on Sony. Not because the label was incompetent so much as it had no access to children’s TV. In other words, it’s going to be very hard for anyone other than Disney to succeed with this paradigm. Disney has got its cable channel, its radio station, its theme parks, its cruises, it can cross-promote like crazy. So, if you’re a kiddie act, you’d better be aligned with the Mouse. But the Mouse can only sign so many acts. And if you’re not as good-looking as Demi Lovato or as personable as Miley Cyrus, too bad. They’re not selling art, they’re selling artifice.
Conversely, no one is interested in old farts singing heavy metal music. That was the flaw with the Pat Boone record. Good train-wreck promotional value, but who is actually going to buy the album? Who wants to see the act live?
In other words, if you want to make it in this business, you first and foremost have to figure out who your audience is. Sure, you can play what you want, you can choose to have a day job, you can even starve, but if you want to make money, chances are your music is just not enough, you’ve got to consider your audience and how to reach it.
Sure, you’re angry everybody on MTV was pretty. But that’s what sells on American TV, looks. Doesn’t mean you can’t sell great music by ugly people, just that you’re not going to get a chance on TV. You’ve got to find the anti-MTV people. Who’ll listen first. And spread the word virally. But know that word spread virally is not as fast as TV. But what is spread by word of mouth lasts longer than what is exploited via the boob tube.
How about those overpriced arena shows by the classic acts?
Turns out people would rather overpay for what they know than go to see an unknown band. So, the key is not to try to convince people to come see you without knowing your music, but getting them to know your music first. As for the live industry, since they’ve turned concertgoing into an exclusive event, it’s very difficult to fill seats at the show of a developing artist. So, they book what’s on TV, which fades away, or don’t book anything at all and complain. Whereas they’ve got to rebuild the developing live sphere. By realizing it’s populated primarily by people in their late teens and early twenties who want to socialize and get high. So, you’ve got to have alcohol and a fun vibe. Create the vibe and it’s less important who you book.
Point being, don’t stand on the premise of being great. That’s just not enough in today’s marketplace. In the sixties, you cast great films with big ideas. You were striving to create art. Today, "Slumdog Millionaire" loses its distributor and is in danger of going straight to video and ultimately is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Did the picture change? No, a marketer decided to give it a shot.
This is a hopeful story. That quality will win out. And sometimes it does. But making films is expensive, there are few distribution slots. Everyone can make a record. And seemingly everyone wants his chance.
Then you’ve got the holier-than-thou listeners saying that their favorite must make it. Whether it be TV On The Radio, the Hold Steady or Vampire Weekend. They deserve it, they’re the best. But best no longer matters. Maybe in year-end polls, to the degree anybody pays attention, but in today’s world people are fine living in their own little universe. You can avoid hip-hop. You can avoid Mariah Carey. You can avoid Metallica. It’s your choice. It’s no longer the sixties, with the Beatles, Stones, Louis Armstrong and the Temptations coexisting on the AM dial. Now you’ve got infinite choice. As for someone criticizing your choice… All you’ll get back in return is a laugh.
So have no illusion that marketers are looking for greatness. They’re looking for an audience. One large in size, that’s easy to reach. If they can’t find a slot for you, they won’t sign you. If they think you’ve got a tiny slot, they’re not going to offer you much money and are not going to spend much.
That’s today’s world.
Where it leaves the future of music is a debate for another day. Whether quality will rise up and dominate. But don’t think we’re still living in the twentieth century. There are few proven avenues where you can break acts. And few where you can make money. It’s easiest to break an act on radio. Then TV (there are fewer TV slots than there were before MTV went long-form.). And you make the most money selling physical product. So, a label wants an act they can get on radio and TV, and they don’t care that you listen on your iPod, they want to sell album-length CDs, that’s where they make their profit. It’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s a matter of dollars and cents. If you want things to be different, you’ve got to take a risk. You’ve got to start a record label or concert promotion company. You’ve got to champion something new and find a way to sell it. Because the big boys are just protecting their turf, doing what they know how to do in order to succeed in the short term. Are they going to fail in the long term? DVD sales are off, theatre attendance is dropping. Radio is a shadow of what it formerly was, CD sales are tanking. The big powers are not squeezing you out, not preventing you from playing, they’re just picking the low-hanging fruit, before it all goes rotten, falls from the trees and disappears.
