Imogen Heap Sings The Blues
Complaining gets you nowhere. Especially in this economy, where people are losing their homes and feel lucky to have jobs. Yet Imogen Heap is tweeting that she can’t afford to tour?
Can’t afford it?
Can’t afford to do it the way she wants to, with full production, so she can give attendees the gig of their lives.
Mmm… Some of the best shows I’ve ever seen have featured naked stages. And I’ll add that one person and a piano or an acoustic guitar can reach me in a way that a full band and stacks of amplifiers oftentimes can’t.
But what troubles me even more, is Imogen Heap entitled to make a living making music?
Her shows aren’t selling out. Whose problem is that? She blames Live Nation, but famously artists are in control of ticket prices. Sure, there are add-ons, and they’re in many cases heinous, but what it truly comes down to is whether you’ve got an audience that wants to see you.
Maybe Ms. Heap is burned out. From doing all the social marketing for her album. She worked on it for eons and it sold in mass quantities very briefly, like so many other projects today. Maybe Imogen just wasn’t innovative enough. Or she’s lacking a good team.
Today it’s about a steady stream of product. Instead of getting ten bucks from your fans every two years, get a dollar or two from them every month. Yes, Imogen could constantly be releasing new material, which hard core fans would have to own.
I’m not sure whether she’s released special packages, but Trent Reznor booked almost two million dollars in revenue from a limited release of an album plus extras over two years ago. This is not a new paradigm. And you don’t find the buyers complaining. Just like all those purchasers of the Beatles’ USB thumb drive with all their remastered albums. Makes no sense to me, but buyers wanted it, it sold out. Isn’t that the essence of fandom? The hard core is willing to invest deeply in what the rest of us cannot comprehend?
If it’s money Ms. Heap wants, she can sell out. She can be a songwriter for hire, do endorsements, take all offers.
But she wants to be an artist. That’s admirable. But she’s not entitled to make a good living doing it.
That’s what’s topsy-turvy about our industry. The money is now first. And it’s not only the labels and Live Nation, it’s the performers themselves. Aware of the exploits of Led Zeppelin, reading the grosses of U2, they want some of that money. But maybe that money is now unavailable. Or can be gotten only by a very few. Isn’t this what’s wrong with the media business in its entirety? From music to movies to newspapers? People complaining that they’re just not making what they used to?
And let’s not focus solely on theft, that’s a knee-jerk reaction. Craigslist helped kill newspapers, by making almost all classifieds free. Craig Newmark is not complaining. He’s leaving money on the table. He’s not doing it to get rich, he wants to provide a service to people, which they love. Isn’t this like the artists of yore, who put their audience before their pocketbooks?
I can’t buy a house. I certainly can’t buy a private jet. And I don’t go out for restaurant meals every night. Because I can’t afford it! So, when Ms. Heap says she can’t afford to tour the way she wants to, I have little sympathy. If she told me she couldn’t eat, didn’t have a roof over her head, that would be different. Then again, if it was because she couldn’t make enough money from playing music, I’d tell her to get a day job, like the rest of the wannabes.
Furthermore, she seems unaware of Eventful.com, which allows you to book a tour where your fans are, on demand. Sure, she may live in the U.K., but even KISS used this to route their tour. Is her agent unaware of this service?
Once you start bitching, once you start begging, people start abandoning you. They can’t stand the desperation.
The key is to build upon what you’ve got.
And not to yearn for the past.
Can Imogen Heap complain that she can’t make money off of records because so many people steal music when she’s using Twitter and YouTube free for her marketing campaign? And it’s not like either of those companies is making any money. Deep pockets are sustaining them now, but not forever. The highway is littered with the detritus of failed startups.
You can’t complain about new media and use it at the same time.
And even if you eviscerate P2P file-trading, people still only want to buy the single on iTunes, and a performance on TV means less, as does print hype…Â If we start turning back the clock, where do we stop?
Music is a calling. It’s a privilege to earn a living making it. We look to our artists as beacons, doing it their own way, willing to sacrifice in the process. So, we the public are doing jobs we hate, working in offices, performing drudge work, and in addition we should be worried about the worries of prima donnas?
Not that Ms. Heap is a prima donna. But it’s hard to have sympathy for her here. It’s like Procol Harum or Peter Gabriel complaining they can’t take the same fifty piece orchestra from the record on tour. These acts make do. They use a synthesizer, or hire local hands. Is it as good as the vision in their heads? No, but they live in the real world.
And what intrigues us in the real world is those who test the limits of the construct with the few assets they do have. Who dig down deep into their psyche and wow us with the result. Sure, you can hire the best producer and musicians and pay a fortune to record for months, but if that worked, Michael Jackson’s post-"Bad" albums would have outsold "Nevermind", but they did not.
Imogen… Follow your muse. Stop marketing, tweeting and blogging ad infinitum and take a break…that’s when insight arrives, when you’re doing something else, taking a shower, on a hike, reading a book… There’s a better way out of this dilemma than complaining.
