What if it’s over.\u00c2\u00a0 What if everything this business was built upon,
everything we know, is disappearing.<\/p>\n
Well, this business WAS built upon music.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was a long time ago.\u00c2\u00a0
That was before everybody got greedy.\u00c2\u00a0 Before it was demonstrated how much MONEY there was in the music business.<\/p>\n
Oh, there’s always been a music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Back to the days when cavemen were
banging on rocks and people sat around and listened.\u00c2\u00a0 But the sixties were
different.\u00c2\u00a0 We had recorded music, and a large ready audience, i.e. baby
boomers, with the money and wherewithal to buy it.<\/p>\n
Before the sixties the single was the dominant format.\u00c2\u00a0 First 78s, then 45s.\u00c2\u00a0
You can’t make much money selling singles.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask the labels how
profitable iTunes is.\u00c2\u00a0 And, there wasn’t much money.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a depression.
And then a war.\u00c2\u00a0 But when rock and roll hit, when the baby boomers came of age, when the Beatles turned it into an album format, purveyors started COINING DOUGH!<\/p>\n
You HAD to have the Beatle album.<\/p>\n
And the Beatles and the San Francisco sound begat concert venues.\u00c2\u00a0 And press
to cover the scene.\u00c2\u00a0 And suddenly, music was the driver, the hippest art form
extant.<\/p>\n
And the MONEY!<\/p>\n
First there were the records.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, Led Zeppelin changed the live deal.\u00c2\u00a0 To
90\/10.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody wanted to SEE Led Zeppelin.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no venue too big,
they could sell every seat of a stadium.<\/p>\n
And there was radio to grease the way.\u00c2\u00a0 To turn people on to new bands.<\/p>\n
But then FM radio became formatted.\u00c2\u00a0 The acts became corporate.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole
thing tanked.\u00c2\u00a0 But MTV revived it.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, there was a new way to expose product.\u00c2\u00a0 And this new exposure sold
TONS of albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Killed acts as quickly as it made them, but the public was
hooked, they had to watch, MTV was the antithesis of corporate television.<\/p>\n
Then came the baby boomlet.\u00c2\u00a0 The CHILDREN of the baby boomers.\u00c2\u00a0 Whose parents
didn’t believe in denying them.\u00c2\u00a0 Lou Pearlman developed a whole new breed of
act to appeal to this group, and the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync sold DIAMOND!\u00c2\u00a0Over ten million albums per record.<\/p>\n
Then it died.<\/p>\n
Yup, died.<\/p>\n
The labels will tell you it’s file-trading.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why we have no more
diamond albums.<\/p>\n
Concert promoters blame the acts, they’re too greedy.<\/p>\n
And if you listen to the public, everybody’s too greedy and the acts suck.<\/p>\n
But, is any of this TRUE???<\/p>\n
Well, all of it’s true to a degree, but are these the factors that are ailing
the music business or are their OTHER, unforeseen, unexplored reasons?<\/p>\n
There’s no center anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 No town square.\u00c2\u00a0 No marketplace that everybody
passes through.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re no longer one cohesive culture.\u00c2\u00a0 And therefore, you can’t
find ten million people to buy one album.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like the sixties, when
you heard everything.\u00c2\u00a0 Mariah Carey had the biggest track of the summer?\u00c2\u00a0 I bet
half of America never heard it.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, most Americans are not familiar with
the Top Forty chart.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s meaningless to them.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t listen to the radio
stations and they don’t like the urban-oriented sound.<\/p>\n
The acts that sell today, to the degree they DO sell, are overexposed.\u00c2\u00a0
That’s what the major label’s business is.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why you sign with a major rather
than an indie.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll get you on the radio, MTV\/VH1\/Fuse, "The Today Show",
maybe even "20\/20", in "Us", "People", singing the national anthem at
sporting events, in movies, at least your songs.\u00c2\u00a0 Because if you don’t do ALL of the
above, not enough people are aware of your product, the major label can’t sell
enough copies to recoup its investment.<\/p>\n
But it gets worse.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to get everybody to buy in, in order to get all
the exposing media involved, the music has to be palatable.\u00c2\u00a0 Must be bland and
inoffensive.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, it’s a tune-out, and ratings will decline.\u00c2\u00a0 UNLESS,
OF COURSE, it’s the edge, the danger that you’re truly selling.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like
the days of the Rolling Stones, words are not enough, how many times was
50 Cent shot?<\/p>\n
But it’s not only the labels that are in trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 The live business is never
going to be the same.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got nothing to do with sheds or arenas.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing
to do with the quality of food.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that not enough people know about
the touring acts that you can SELL 20,000 tickets a night.<\/p>\n
Classic rock acts.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re already ingrained in the public consciousness.<\/p>\n
The Dave Matthews Band?\u00c2\u00a0 Truly, the last one to squeak in.\u00c2\u00a0 When MTV still
played music, broke bands.\u00c2\u00a0 THEY can make the numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s
Coldplay…\u00c2\u00a0 One has to ask, is Coldplay selling out because it’s such fantastic
music or because people need a rallying point?\u00c2\u00a0 To feel SOME connection to the
mainstream?<\/p>\n
But Coldplay is irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s just say there will be a COUPLE of new
bands that will break through and sell tickets for a year or two (if you think
Coldplay’s gonna be doing 20,000 a night three years from now, you’re dreaming,
or else they’re going to make a quantum leap in recorded material, since "X&Y"
is so bland, so repetitive, so WEAK as to be laughable to anybody truly
listening).<\/p>\n
This business was built upon a NUMBER of acts selling out arenas.\u00c2\u00a0 Where are
those acts coming from?<\/p>\n
There’s no mainstream outlet exposing these acts, IRRELEVANT of how good the
material is.<\/p>\n
MTV plays almost no music.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember when you HAD to get a ticket to the
VMAs?\u00c2\u00a0 Could there be LESS buzz about next week’s show?<\/p>\n
Radio is run by advertising men, not music lovers.<\/p>\n
But music lovers still exist.\u00c2\u00a0 They haunt the Web.<\/p>\n
But the Web is narrowcasting.<\/p>\n
Music ain’t gonna die.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that each album is going to sell fewer
copies and each concert is going to have fewer attendees.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll go to a club to
see a band that almost no one has ever heard of.\u00c2\u00a0 Just you and some other
people on MySpace.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be enough to sell a couple of hundred tickets in
Cleveland, but it won’t ever sell 20,000 a night.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless, of course, the act signs
to the major label, which will dumb down the music, sell it everywhere and
kill it.<\/p>\n
It’s a funny era.\u00c2\u00a0 More people are making music than ever before.\u00c2\u00a0 More music
is AVAILABLE than ever before.\u00c2\u00a0 There are so many genres that even an expert
can’t keep them all straight.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s bad for the old guard.\u00c2\u00a0 The old guard
is based on tonnage of individual acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Those days are through.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What if it’s over.\u00c2\u00a0 What if everything this business was built upon, everything we know, is disappearing. Well, this business WAS built upon music.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was a long time ago.\u00c2\u00a0 That was before everybody got greedy.\u00c2\u00a0 Before it was demonstrated how much MONEY there was in the music business. Oh, there’s always been a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}