The edifice is cracking.\u00c2\u00a0 Those in power know.\u00c2\u00a0 If the end isn’t here, it’s coming.<\/p>\n
Something happened in the record business about five years back.\u00c2\u00a0 It ceased being fun.<\/p>\n
For thirty years, the music business has been driven by the major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been a top down affair.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels pick the acts, and those further down the food chain break and profit from them.<\/p>\n
The labels were where you wanted to work.\u00c2\u00a0 To be close to the action.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And "fight" is the appropriate term.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 All in service to artists you revered who spoke from their heart, sometimes with their voices, oftentimes with their axes, frequently with both.<\/p>\n
But then something changed.<\/p>\n
I believe it was when Doug Morris hired Ron Shapiro to be his publicist fifteen years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, the executive became more important than the act.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where Tommy Mottola was even revered in an episode of the "The Sopranos".\u00c2\u00a0 And then the whole thing fell apart.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the essence of the music explosion was forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 That it was about irreverence, and change, questioning authority.\u00c2\u00a0 Breaking a record became as institutionalized as a military assault.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a way you did it.\u00c2\u00a0 And you shoehorned acts into the formula.\u00c2\u00a0 They had to be good-looking, they had to create top forty hits, you made expensive videos, paid radio to play the tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, the public stopped paying attention.<\/p>\n
The labels felt they were ENTITLED to their success.\u00c2\u00a0 It was their RIGHT!\u00c2\u00a0 They picked acts, radio and MTV played them, and people BOUGHT THEM!<\/p>\n
Things started to get bad for the concert promoters.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the acts the labels were developing…not many people wanted to see.<\/p>\n
And the people stopped listening to radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Because there were too many commercials, and the same damn unadventurous songs were spun ad infinitum.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
The touring business realized this first.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody from the managers to the agents to the promoters.\u00c2\u00a0 First and foremost, a venue must be filled.\u00c2\u00a0 And promoters realized that some of these acts that were not on MTV or top forty radio, THEY were the future.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether it be old jam banders like Widespread Panic or new, developing regional acts that almost nobody had heard of, like the Arcade Fire.\u00c2\u00a0 As for those acts signed to major labels, they now realized that their money didn’t come from record royalties, but tour income.\u00c2\u00a0 Both ticket sales and merchandise.\u00c2\u00a0 They changed their focus.<\/p>\n
And thus we got the great divide.<\/p>\n
The only people who believe in the old game are the major labels and the old media institutions surrounding them.\u00c2\u00a0 Complicit TV and radio.<\/p>\n
For years, the major labels blamed it on the audience.<\/p>\n
But now they don’t even do that.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the facade, despite the ravings of the RIAA, the major labels are VERY afraid.\u00c2\u00a0 And you could feel this tension at the MusicCares dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like a high school reunion.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody coming together for one last hurrah before they hit retirement and could no longer afford the trip back home.<\/p>\n
Everybody was dressed up, except for the musicians.\u00c2\u00a0 People like road warrior\/studio guru David Landau.\u00c2\u00a0 He wore his jeans.\u00c2\u00a0 He had to be loyal to his roots.\u00c2\u00a0 Because he couldn’t count on the major labels, he had to rely on his buddies, the musicians, to survive.<\/p>\n
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The edifice is cracking.\u00c2\u00a0 Those in power know.\u00c2\u00a0 If the end isn’t here, it’s coming. Something happened in the record business about five years back.\u00c2\u00a0 It ceased being fun. For thirty years, the music business has been driven by the major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been a top down affair.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels pick the acts, and those […]<\/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-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-51","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","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=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}