Is anybody going to care about "X&Y" next year at this time?<\/p>\n
I doubt it.\u00c2\u00a0 You see everything mainstream dies a quick commercial death.\u00c2\u00a0
That which is overhyped and overexposed better be sold quickly, because the
media and the people just can’t stand to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at it this way…do
you care that Mark Felt was Deep Throat THIS WEEK?<\/p>\n
It may be hard to believe, but the release of "Rumours" was not an over the
top media event.\u00c2\u00a0 The band didn’t play the "Today Show".\u00c2\u00a0 I mean how much
credibility does the "Today Show" HAVE?\u00c2\u00a0 There weren’t endless stories in the
mainstream press about how many copies the album was going to sell the first week.\u00c2\u00a0 As a matter of fact, sales were not even part of the mainstream press
equation.\u00c2\u00a0 To the degree there was mainstream press, it was about the MUSIC
(oh, and the romantic drama, which INSPIRED the music.)\u00c2\u00a0 By today’s standards, the
release of "Rumours" was positively UNDERGROUND!\u00c2\u00a0 If you were hip, you knew about it, but your parents didn’t come into your room, didn’t phone you up and ask
you what you thought of the record.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t for them, it didn’t fly on their
radar.<\/p>\n
But everything changed with MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, exposure became MULTIPLIED!\u00c2\u00a0
There were at most sixty channels on cable systems.\u00c2\u00a0 EVERYBODY surfed past MTV,
the press was endless.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, you could sell a lot more records MUCH more
quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 Which seemed like a good thing at the time.\u00c2\u00a0 But with hindsight, we
can see this overexposure killed acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Once the novelty wore off, once we saw
all those videos for "Thriller", it was just an endless repeat of the paradigm.
Everything was flavor of the moment.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that the business knew it.\u00c2\u00a0 The
business thought the boy bands were the ZENITH!\u00c2\u00a0 MILLIONS OF COPIES IN A WEEK!\u00c2\u00a0 But how many copies of "No Strings" are being sold THIS WEEK?\u00c2\u00a0 As the Eagles tour sold out arenas, the Backstreet Boys were starting over.\u00c2\u00a0 That boy band thing wasn’t about music, even though some of the tracks were good, it was about
MANIA!\u00c2\u00a0 About a younger generation coming of age with MONEY!\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that
the business expected this blockbuster trend to continue is hysterical.\u00c2\u00a0
EVERYBODY knows once you hit puberty you look for something darker, different, you want something that represents your identity, something that everybody else
DOESN’T HAVE!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the group in middle school, in high school it’s about
INDIVIDUALITY!\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to sell bands to high school students they’ve got
to be real, credible and NOT MAINSTREAM!<\/p>\n
But the business only believes in mainstream.\u00c2\u00a0 All the time.<\/p>\n
But it’s not working.<\/p>\n
Because none of these latter-day blockbusters, the ones that sold millions in
their time, still sell.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of stopped in the early nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 With
Metallica’s Black Album and "Nevermind".\u00c2\u00a0 After that, the business as we knew it was history.\u00c2\u00a0 Music completely gave up the underground, it was only mainstream and bland ALL THE TIME!<\/p>\n
So, the public has rejected the mainstream, blockbuster music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It
just doesn’t square with their identities.\u00c2\u00a0 They want to DISCOVER music.\u00c2\u00a0 That
speaks directly to THEM, not EVERYBODY!\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s the job of the label to
deliver this.\u00c2\u00a0 But the majors don’t want to do this, they just want to rant and
rave that everybody should come back to the old paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 A paradigm based on
selling millions instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s all you can sell.\u00c2\u00a0 Because radio won’t
go from track to track, five singles deep, over two to three years like in the
old days.\u00c2\u00a0 Because, you see, the audience won’t TOLERATE IT!\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve been
overhyped on the album, they already know all the tracks, they won’t be
SPOONFED!\u00c2\u00a0 And, if something is shitty, they know it instantly, that’s what the Web
tells them.<\/p>\n
The music business has become the movie business.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the movie business is
INHERENTLY different from the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 First of all, there are
multiple WINDOWS!\u00c2\u00a0 Theatrical, DVD, on demand, pay cable, basic cable, network,
syndication, each one generating more bucks.\u00c2\u00a0 In music you have the initial
release and then…NOTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, most movies you only want to see once, whereas great music you want to hear again and again.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the labels are only
making music you want to hear ONCE, if that.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to make albums that
are playable and sell them without force…and keep making new ones.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, music is going underground.\u00c2\u00a0 The average person doesn’t know
what pitchformedia.com is, and that’s what’s great about the site.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got
a RENEGADE feeling!\u00c2\u00a0 And read the reviews, there’s no corporate filter, it’s
not only positive, like in the kiss-ass major label hype world.\u00c2\u00a0 But,
pitchforkmedia is only the tip of the iceberg.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s myspace, and music blogs, and
individual sites.\u00c2\u00a0 The music is HARD TO FIND!\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s the way the audience
LIKES IT!\u00c2\u00a0 They want to keep the mainstream OUT!\u00c2\u00a0 And, since millions of
people aren’t into any one band, the mainstream media doesn’t care, which suits the new audience just fine.<\/p>\n
The Eagles’ "Greatest Hits" and "Rumours" are still selling.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the
blockbusters of the last ten years are not.\u00c2\u00a0 And the reason is the old acts were
nurtured, were not overexposed, they belonged to the AUDIENCE, not the MEDIA!\u00c2\u00a0
Sure, their handlers might not have known any better back in the day, but the
key in 2005 is NOT to overexpose.\u00c2\u00a0 It KILLS THE ACT!\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, the major
labels don’t care about the act.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re all about today, fuck tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows the new Coldplay album is out this week.\u00c2\u00a0 The Black Eyed Peas
were even on the aforementioned "Today Show".\u00c2\u00a0 The White Stripes were
featured in seemingly every publication known to man.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they even made the cover of the L.A. "Times" Sunday "Calendar" section.\u00c2\u00a0 How fucking hip can they BE
when the mainstream press embraces them so?\u00c2\u00a0 As a matter of fact, it’s a
NEGATIVE, a TURN-OFF!<\/p>\n
So, the business is destroying itself.\u00c2\u00a0 Placing all its hopes in overhyped
mainstream fodder, which inherently has a short shelf-life because it’s so
overexposed.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be, managers wouldn’t let this happen.\u00c2\u00a0 But, now the label
thinks it rules.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck the managers along with the acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Great managers like
Cliff Burnstein and Irving Azoff don’t always say yes.\u00c2\u00a0 Have you seen Metallica
on TV recently?\u00c2\u00a0 In the press?\u00c2\u00a0 How about Christina Aguilera?\u00c2\u00a0 No, their
managers are letting the acts AIR OUT!\u00c2\u00a0 So the public doesn’t BURN OUT ON THEM
COMPLETELY!\u00c2\u00a0 So they can have long careers.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at Jewel for example.\u00c2\u00a0 Overhyped to high heaven, people HATE HER!\u00c2\u00a0 Did people hate singer-songwriter chicks thirty years ago with such a passion?\u00c2\u00a0 No, they didn’t even know who most of them WERE!!<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, the problem isn’t with the audience, it’s with the BUSINESS!
A business out of touch with the kind of acts people want to consume and how
they want to consume them.\u00c2\u00a0 The public doesn’t want another blockbuster sold
on DualDisc, they’re clamoring for a band that they can talk about on the Web,
that they own, not TV, that they can’t get a ticket to see.\u00c2\u00a0 One that doesn’t
have one hit and play arenas.<\/p>\n
Music fans know ALL of the above.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why music itself is healthy.\u00c2\u00a0
It’s just the major label game that’s in trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s the labels’ own damn
fault. <\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is anybody going to care about "X&Y" next year at this time? I doubt it.\u00c2\u00a0 You see everything mainstream dies a quick commercial death.\u00c2\u00a0 That which is overhyped and overexposed better be sold quickly, because the media and the people just can’t stand to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at it this way…do you care that Mark […]<\/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-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","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=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}