The era of big marketing is OVER!<\/p>\n
That was the mantra of the nineties, get the word OUT!\u00c2\u00a0 Let everybody know, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!<\/p>\n
This was radically different from the late sixties and early seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 When every record wasn’t expected to go platinum, back before there even WERE platinum records, back before the labels had endless wads of cash and somewhere to SPEND the Benjamins.<\/p>\n
I mean where the fuck were you gonna lay off all that dough back then?\u00c2\u00a0 FM radio was a bunch of stoners you could get high, but payola didn’t really return until the resurgence of Top Forty in the eighties.\u00c2\u00a0 And how much did an ad in "Rolling Stone" cost ANYWAY?\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind "Fusion", "Crawdaddy" or "Zoo World".\u00c2\u00a0 And you didn’t have to pay travel costs to New York to do the "Today Show", hell, TV didn’t even FEATURE music, not on a regular basis, not in any depth.\u00c2\u00a0 As for wardrobe and hairstylists…they weren’t even part of the equation.\u00c2\u00a0 Gregg Allman didn’t need a woman in tow to fix his tresses, all he needed was a bottle of shampoo.\u00c2\u00a0 And what you wore offstage you wore on.\u00c2\u00a0 And video costs?\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t even EXIST!<\/p>\n
What broke the bands of yore was the MUSIC!<\/p>\n
If you need any evidence that the nineties marketing era is over, just tune into MTV, the force that DROVE the business for twenty years.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t play any MUSIC!<\/p>\n
There was one channel.\u00c2\u00a0 That made or broke your act.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing music 24\/7, at least at first.\u00c2\u00a0 The pipe was just wide enough to keep the audience satiated, and even though acts that didn’t get on MTV were fucked, those that made it on blew up to SUCH a degree that the purveyors couldn’t complain.<\/p>\n
In the seventies, you couldn’t get the message out.\u00c2\u00a0 In the nineties it became ABOUT the message.\u00c2\u00a0 Letting people know, beating them over the head.\u00c2\u00a0 Endless videos and singles.\u00c2\u00a0 Promoted all over TV.<\/p>\n
But now it’s like somebody dropped an atomic bomb on the scene.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe, more importantly, there are ALTERNATIVES!<\/p>\n
It’s the choice that’s fucking up the system.\u00c2\u00a0 The majors would like us to only be interested in their wares.\u00c2\u00a0 But they don’t get it at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Signing fewer acts, working them with fewer employees, that’s going in the WRONG DIRECTION!\u00c2\u00a0 The goal is to have a SMORGASBORD of product that ultimately appeals to everybody, not to try to get everybody to buy the same few records.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you can market and market and nobody cares.<\/p>\n
For everybody enthralled with the success of the Pussycat Dolls, there is a PLETHORA of individuals who’ve NEVER HEARD THE ACT!\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t HAVE TO!\u00c2\u00a0 There are enough alternative avenues of exposure.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re not FORCED to pay attention to the "system", just like underground FM radio gave us a respite from AM Top Forty in the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, Louis Armstrong’s "Hello Dolly" and Frank Sinatra’s "Strangers In The Night" would have done a FRACTION of the business if everybody wasn’t forced to listen to the same Top Forty stations SPINNING THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I don’t watch "Desperate Housewives", or "E.R.", hell I’ve never even seen an EPISODE of either!\u00c2\u00a0 I fill up my viewing hours with what’s on pay cable.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I care that fewer people watch what I do than the mainstream network crap?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I feel SUPERIOR!<\/p>\n
It was one big homogenous society in the MTV years.\u00c2\u00a0 There wasn’t mainstream and underground, not oversold and hip, we were all in it together during Reagan and Clinton.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we’re PROUD to say we don’t listen to Christina Aguilera, never mind Paris Hilton.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we know who they ARE, but we never have to listen to their music, and we LIKE THIS!<\/p>\n
Used to be you spent enough and you got a shot at traction.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, you can overhype something like the New York Dolls’ return and ultimately nobody cares but the insiders.\u00c2\u00a0 The return of the vaunted New York Dolls?\u00c2\u00a0 They can’t even sell 10,000 records a week, no matter HOW skinny David Johansen still is.\u00c2\u00a0 People just don’t CARE!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an insider circle jerk.\u00c2\u00a0 The music sucks.<\/p>\n
Oh, it’s become about the music again.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that’s why Top Forty still works.\u00c2\u00a0 Those records that run to the top of the chart, they may be meaningless, but they’re expertly crafted pop gems.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got hooks constructed by teams, lyrics done on the assembly line.\u00c2\u00a0 But only the exception, like Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy", truly enraptures you.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest…hook you about as much as "Afternoon Delight", which ruled AM in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, Top Forty is not the main show, but a SIDESHOW!<\/p>\n
And the rest of the world?\u00c2\u00a0 A complete morass.<\/p>\n
Spend all you want, you can’t reach those who’ve tuned the Top Forty out.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re lost to the major marketers FOREVER!\u00c2\u00a0 They know it’s all fake and phony.\u00c2\u00a0 If they want something new, it’s got to be real, unhyped, GOOD!\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ve got to discover it by themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 From surfing, from a friend.\u00c2\u00a0 If the machine endorses it, it’s CRAP!<\/p>\n
It’s a mad dash for musical fulfillment.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it’s those in the creative labs who are going to triumph in the coming years.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about business deals, but what’s on the RECORD (er, file).<\/p>\n
If you want to make it in this media-saturated world, you’ve got to deliver the essence.\u00c2\u00a0 Something so appealing that people WANT to listen to it again and again and want to tell all their friends about it.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t tell your friends about Britney, everybody already knows ALL ABOUT HER!<\/p>\n
True A&R men are going to come back.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the sycophants and phonies at major labels today.\u00c2\u00a0 People with sieves so narrow, nothing innovative can slip through.\u00c2\u00a0 No, it’s like the late sixties, when if it sounds good, FEELS GOOD, you commit to it.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because you can hype the image, or the singer is good-looking, because those things NO LONGER MATTER!\u00c2\u00a0 Not when it comes to career acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the more you hype, the shorter the career.\u00c2\u00a0 MTV proved that.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody on the street knows that.\u00c2\u00a0 People want to OWN things.\u00c2\u00a0 Not be SOLD THEM!<\/p>\n
It’s an era of underground.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t view Pearl Jam as the paradigm so much as Ani DiFranco.\u00c2\u00a0 I personally think she’s overrated, but her audience believes she’s godhead and buys enough of her CDs and goes to see her in such prodigious numbers that she’s laughing all the way to the proverbial bank.\u00c2\u00a0 Because she’s OUTSIDE!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the LACK of mainstream marketing that keeps her flame burning.<\/p>\n
If you sign with a major label, you’d better be anticipating a brief career.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, after years of entertainment business publicity\/information, musicians know if your career is brief you won’t make any MONEY!\u00c2\u00a0 Acts want to be in it for the long haul.\u00c2\u00a0 Which means they’d much rather go indie.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s no money to break them in indiedom.\u00c2\u00a0 So, you can only focus on one thing, MUSIC, and hope you get lucky.<\/p>\n
Maybe Pitchfork writes about you.\u00c2\u00a0 And that even leads to airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you say ARCADE FIRE?\u00c2\u00a0 But this works only so long as Pitchfork is cool.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the line that Fox is walking with MySpace and doesn’t even realize.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike MTV, Murdoch’s minions don’t manage the brand.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of looking outside, MySpace now seems mainstream, and this will lead to its ultimate usurpation as surely as Google unseated not only Yahoo, but the once dominant AOL (then again, AOL was barely ever cool).<\/p>\n
It’s no longer about hype\/marketing, but brand MANAGEMENT!<\/p>\n
But that requires the underlying product to have soul, to connect.<\/p>\n
And it doesn’t have to be pretty.\u00c2\u00a0 Check out Crocs for an example.\u00c2\u00a0 It just has to RESONATE!<\/p>\n
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