I can’t get over what a non-event the release of an album is today.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, the media trumpets the dropping of these discs like the second coming.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one’s paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, that’s not really true, VERY FEW PEOPLE ARE PAYING ATTENTION!<\/p>\n
We used to live in a small universe.\u00c2\u00a0 Fewer than 5,000 albums were released a year.\u00c2\u00a0 And people like us, we knew every one.\u00c2\u00a0 Now nobody knows every one, and not many people care that they’re uninformed.\u00c2\u00a0 But it gets worse, sales superstars like Avril Lavigne release "monster hit singles" that nobody hears.\u00c2\u00a0 "Girlfriend"?\u00c2\u00a0 A hit in the media, but most of America has never heard it.<\/p>\n
Then there’s Patti Smith’s covers album.\u00c2\u00a0 She just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she’s riding a wave of publicity she hasn’t been the beneficiary of since the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 But will anybody buy her record?<\/p>\n
Not many.<\/p>\n
Doesn’t matter how good it is, most people don’t care.<\/p>\n
And it’s not Patti.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a heritage artist putting out a new record…nobody wants it.\u00c2\u00a0 They just want to hear your old stuff.<\/p>\n
And if you don’t have a big time rep, then you’re not going to break through, unless you sell your soul to the promotion\/marketing machine, and then you STILL won’t go platinum probably, and you’ll just be a footnote in the history of music.<\/p>\n
What the hell is going on?<\/p>\n
Back before publications like the L.A. "Times" printed new album previews, we were hungry for the new discs of our favorite bands.\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to hear all the new albums, maybe someone would surprise us and we’d BECOME a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, an act has a hard core of dedicated fans and that’s IT!<\/p>\n
But it gets worse.\u00c2\u00a0 Household names?\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t have a dedicated sales base.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they might be able to tour if they’re from the classic rock era, but all those famous people from the last forty years, they can’t sell tonnage.\u00c2\u00a0 NOBODY CAN SELL TONNAGE!<\/p>\n
Oh, let’s not make it black and white.\u00c2\u00a0 There might still be phenomena.\u00c2\u00a0 Nickelback is a phenomenon.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, their initial monster hit predated this new era.\u00c2\u00a0 People were still listening to Top Forty radio and watching MTV when "How You Remind" me broke.\u00c2\u00a0 Same band releases same initial single today?\u00c2\u00a0 Much less impact.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, let’s look at it this way, if Nickelback’s latest album had come out at the turn of the decade, at the height of CD sales, it would have gone diamond, done in excess of ten million in the U.S., I have no doubt.\u00c2\u00a0 KID ROCK went diamond, and he had FEWER HITS!<\/p>\n
We read about these new discs, it’s as if these acts can sell records, but they can’t.\u00c2\u00a0 And sure, there’s no more Tower and the big boxes are stocking fewer albums, but the real story is there’s just no focus.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a coterie of not quite adolescent girls following the mainstream, and then everybody else is off in his own niche.<\/p>\n
Used to be an album release was just the beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like starting a fire on "Survivor".\u00c2\u00a0 Once you had your flint and your logs, you were gonna blow on the tinder, if you did it right you were gonna have a\u00c2\u00a0 CONFLAGRATION!\u00c2\u00a0 Now the PEAK is when the record drops.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all downhill from there.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, a few discs build.\u00c2\u00a0 But most just fade off into oblivion.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re run up the flagpole and then they disappear, as the media runs another record up the flagpole.<\/p>\n
Acts used to be excited.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got an album coming out!\u00c2\u00a0 We and the label are going to build it into a raging success!\u00c2\u00a0 No you’re not, if you’re lucky you already have a road audience and you’ll sell the disc to the people coming to the show, or actually AT the show.<\/p>\n
Don’t buy the hype.\u00c2\u00a0 All those stories, all the reviews, almost nobody’s paying attention!\u00c2\u00a0 Who could, it’s overwhelming!<\/p>\n
But the media and the music business don’t stop.\u00c2\u00a0 If the public isn’t interested in reading the reviews of a zillion new records and stories of how they’re being made, how come they’re printing this stuff ANYWAY?\u00c2\u00a0 And if you can’t release a record with the hope of it going platinum, why are you investing so much money, time and effort?\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re only going to sell 25,000, maybe you should cut the album more cheaply and maintain a really good mailing list to get the word out, rather than employing high-priced publicists who try to reach the masses who don’t give a shit.<\/p>\n
This is reality.\u00c2\u00a0 The blockbuster era is done.\u00c2\u00a0 The business is living a giant lie, the purveyors are participating in a giant circle jerk.\u00c2\u00a0 The public has tuned out, and is only listening to each other.<\/p>\n
It’s not about beating acts or labels up.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s actually depressing that the scene is so saturated and there’s so much choice that it’s almost impossible to go gold.\u00c2\u00a0 In the future there could be a new avenue of exposure that builds hit acts, then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n
So don’t be impressed when you read about so and so’s new album.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s nothing going on other than this story.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a cardboard facade with carney-level sales figures behind.<\/p>\n
And if you’re a musician, realize that it’s about those who you know, serving your fan base, growing it organically.\u00c2\u00a0 Your dream of a big break and mass appeal?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not gonna happen.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if it does, like a flash mob, the audience will move on to something new soon thereafter.<\/p>\n
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I can’t get over what a non-event the release of an album is today.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, the media trumpets the dropping of these discs like the second coming.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one’s paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, that’s not really true, VERY FEW PEOPLE ARE PAYING ATTENTION! We used to live in a small universe.\u00c2\u00a0 Fewer than 5,000 albums […]<\/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-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","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=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}