Posts Tagged ‘music industry’

Corporate Greed Is Killing Music

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Some people ask me why I say “corporate greed is killing music.” What about people that are stealing music? Or even those that do buy music but are too lazy to check out anything other than what the corporations are pushing on them? Or couldn’t the blame be places on the musicians and bands that just dial in a performance and don’t push themselves creatively?

Well, maybe the truth of the matter is that “lazy fans (or musicians) are killing music” really just doesn’t sound as catchy on a t-shirt. But for me, I don’t think these factors are killing music. They are certainly ruining it in some cases, but not killing it. We have always had some fans that don’t want to think and some musicians that are lazy – even back when the music industry was booming. But then again – we also had corporate greed. So what is different now?

The difference is that now fans and musicians that do care can find ways around the corporate greed – both legally and illegally. The digital revolution has leveled the playing field a lot. The corporations could have jumped in early and taken advantage of the changes – but they still would have lost some money. In the long run, they would have still stayed afloat, but that short term loss was just too much for them. So they went the greedy route and fought the change.

The reason this is important is that we still need a national distribution network for people to hear and obtain music (legally). The corporations provide that. Without that, there would be no way for any bands to go on national tours – and almost all bands would just be local acts trying to make a living off the same fans every week. In other words, there would probably be no professional music stars.

There would probably be no music acts at the half time show during the Super Bowl either. You need someone famous to do that, and without the national distribution that labels afford, there would be no stars.

But those corporations are also ripping off their bands. So you see why I pin the problem on the corporations. They could have changed for the better, maybe suffered a bit, but ultimately came out on top with everyone happy and new, sustainable business model.

But they chose the path of greed.

(this article was also published in the January 2011 issue)

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Innovative Changes In The Music Industry

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

So the music industry is dying, MySpace is dying… every where we look the opportunities for musicians are drying up. Or is it that just the big music labels aren’t adapting fast enough to the changing times? Maybe their greed is finally getting the best of them?

No matter what happens in the changing tides of the music scene, I think that bands and musicians themselves need to be the innovators – especially in how they reach their fans. We’re starting to see many bands do just that, of course – but the more that jump on the innovation band wagon, then the faster we can get to the new future of the music industry.

Several bands are trying some inventive methods. One such band is SLIDE. I don’t really know if there is a way to describe their method, or a good term that fits it. But the idea is pretty simple: record songs one at a time, release them through iTunes as they are recorded, add a few remixes to make it interesting, rinse, and repeat. When they get enough songs out there, they will release a CD. Instead of “pay-as-you-go” plan, this sounds like a “finance-an-album-as-you-go” plan. I can’t speak for how they afford it, or how much money they make towards the overall cost of recording, but they are still moving forward, gaining momentum all the way.

Another innovative method is the open source record as described by Temple Foundry Mediaworks. From the sounds of it, it still seems like this will be experimental for now. My head is swirling with many questions about how the details will work out, but it is still an interesting model to follow.

The Internet (for now, at least) is still a good source to connect with fans. If your band doesn’t have a FaceBook page yet – get with the times. MySpace is turning into a ghetto fast.
Other sites have some good ideas, too. I really like what BandCamp.com is doing – you can sell albums or songs in full quality format. This is a great way to get albums out there, especially ones that might not be popular enough to justify a full CD pressing (obscure re-issue, fan club type albums, or unreleased albums that never got finished).

But I have to wonder if the dream of being a full-time working musician, making enough to live, is gone forever. Will music become a part-time hobby for most? If you can get enough people to come out and watch your shows, maybe you can become a full-time musician. But how can that happen? We used to know who the hot bands were by listening to the radio and watching MTV. Those avenues are dying. What will be the radio charts and MTV top video countdowns of the future? I am all for bands being able to do open source records and online downloads, as long as there is a way for bands to tell how popular they are. They need to know if they need to book the stadium tour or the dive-bar tour after all.

This last issue is really the missing piece. Music distribution is pretty irrelevant in the Internet age. People can find the music if they want to buy it. The issue now is how do bands know how popular they are? Where do you turn to find out what people with your same tastes are listening to? Discussion forums are dying, and Facebook doesn’t quite (yet at least) rate music popularity. That is one piece that we are beginning to miss… but are we aware of what we are missing?

(this article was also published in the April 2010 issue)

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How Bad Is The Illegal Music Downloading Business?

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Did you hear the recent news about illegal down-loaders? Those shady, evil, conniving pre-teens that are destroying the music world as we know it are buying the most legal music. The audacity of those… a… what?

I had to have read that wrong. Let me see… what does it say exactly? “The people who do the most illegal downloading also buy the most music.”

Maybe I should put down stones before casting them and all that…

Shocking as it may seem to those that buy the music industry lines, these findings don’t really shock anyone that knows someone who downloads illegally. You see, illegal downloading has never been about getting something for free (to most). It has been about finally getting quality control back in a system that has always made big bucks on consumer ignorance.

Let’s face it – how many albums do you have that you would have never bought if you could have listened to it first? The music industry has made big bucks from pushing artists to finish before they have good songs, or just putting a mediocre band in the studio to record two hit songs and bunch of filler, or putting good albums on cheap quality mediums that will scratch, break, or go obsolete within a few years (forcing consumers to re-purchase their entire music collection). They have always counted on you not knowing what you are buying. You are supposed to hear the one good song on the radio and rush out and buy the whole album – filler junk and all. Then you are supposed to play that one song to death until your record scratches, your tape breaks, or your CD melts on your dash and you are forced to buy a new one.

Oh, and of course they have a way to get more money off of the bands that can produce an entire albums worth of good songs. They just “invent” an entirely new format for delivering music every few years, forcing you to buy an upgrade… at full price. Remember when they tried to get those mini-discs to catch on, and then Gold discs, and then the super discs, or whatever all of those “CD-upgrades” were called? All of those formats tanked – because people were fed up with the constant upgrade.

Did you know the same is also pretty true for the movie piracy business? Most pirated movies come from someone sitting in the back of the theater with a handheld camera. The quality is pretty horrible. But people download them so that they can see the movie first before deciding to go to the movie theatre to watch it.

Of course, the unfortunate side effect of this for the smaller labels and independent bands is that people expect to be able to preview music, but have a harder time finding the less popular artists. If they don’t preview it, they don’t buy it. So the truth be told, the mp3 revolution is hurting the “little people” in the business. The only way to change this side effect would be to change the system. But the big labels don’t want to do that, because it would even the playing field. I fully believe that this is the main reason why big companies have been reluctant to embrace the mp3 revolution.

They are afraid of their filler junk being on a level playing field with all the quality little guys and girls out there.

(this article was also published in the December 2009 issue)

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Why Follow The Example of the Music Industry?

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

I like a wide range of music. Just look at the random albums I reviewed in this issue. Unfortunately, I also follow a lot of what goes on in the “music industry.” Sometimes this industry is just flat-out weird. One of the issues that have really puzzled me through the years is the thought that “Christians put out a bunch of bad music – if only they could be as good as the mainstream music industry.”

What I find the most puzzling is not that people think Christians put out bad music in large quantities. That much is pretty obvious. The weird part to me is the thought that the mainstream music marketplace puts out mostly high-quality, enjoyable music.

Listened to any radio stations recently? Heck – listened to any of the songs that get blared in the backgrounds of movies and television scenes lately? This is the standard we are supposed to live up to? I think I’ll pass. I’ll take my cheesy 80s hair metal clone White Metal warrior music any day over 90 % of the swill that passes for hit songs now-a-days.

People always want to ask: “what is wrong with the Christian music industry, and what can we do to fix it.” The problem with the Christian music industry is that it follows the mainstream music industry too closely for my comfort. There are two basic reasons why there is so much bad Christian music out there (I hate that label, but you know what I mean). First of all, there is just so much bad music out there period. We need to look at fixing the problem with mediocre music in the first place, and that will trickle in to all lyrical subgenres (did you know that there is Hindi death metal and Islamic rock? Really – no kidding). Secondly, too many musicians of any religious persuasion are basically entertainers at heart. They want to give people what they think they want, and as long as teenie-bop nu-metal rock rules the sales charts, musicians will see that and want to just give people what they think they are wanting.

The challenge is for Christians to live the old cliché: “be in the world but not of the world.” We teach Christian businessmen that they need to be good at business and follow the practices of the leaders in their fields. So, when these Christian businessmen went out and formed record companies back in the day, who did they follow? The examples set by the already busted music industry. The example of finding a trend and exploiting it to death. The example of creating suspect artist contracts that keeps most music sales out of the hands of the actual artists that created the music in the first place. The example of a hundred other bad business practices.

Follow that example? Why?

Those that claim that Christian music only copies popular trends of the mainstream about 5 years too late never really spent much time in a music store. Or, more accurately, the bargain bin and Top 40 shelves. Hundreds of albums get released every month. Ever checked out some of the ones that don’t even make the charts? Massive delayed trend copiage going on there… along with the occasional ignored album of some truly trend setting band.

That is why in some of our interviews we ask artists what is wrong with the music industry – not just the CCM industry. The problems are wide spread across every section of the industry, not just one corner of it.

(this post was also published in the October 2008 issue)

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Posted in October 2008, Published Articles | 2 Comments »