What happened was the spirit of music died.
The public is continuing to lose their ear. Money, ladies and gentleman, Madison Avenue Millions has corrupted and hypnotized and numbed the ears of the American public. What is the solution? What will elevate music to a higher level where it can survive? Where is music going?.......It is going here:
Home made music. Music produced and consumed without the involvement of major corporate involvment, MTV, Madison Avenue, or Rolling Stone. Local PERSONALIZED music. One artist making his art without the corporation looking over the artist's shoulder, manipulating every move. This is how fine art has been created for centuries. Word of mouth music. This is the only hope and alternative to the tedious boring cookie cutter music foisted upon the now unbuying public.
Every musicians dream is to land that major record deal. You get signed, you get a quarter million dollar advance. You get on MTV, written up in Rolling Stone, you're a big hit, get a Grammy for Record of the Year, millions of screaming fans. You also dream that you'll win the state lottery. IT'S THE SAME THING.
Think about it....in the past ten years here in Colorado, more people have won a million dollars in the State Lottery than have been able to make a living wage after getting a major record deal.
A signed musician has as much a chance of making the same money as a cashier at Safeway as he has getting struck by lightning. I can name maybe three musicians from Colorado who continue to recieve record royalties after getting signed in the past two decades.
Yet, in spite of this undeniable fact, everyone, everyone makes a big deal out of somebody who gets signed. Not only do musicians think getting signed is the Holy Grail of Music Success, but so does everybody else. It means nothing except that some record company executive thinks your music is MARKETABLE. It says nothing about the quality of music a group or artist is producing. If anything, it means your music sounds middle of the road, like a previous hit. The truth of the matter is GOOD MUSIC is entirely independent of commercial potential and "success".
Add to this, today's affordability of professional home studio recording equipment makes the backing of a large company to cover initial recording expenses unecessary, and diminishing label role in the creative process. This doesn't exclude good music from being on a major label, it means being on a major label is IRRELEVANT. It means good music can be anywhere. In your own backyard as well as on Saturday Night Live. So why is there obsession with Getting Signed? It has nothing to do with music! And more likely than not, getting signed will eventually ruin the music produced by the musician.
Artistry in music is
being replaced
year after year with NON-MUSICAL ELEMENTS. Like an insidious
virus taking over and destroying it's host, non-musical elements of
1) Image
2) Packaging
3) Video
4) Advertising
are replacing the contents of real musical
expression.
Music produced within the context of "The Music Industry" requires several things. Huge capital investment for massive product saturation, video production, advertising, endless road travel. All of these things are non-musical and reduce the amount of energy an artist can spend creating actual music. Music is sound. Period. Either time and energy is spent making sound, or it is not. If it is not, it is not music.
A Major Record Deal will more than likely kill a musicians music. Here's why:
1) Travel
Touring will make you crazy. It is boring. You eat bad food. You
spent 90% of your time sitting on your ass in a car, bus, or plane
seat. This is bad for your body which makes your brain work poorly,
which ruins your ability to make music. Yet, if a musician is
signed to a record label, s/he will be required to tour. The only
way to sell all those zillions of
CD's in record stores across the nation in towns where nobody knows
you from Adam is to spend months on a bus. The solution to musicians
and consumers: Stay close to home. Think local music, in
whatever
form it appears,
CD or not CD (more on this later).
2) Money Pressures
When a record company signs a musician, they essentially become the
artist's
bank. They loan the band/musician money, which the musician must pay back
from sales of
music. This kills creativity. It kills experimentation. It
makes musicians paranoid. It makes the record company very very
nervous.
It ruins music. The solution to musicians: Pay your own way. Be your
own record company.
This of course goes completely against the grain of American philosophy which is GET RICH QUICK and EAT A FREE LUNCH. Non-thinking musicians are as vulnerable to media madness as anyone, and assume the solution to all their problems will be to become a rock star. But as we see, this creates more problems than it solves.
Record companies and musicians are spending WAY too much time on making music that looks good. Ten page CD booklets, videos that cost $250,000, costumes, stage designs. It is not musical. Consumers are not listening.
As far as the importance of television and moving images, being on Saturday Night Live,
David Letterman,
Ed Sullivan, or MTV has got to be the thrill of a lifetime for a
musician. It may boost ticket and album sales to stratospheric
levels.
However, to get on one of these shows, you must either
A) Already
be famous
B) Bribe the shows producers with premium sex
or huge sums of money
C) Be a part of the major record label mafia
(see above).
As far as elevating the cause of Music As A High Human Endeavor, last week I saw Spice Girls on Saturday Night Live. Hmmmmm. TV does not apparently always help the cause.
Most homes are filled with rows and rows of expensive Cd's, that spend most of their time NOT getting played. As pointed out in another paper Digital Mass Hypnosis, a properly made cassette will provide as much entertainment satisfaction in most environments than any CD. In the car and in walkmans a cassette makes way more sense.
A CD is non-renewable/recyclable. Compare this to a simple cassette.
A cassette which is treated as well as any CD will last longer than the interest in listening to the music produced on it. Who possibly has simply played a cassette so much that one could detect a degredation in sound? Nobody. Certainly, if a cassette is left in a pile of mud, just like a CD, it won't hold up.
In additon, new music can be put on a reused cassette. The so called advantage of CD permanance, and unparalleled superiority of sound is baloney and hype. At the very least it does not justify the expense.
The start up cost of manufacturing a single CD title is either beyond the means of many musicians, or limiting. The initial investment for a single recording will cost thousands of dollars just for a minimum duplication run. On the other hand, a band can manufacture quality sounding cassettes at home for no more investment than a single blank tape. It would be nice to hear several variations on a theme, different takes or versions of the same composition. The expense of CD's makes this impractical. The inexpense of cassettes makes this possible, for far less than $15 a pop.
If record sales have flattened out it looks pretty clear what a big part problem is: CD's are too damn expensive.
Greed and non-musicality has infiltrated the music business as never before. It has become a dinosaur which deserves to become extinct. As in the mass extinction of dinosaurs millions of years ago, it was the small intelligent, warm blooded furry mammals that survived. Now, it will be the small, intelligent, personal musicians that survive.
A musician/music store that sells to his/her own family, his own neighborhood, his own region can produce superior music. A local musician can keep expenses to a logical minimum. Even by utilizing the internet, one can connect to a global audience and still bypass the ridiculous, obsolete music industry.
By utilizing the perfectly good format of cassette tape, a musician can manufacture his own product without making a huge capital investment that will tax resources beyond what is practical. The self made musician self-owned record company can make from one to a thousand cassettes that rival any CD in musical content, and for all practical purposes, in sound. Records stores should and can sell more quality cassette duplicated music, local and national at less per/unit price, and in the end sell more music and make more money. Everybody wins.
We don't need MTV. We don't need fancy packages. We don't need to buy only what we see on the cover of Rolling Stone. What we need is to use our ears. Then, music will survive.
It is time for music to move on. Musicians must take the first steps, and become much more resposible and in control of their own product and fate. Musicians need to emphasize the quality of their music. Next, the music critics and journalists will have to spread the word, and help the public realize where they can find the best music, whether it is on a CD in their record store, and especially when it is not. For this is where the future is.