"Remember you are employed, and working for the Muse."-
Frank Zappa (to N.S)
The Evolution Of Music
by Neil Slade
The cover of this month's Musician Magazine emphatically
proclaims
"Bad Times For the Music Industry". The article tells us sales for
1996 were only 12.5 BILLION dollars. Growth has only been 1.6% over
the previous year. Oh my. Everybody is really worried. Retailers
are going bankrupt left and right. Troubled times ahead for the music
business. What happened to music????
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:
De-Centralized Music
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.
The Big Record Deal
Ask most musicians what they want and they will tell you exactly
this: "I want a big record deal, and be on Saturday Night Live, and
play big concerts, and make a million dollars." It is
fantasies like this that RUIN MUSIC, and ultimately
ruin the music business.
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.
More Label Trouble
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.
Eye Candy
It is known that human beings get something like 80% of their
information through their eyes. The music industry knows this, and so
in selling music they have emphasized this visual element far
beyond what is good for music. In truth
music is totally non-visual. But the pervasiveness of the visual
element is so overwhelming in the music industry, that people have
forgotten that music is sound. The public's ears don't work much
anymore and the line
between what is music, and what looks attractive has become
inseparable.
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.
Okay everybody, STOP IT!!!
(Remember The Beatles White Album.)
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.
No CD's
CD's are the biggest rip off the music business has ever created.
These days, it costs less than one dollar to manufacture a CD. Yet,
after tax, most Cd's have cost the consumer $15. The money has
lined the pockets of a few record company executives, a few select
rock stars,
and that's it baby. Everybody else has paid the price. And for what?
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.
The Dinosaur and THE SOLUTION
The enormous SYSTEM that is the music industry:
artists PLUS managment PLUS manufacturers PLUS advertisments PLUS
record company PLUS videos PLUS retailers PLUS PLUS PLUS
makes today's music products too
expensive for people who do not make at least $20 and hour.
Even cassettes sell for many many times what the actual
cost of materials are. It is INSANE.
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.
