This week, I saw a documentary called Before the Music Dies this. The point of this movie is that the music business is doesn’t care about music anymore. You can see a clip here .
You see, the music industry only cares about making money, so they put together a product that will appeal to a broad audience and make them lots of money. It’s not like it was in the 60s, when the music industry cared about real artists. They would spend years with them, letting them develop their talent. It was like a love-in.
Or so the filmmakers would have you believe. They gloss over things like The Monkees and any of the groups that Barry Gordy put together. Those were for the money, weren’t they? Sure, biz types were music fans, but don’t kid yourself. It was all about the money. If all they cared about was the music, they would just go listen to music. What they cared about most was making money. The big difference between Motown in the 60s and today’s music industry is that they’ve now figured out how to best sell their product. They have the tools to figure out what will sell and they use them. And they’ve expanded their industry. They don’t just sell music anymore; they sell a lifestyle. In the film, only Michael Penn gets this distinction.
The music industry was still in its infancy during what people think of as its golden years. There was no precedent for what they were doing, so they had no idea how to package and sell their goods. As a result, they used the product that was available. And if it wasn’t quite right– that is, if it didn’t sell, they put money into developing it. Eventually, they came up with something that people wanted. Nowadays, though, business types have a pretty good idea what they can sell, so they don’t need to spend a lot of time with artist development. Why would they?
What the filmmakers want you to take away from the above clip is that it’s easy to write a song and then package it, as long as all the elements are there. But the reality is that is takes a lot of work from a lot of people to make even a dumb video like the one they produced. The filmmakers don’t show you that. All of that work by so many people will inevitably produce something that has some value. Whether it suits your taste is beside the point. How many reality TV shows have you watched that weren’t any good, but that–like a train wreck–you watched anyway? You want to find out what all the fuss is about, and to see what happens.
Radio works the same way. You would think that for all the complaining people do about radio that they would just stop listening. But they don’t. And until they do stop listening, radio will be programmed for maximum bland. Several years ago, I participated in market research for radio, for which I was paid a cool $50 in hard cash. All I had to do was sit there and rate dozens short clips of songs. If I wasn’t familiar with a particular song, I was supposed to fill in a special circle on my score card, because they weren’t interested in my opinion about something I wasn’t familiar with. They just wanted to know which songs were most likely to keep me listening. So for about an hour, I listened to and rated lots of things that were pre-screened for my demographic. Lots of Zeppelin and Skynnard and–more than anything else–Ozzy. Everything from Sabbath to “Mama I”m Coming Home.” Who knew that Ozzy was the thing that was likely to be least offensive, the thing that was sure not to drive you to skip down the dial? Mom does, indeed, love your stuff, Ozzy. If you need convincing that radio is not in the business of playing music for the enjoyment of the music, an hour of middle of the road cock rock will do the trick.
It doesn’t matter if the music that the industry produces is any good (though sometimes it is), because the goal is to keep you listening. But, if you want to find good music, you can. This is where the film gets it right, though it takes them half the movie to actually get there. It is possible now for you to make and find any music that suits you for very little investment. The tools to produce high quality recordings are within reach of anybody that owns a computer and has the desire. And the means of distribution–far more efficient means than ever before–are a couple clicks away. The music industry is irrelevant to this kind of production and they know it. This is why they now deal almost exclusively in spectacle. Spectacle is something that people will pay for and can’t trade on the internet.
And yet, people keep talking about how the music industry only produces crap. To this, I say: Who cares? Don’t listen to it. Go make music of your own. You’ll get more out of it that way.
I am the music industry and I create lots of crap. You can see/hear some of the spectacle of the crap I produce here.
I’m not a music expert here but everything I have heard about the music industries in the sixties tells me that not one musician from that era except for a very few ever owned their own songs or were even allowed to write their songs. Often times they would bring in song writers and all the singer had to do is sing. The record company owned the artist and was often the true artistic driving force behind the music.
As far as radio sucking, once you reach a certain age whatever is on the radio will no longer appeal to you. On my way home from work I must have passed at least five cars with teenage drivers and all of them were loudly playing rap or hip hop from their vehicles.
I don’t believe this type of music would appeal to age groups of the upper twenties and above demographics. Radio seems to cator to those that have a disposable income and what better time in your life do you have all that income that doesn’t have to go to anything than during your impressionable teen years?
Yes, there are choices on the radio for every listener. I for one listen to classic rock. Unfortunately it’s easier to put the same songs on rotation over and over again than to play a true variety. So a new comer might be put under the faulse impression that perhaps only about thirty songs were released during that particular era.
As far as record industries spending more time developing artists in the sixties, I hear it’s done more so today. But at the expense of already established artists. I recently read an article about Tori Amos and whitney Houston. Both artists still release new material, but get minimal backing from their record company.As a result their efforts fail to chart well. Why are the record companies doing this? According to the article it was to promote and develope up and coming acts instead.
I don’t believe we infuence what’s on the radio. We should, but we don’t. It’s the record companies working with the radio industry.
Dear anonymous,
“not one musician from that era except for a very few ever owned their own songs or were even allowed to write their songs”
I can’t vouch for who owned which songs but as for songwriting? Lets see Hendrix, The Beatles, Neal Young, Otis Redding, Frank Zappa, Dylan, The Velvet Underground, the list goes on and on. Yes, there were factories but there were just as many bands and artists writing their own music.
As far as you comments on radio. Commercial radio sucks not because of a generation gap but because big media corporations make sure you have the same songs crammed down your throat no matter what city you are in. The day DJs became merely bumpers between ads was the day that radio was officially dead. Rap has stayed relevant to a degree becasue it still has regional radio but rock has not fared so well. Face it if you think you have real musical choice beyond the college stations on the left of the dial you are just kidding yourself. Like you say it’s the same crappy “Hits” over and over and over and over again.
Ironically the same companies that abhor the real DJ formula are embracing it on XM or Sirius? Hmmmm ever wonder why that is? Could it be that nobody would pay for the shit they pass off as radio on the airwaves?
As for the record companies, they are to big, slow and clumsy to understand how to promote artists. They put millions into videos as if they matter anymore, keep CD prices high, and fight digital media at every juncture. Why aren’t CDs a reasonable $10? Why is it that when they sign an act that sold 500,000 units on an indie label, they expect them to sell a million? Why is it they got Bill Gates and crew to give them a rim job and call it the Zune? I’ll tell you why becasue the are glorfied bereaucrats with million dollar salaries.
You are right though that we hardly infuence radio as the companies who run them simply cart out the shit everyday and yet many people listen to it.
You’re wrong if you think that you don’t influence radio. If a radio station–any radio station–loses its audience, the owners will retool right away. In fact, this happens all the time. How many of the stations currently on the air in your home town have the same format that they had ten years ago? Radio is about the most unstable job you could pick.
But don’t take my word for it. I point you now to the lyrics to theme song from WKRP in Cincinnati:
Got kind of tired packing and unpacking,
Town to town and up and down the dial
Don’t think, though, that just one person not listening is going to faze them. Most stations have huge audiences so it’s going to take a a downward trend in overall listenership for anything to change. The parent companies tend to be trigger happy, though, so as soon as they see that trend, they will pull the plug.
They don’t have an option. Most stations on the air now were bought for top dollar as soon as radio was deregulated in 1996, so they can’t afford to lose anything. There is no margin for error.
I listen to radio in the car, mostly to be distracted for a few minutes between point A and point B. I don’t really care what it plays. If it’s on a commercial or a dj I change the station (which is probably why i often end up on the left of the dial – less commercials, less djs). Occasionally, but very rarely I’ll discover a new song/act thru the radio, but in general that is no longer the purpose of radio. If you pine for those days when radio introduced you to the music you wanted to hear, you are in the wrong century, my friend. You want to find challenging and interesting new music that grabs you? Well, you’ve got to make an effort – the best effort you can make is to get out to see live music, but besides that you can also find on-line blogs like this one, go to independent record stores, for god’s sake, talk to people, socialize, almost everyone these days is into music that they think is the shit. A lot of the time they are wrong, but still, stop anyone at the supermarket and ask them what music they like, a lot of them will try to give you a very cool answer and more often than the radio, they will be able to play you something interesting on their Ipod and at the very least it won’t have commercials, djs, nor will it be all controlled by the same 5 dudes at Clear Channel. Radio, ha!
Ramon said:I can’t vouch for who owned which songs but as for songwriting? Lets see Hendrix, The Beatles, Neal Young, Otis Redding, Frank Zappa, Dylan, The Velvet Underground….
ANONYMOUS:Perhaps these artists are relevent today because they did have control of their own material.Many more artists did not. I will try to post the article I got the imformation from.
I apologize for my bad grammar on the first post. I was doing three things at one time.
Just to be clear I’m not talking control over the publishing. I’m just saying that there were many people who wrote their own music.
I am simply questioning yoru categorization that few were allowed to write their own music. Hell even the monkeys got to pen a few like “Last train to clarksville” which is actually a great song.
Maybe our friend has the decade wrong. Maybe anon means the 50s. Where it was indeed rare for a performer to also be the writer.
Radio is only good to hear, when you have just crawled out of a mozzy infested swamp, having been chased by a psychopath through the wilderness for 7 days with no food, out of your mind for the rest of your life from the terror of your ordeal, and you see a group of teenagers having a tailgate party through a crack in the treeline and rocking out to …. whatever the “top 40″ crap is that day. Thats when its nice to hear the radio.,, Oh And also when major cities are getting bombed… Its nice to hear the radio for the propaganda… and to know the closest metro zone still exists.
It’s odd to be thinking about this topic because I almost never find myself pondering the industry much anymore. I mean it just doesn’t do much for me. Most of the music I like is produced well beyond the majors, and the stuff that is on a major is there with little regard from me. Obviously for NAP types the bulk of what we like has little to do with labels. My thing with industry music is the way in which so much of it is mixed. It’s all a little too pristine. But you made a point earlier Justin that touches on what I’m about to mention. Basically it’s that there is a level of professionalism to major label music that is nearly absent in the rest of the world. Like the amazingly heavily produced videos to the elobrately compressed and processed recordings, the work is there, it just tends to be bland if you ask me. Yes there are numerous exceptions, but by and large there tends to be a sanitary quality to much popular music that I find almost distracting. My attention has always been held, at least to a certain extent, by popular music probably for many of the same reasons it grabs most people’s attention. The melodies are simple, catchy, and repetetive. The lyrics often speak to common feelings of basic emotional concepts that virtually anyone can relate to on some superficial level. I think I just like to work a little bit to get my rewards in music. Sure I love a ton of catchy music, and I am by no means categorized as being an exclusively avant garde fan or what have you; I just tend to go my own way in search of what I love in music. This goes a long way towards explaining why I rarely listen to preprogrammed music at all. I generally don’t care what some stranger wants me to hear. Sure, plenty of strangers have plenty to offer, but here in Houston the choices on the radio are pretty much KTRU, and then a micro-fraction of KPFT, and a handful of late night others. Slim pickin’s indeed. But that’s cool too because they don’t program FM radio for me anyway. I don’t have the cash lining my pockets that it takes to buy much music anyway, and on top of that, with the youth market becoming a major section of the buying public, things are naturally inclined to cater to them (the lowest common denominator). Never before have children dominated so much of the popular culture for both themselves and adults. You can blame the new wealthy and their “my kids get bj’s from Jesus” crowd with their overwhelming sense of entitlement. kids no longer get music ideas from their older siblings, their siblings are listening to what the younger ones like (ex: Fall out Boy, My Chemical Romance). You know, children’s music. I don’t really have too much of a problem with it other than to say that the shit is just flowing in a different direction. What the fuck should we care? Nobody gives two shits what we like, and that is a good thing. They can have Green Day and continue to think bands like Panic at the Disco are really amazing. It’s not important. I mean for fuck’s sake, the Russians think Borscht is good. People have bad ideas, it’s what defines us. It makes the national news when a woman in her 20′s prances about in a dress with no panties. And on top of that, the whole world thinks the apocalypse must be now because it would appear as though the same woman may in fact have a vagina! No! Not a vagina! What is this world coming to? What’s next? Penises on guys?
Oops, getting a little worked up.
The radio belongs to Clear Channel; ask Ramon, he knows all about it. It’s their world, we just live here.
John, you had me at “NAP types.”
Yeah, after a little research I discovered that I was mostly wrong about the song writing information. I say ‘mostly’ because I was recalling an article about Motown in the sixties and how they kept a tight rope around most of their artists. They were forced to sing alike, look alike and dress alike. It was like they had one winning formula and so everyone on that label had to abide to that formula. I’m sorry for the confusion I caused. I guess I was the only one confused. Thank you all for setting me straight. In the future I will do a little research before I post any comments.
Nobody was saying there weren’t “hit factories” like Motown. Just that you made a “some” vs “many” error.
No sweat.
The whole idea of owning a song because you wrote it is a problem in this recorded music era and it’s not just a problem for the commercial spectacle makers it seeps down into little local music cultures in a problematic way. I remember playing music in Houston as a kid, I’d want to cover somebody’s song and they’d get uptight about it. You know, they were fearing that Behind the Music nightmare that somebody else would record their song and make it a hit and become rich and famous. Like that wouldn’t be the best problem they could ever have. The problem is hopefully fading as it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there is no big money in the music biz. I hope that’s the case, that more kids are making music solely for the artistic enjoyment and banging chicks. For a while there it was really strange to be hanging out in places like the Caberet Voltaire with people more worried about this fantasy business they were masterminding for themselves rather than sharing ideas with other folks. Big problem.
Not that this is any surprise, but I read a lot in this post that flows from several recent posts. I think that the reason most of us find what’s on the radio superfluous at best and “dart in the ear”ish at worst is that we love music. There is virtually nothing on the radio that deserves that kind of attention. As John mentions, you have to search out what you love in music. There is no searching in popular, top 40, Clear Channel programmed radio. It is all prima facie. All of the “emotional content” is so blatant as to (at least in my case) negate the emotional impact it was intended to have in the first place. Let me give you an example. During the Christmas season, as I’m sure all of us Houstonians are aware, Sunny 99.1 blesses us with continuous Christmas favorites. I am notorious for generally despising Christmas music, and have to fight my wife and inlaws for control of the radio whenever we are in the car together. Well, the other day my wife and mother-in-law won, and I found myself suffering through an interminable collection of holiday schmaltz. One song in particular seems appropriate to the topic; maybe you’ve heard it. It’s some shit about Christmas Shoes. Basically, some dirt poor kid’s mom is going to die, he tries to buy her a pair of cheap shoes “so she can look beautiful if she meets Jesus tonight.” Kid doesn’t have enough money, and the previously grinchy singer, standing behind the kid in line, ponies up the needed five bucks. It’s suppossed to be a tear-jerker, but everything is shoved in your face so much, I just find the whole thin off-putting. As John says, radio is L.C.D. type music. Execs in the business can’t expect any active involvement from listeners, and most listeners don’t want to be required to put any thought into their end of the experience; thus you have songs like the one just described, which basically acts as a sonic billboard telling you in letters 30 feet tall “this is sad; you should cry.”
Ironically, one of the most interesting radio experiences I have had of late stems directly from music company attempts to create “smart programming”, which would take various data inputs from the listener, and design playlists around those inputs. I believe that the system is also designed to put listener specific ads in the mix. Anyway, one of these, Pandora, is pretty interesting. As is the Music Genome Project that feeds it. That’s what I listen to while on night shift.
I feel for you, Nick Hall. I’m at work and sunny 99.1 plays Christmas music all day and all night and in my nightmares. The thing that makes it even more sickening is the fact that the radio station refuses to acknowlege that their library of what seems to be only five or six Christmas songs is performed by a numbing multitude of different artists!! This fact, coupled with the ignorant idea of playing the Christmas songs even before Thanksgiving is the main reason why I am slowly going insane this holiday season.
Well said, Master Crane – if people don’t like the music that’s on offer, they either need to a) look to something other than the major label distribution channels, or b) make their own music. In my optimistic dreams, we’re all heading towards a world where more and more people unplug from the machines of homogeneous culture and “wake up” to the millions of cultural “micro worlds” that are already out there.
Pandora rules. I can’t recommend it enough. There is some crazy voodoo going on there. It’s the first thing that has significantly changed my music listening habits since mp3′s became available.
It’s weird, after taking almost complete control over my music programming via iTunes, iPod, etc., it actually felt very bizarre to let some 3rd party entity start choosing my music. I kept waiting for the crappiness to start, but instead I get tons of good music with a lot of old and new stuff that I have never heard before. And amazingly it is free and there are no audio ads in the music stream.
I think it is probably too good to be true, so try it out soon before it costs money, has ads, is bought by Google, or all 3.
I’ve had very little luck with pandora. get too eclectic and it falls apart i find.
ook….John, you are killing me.
“you know, children’s music”.
I finally understand how my older brother felt when I bought “Synchronicity” back when I was in 9th grade and thought I was too cool for school. All he could do was stare at me and shake his head. Of course this is the same guy who once bought a T-Rex album back in the day just to piss off his friend.
Children’s music. Leave it to you to say in two words what I’ve been trying to articulate for the last 10 years…