It may be, whatever that means, but it’s not relevant. You can make a better fruit salad than the one you get in a tin. You can make a better breakfast than McDonalds. You can grow better vegetables than you find in a supermarket. Sales charts are market rankings, not quality charts. Music charts are a snapshot of the mainstream music mass market. You don’t earn a place in the charts by being better than everyone else, you simply have to sell more breakfast cereal in the same week. Is that what you’re best at? If you make cornflakes, what makes you think the world needs yours too? It doesn’t. Are you lucky, adaptable and very well-connected?
Again, maybe so but not relevant (especially now TOTP is gone). How many acts like yours do you see in the charts? None? It’s not because you’re special—it’s because you don’t belong there. How many musicians like you do you see in the charts? None? That’s because niche acts are not global mass media acts. The mass audience is not like 200 fans in a small club, or a fan seeking rare classics in a small record shop. The mass market is made up of many people with different tastes and it demands only the lowest common denominator. Folk, jazz and classical musicians are always better writers, players and singers than the stars on telly, but they aren’t doing the same job. And even if you are the lowest common denominator, what makes you think the world needs your act? It doesn’t. Have you got good hair?
The Sixties won’t happen again—circumstances were unique.
The consumer market had been suppressed during World War Two. Post-war industrial production skills, technology and resources became available to domestic markets. Conscription and rationing ended. Teenagers suddenly had spare time and disposable income, and cinema, fashion, and music helped them spend it. The recording industry made two key innovations, vinyl LPs and singles. Consumer electronics became more widely available and civilian broadcasting restarted. Broad genres flourished because solo listening was rare in a world where household music receivers and players were few. Family listening was the norm. Parents brought up their children in a musical environment based on pre-war music culture—many families had good piano players (and pianos). The new mainstream mass entertainment was immature and open to innovative entrepreneurs. Instruments, media, venues, and duplication technology were all developing rapidly. Skilled musicians and writers from smaller genres (jazz, folk, blues, etc.) moved into popular music providing expertise and and a rich repertoire of diverse ideas. Other arts (theatre, film, fashion, TV, hairdressing, photography, etc.) boomed feeding a creative club culture in “swinging” cities.
Once mainstream pop was established, transistor radios, independent labels and pirate radio (frequently snubbed by establishment labels) fed a young underground pop culture. The mass music market was growing (and has grown ever since) but it was still compact enough to produce genuine popular hits. Each subsequent decade, with built-in growth, less reason to be great, diverging music markets and new mass entertainment options has inevitably been poorer musically.
Most people who work in music as writers or performers don’t have a record deal. People outside the industry often confuse music with records, and records with celebrity. The record industry isn’t even the richest part of the music business (film and TV are much bigger). If you’re fixated with the idea that a record deal is the best way into music you’re mistaking popular mythology for career research and mistaking fame with success. Many ringtone, advertising and soap theme composers earn more than major label household names. Chart celebrity burns an enormous amount of money, often all the money it earns. Many less well-known self-employed and freelance writers are better off. The music industry isn’t even the top career choice for writers. J K Rowling has sold 13 million books in the UK (nobody sells that many records), her films have grossed nearly $3 billion and she’s worth over £500,000,000. Nobody in music has earned that much in the same period of time.
Well, that’s what the record industry thinks. That’s what the big labels who manufacture entertainment products think. That’s what every kid who only wants to get signed by a record label thinks. That’s what every couch potato with just a CD player and a TV thinks. But music isn’t records. Recorded music didn’t rule the entertainment industry until the 1970s. In that decade touring was heavily subsidised by income from records and big labels called the shots. By the 1990s it was all over but the popular view of the record business hasn’t caught up. Expresso Bongo and A Star Is Born are history. Today the erstwhile giants of recorded music are traded by venture capitalists and struggle to survive.
Music happens before, after and without records. Without the music business and the record industry there would still be music. You can play songs without making records. Recording is just a tool. Recording is optional. Music isn’t. Records cost money but music is free. Amateur musicians don’t “just do it as a hobby” they just do it. Music doesn’t need a reason, or an excuse for being uncommercial. It’s something we do because we want to. Sometimes we record it, most often we don’t.
Record labels at opposite ends of the spectrum are not even in the same business. The smaller labels are in the music business and the bigger labels are in the lifestyle accessory business. Their ethics and goals are different. Smaller labels are artist-driven, larger labels are market-driven.
There are evil priests, doctors and teachers, and of course, managers. But it takes two for one to let the other one get away with it. Show me an artist who got ripped off and I’ll show you an artist who left business to their manager, usually so they could “concentrate on their music”. Bless. The artist and manager are necessarily joined at the wallet, they must also be joined at the brain, and if possible the heart.
You’ll learn. It will be an expensive lesson.
Ultimately good music will sell itself. But you still need to get it heard and get it into the shops. It doesn’t do that for itself.
It doesn’t. The web is just a big cheap public network. There are thousands of unread bloggers, unheard podcasts, and unvisited sites. There are millions of unplayed MP3s. The rules are still the same: be fantastic, get heard, make excellent contacts. Be persistent and don’t expect stardom. There’s no reason any musician or entertainer should be rich. The web won’t eliminate big business or the mass market but multi-media technology has made audio-only products a cheap commodity.
It won’t. There will be more access and space for indie and DIY artists but one way or another the corporate dinosaurs are here to stay. Big vested interests are very good at staying as big as possible and fully vested. Note that the new download chart just happened to arrive after iTunes provided enough major label sales (there had been indie downloads online for a decade without an “official download chart”). Next, watch as P2P is rehabilitated when major label music services start to use it. Corporate money will always hog access to the market. Traditional broadcasting reflects the influence of the big labels rather than the demands of the market or the breadth of available content. The web offers independent spirits a diverse world but the mass market will always want its entertainment on a plate.