I made a point of watching The Way The Music Died, a PBS Frontline documentary that aired last night.
They made a big deal about the perfect storm that is killing the quality of new music. I was intrigued by their analysis of the big six occurrences that created this perfect storm and I agree with them. Below are the big six and a word or two about each one.
- The "Corporatization" of the Music Industry - It's all about pushing units! More than ever, record companies are run like big conglomerates and they don't care what you sound like or the integrity of the music so long as it sells. They want your latest disc by a certain date and they need it to sell x copies in x weeks. You can't treat art this way, can you?
- The MTV Effect - Getting played on MTV means exposure and exposure creates a hit record. Unfortunately, MTV requires a nice 3 minute video that looks good. Music is for the ears but now we have a bigger emphasis on the visual. This produces more good looking musicians who can't actually sing. Not good.
- The Wal-Mart Effect - This one pisses me off. Wal-Mart and other big chains like it account for 50% of music sales in the United States. On the flip-side, the selling of music accounts for about 1% of Wal-Mart's business. What really ruins the art of music is that Wal-Mart is all about family values and they're very careful about what they'll sell in their stores so a musician must choose safe cover art and reduce the expletives if they want to be carried by Wal-Mart. If you're not carried by Wal-Mart, it's unlikely your album will be a hit. Sad but true.
- The Invention of the CD - The introduction of the CD caused the sale of music to boom. This was good for record companies, but extremely deceiving. People were buying older albums on CD that they had previous purchased on vinyl and cassette and this bubble had to burst sometime. The CD masked serious problems for the music industry.
- Internet Piracy - I've written a great deal about this one. When Napster came into prominence, everyone and their mother started downloading their favourite tunes. It was easy and it was free. Of course, the record companies did themselves no favour by overpricing CDs and releasing albums which only contained one or two decent songs. The rest were shite. Who wouldn't download that one single you wanted without having to part with a twenty?
- Radio Consolidation - Back in the day, some crazy DJ in Philadelphia might start spinning a song others thought was a little too different for mass appeal. This song might start creating a buzz and requests for this tune might start piling in. Next thing you know, other stations start playing this tune and suddenly a new sound has become popular....an unlikely hit is born. Today, Clear Channel and other giant media companies control what is played in every market and there's no chance for a crazy DJ to play something different. Everything is driven by ratings and playing it safe. The opportunities for an unestablished band to succeed are extremely limited. Too few companies control too much media resulting in too much standardization and sanitation.
It was a very interesting show. There were many interviews with members of Velvet Revolver and David Crosby. If they ever re-run it, try and catch it. It's a sad world for music right now. It's a damn shame.
