New technology will unplug music biz
by Thomas Keane Jr.
Wednesday,
The music
industry believes piracy by listeners - the sharing of music files - threatens
the entire system: artists, managers, producers, manufacturers, promoters, and
retailers. Others see the same threat but blame it on dramatic and probably
irreversible changes in technology.
Now the industry has put
Many suspect it will be a
fruitless effort; eventually, the recording industry as we now know it will
collapse. What then? Do harmony, rhythm, and
counterpoint disappear from our lives?
Hardly. Recorded music is so much a part of
our world that we rarely give it a second thought. Yet that system, especially
as it exists today, does little to promote the creation of quality art. Nor
does it provide musicians with a decent living.
In fact, far from making
music better, the recording industry has likely made it worse.
Recorded music has been
around for just over 100 years (the Victor Talking Machine Company created the
first wax record in 1901). Music, of course, has been around for a lot longer.
Indeed, what many think of as the greatest of all music - that of the Baroque,
Classical and Romantic periods - was created without benefit of a recording industry. And for most of the 20th
century, recording was a largely insignificant part of the business. Swing,
country, jazz, the blues, R&B, and early rock 'n' roll all flourished with
little help from the industry.
And in recent years, it has become
increasingly obvious that the recording industry often ends up stifling
creativity. That's because the business puts enormous emphasis on the
production of hits. If songwriters and musicians don't appeal to a large
cross-section of the public, then the industry ignores them, consigning them to
the junk heap. Anything out of the mainstream is hard to hear on the radio or
find in record stores, all of which pitch their wares to tightly defined
demographic groups using near-standardized formulas.
The
result? Some say
music today is the worst it's ever been.
One has to be wary of
overreaching on this argument. Music is a generational thing; today's critics
always think that yesterday's music was better. And
there are music forms - such as rap and hip-hop - that (like them or not) are
clearly breaking new ground. True, Britney Spears is embarrassingly awful, but
every generation seems to produce its share of dreck: Remember the Archies?
Still, even those who rave
about current artists such as Eminem worry that such originality is ever more rare. The inventive ferment of the jazz age, of early
rock, or of virtually every other type of American music seems to be gone. And even as new forms come along (such as Latino or grunge),
the recording industry sucks out their life, homogenizing them until they
appeal to enough CD buyers.
But what of musicians themselves? For
much of history, many of those who have made music have made little from their
art. The great thing about recording, argues the
industry, is that it turns music into an occupation from which one can live and
even prosper.
It's a good argument, except
that it's not true. Several analysts examined what happens to a typical band
signed to a record contract. The results aren't pretty. For example, says Steve
Albini, who used to produce the band Nirvana, a CD with sales of 250,000 (a
strong seller) would, after expenses, net a band less than $20,000. One could
do better working at a 7-11, he points out.
True, stars such as Michael
Jackson become fabulously rich off the business. But
they represent only a tiny fraction of the musicians who make music. In fact,
there are usually only about 125 gold records each year (that's sales of
500,000). Most musicians make money the old-fashioned way: through live
performances. If they are lucky enough to land a
record contract, the CDs and radio play give them an opportunity to reach wider
audiences and sell out bigger venues. But the sales of
recordings per se are rarely the road to wealth.
No one can predict with
certainty the future shape of the music business. But
it seems clear that CDs will disappear. More musicians will sell directly to
listeners on line, and rights to hear music will be sold using ``micropayments.''
Musicians, with easier access to listeners, may be better off.
That's the
future the industry's lawyers are fighting to avoid. ``Who's really hurt by free
downloads?'' asked singer-songwriter Janis Ian in a column for USA Today. ``The executives at major labels.'' The music industry may
die. But music should thrive.
Talk back to Tom Keane at