Difficult Music

Today’s music-industry vets are mad as hell, and they’re not taking it anymore… Besides, I like reading a good rant.

SIGNING YOUR LIFE AWAY
Ooh, the music industry is a dank, seedy place populated by sharks, snakes, and the odd weasel. For every chart-topping act, there are a thousand careers that never get off the ground. The delete bins are filled with broken dreams, squandered talent, bad advice, and debt. The allure of becoming a “major label” recording artist is too powerful to resist for most performers. Thankfully, there are other options nowadays, options that the Internet has opened up.

The Majors Get a Good Shellacking
First, here’s The Problem With Music, an excerpt from an article by Steve Albini. Albini is probably most noted for his recording and engineering skills—I don’t think he likes the term “producer”—and his work with Nirvana (In Utero), PJ Harvey (Rid of Me), and The Pixies (Surfer Rosa). He’s always railed against the accepted practices of the music industry. For example, instead of taking “points” on an album he works on (in effect taking a cut of the eventual sales), he prefers to be paid up front for his work. This article points out the economic realities inherent in a typical major label record contract. Watch out! In the end, says Albini, most bands would have been better off keeping their day jobs at the 7-Eleven.

Courtney Does the Math
Courtney Love isn’t shy about letting her feelings known. She’s used the net many a time to issue diatribes of one sort or another. When Napster exploded and Metallica (or, more specifically, main mouthpiece Lars Ulrich) hired some lawyers to recoup their losses*, Love weighed in with her take on the situation. But, hey, look at this: at the end of her little economic analysis, she says, “the band may as well be working at 7-Eleven.” Given that Albini’s rant dates back to 1994 (when Napster’s creators were probably still in, uh, nappies), can we say that Love has indulged in a little piracy of her own?

Love’s most valid point is that major labels aren’t doing their job. They control the distribution of music—or they desperately want to control its distribution—but they’re doing a half-assed job. They aren’t helping artists find audiences. Says Love, “The present system keeps artists from finding an audience because it has too many artificial scarcities: limited radio promotion, limited bin space in stores and a limited number of spots on the record company roster. The digital world has no scarcities. There are countless ways to reach an audience. Radio is no longer the only place to hear a new song. And tiny mall record stores aren't the only place to buy a new CD.”

* I think Metallica owes far more to the fans who, under the impression that they were going to hear some heavy metal, bought Load and Reload.

Some Much-Needed Discipline
Indeed, record stores aren’t the only place to buy CDs, and artists can find their audiences without the help of major labels. Case in point, Discipline Global Mobile, the record-label arm of Robert Fripp, King Crimson, and related musicians. Read DGM’s mission statement and get a sense of the alternatives that exist for musicians in the 21st century. Briefly, DGM's aim is "to be a model of ethical business in an industry founded on exploitation, oiled by deceit, riven with theft and fuelled by greed." Hurrah! I have a lot of respect for this approach, and I also like that DGM isn’t some hermetically sealed virtual society. They make an effort to reach out to the real world, getting their releases into stores and getting their artists out on tour. Whether a business can, "operate in the marketplace, while being free of the values of the marketplace" (as DGM intends to) in perpetuity, I hope they can prosper for a long time.