What Technology is Doing for the Music Industry
Let’s talk about the music industry. There are a ton of misconceptions out there about how the music industry operates, so I’ll start with a couple of easy ones.
- Popular artists come out of nowhere. This is usually not the case. Some of the most viewed songs on YouTube (No Flex Zone, Girls Love Beyonce, Etc…) are by artists who have been making music for well over 5 years. You only hear about them now because they make the choice to indulge that level of popularity.
- Everything is peaches and cream once you blow up (get very popular). Also false. It’s a common saying that money solves money problems, not personal problems, and it is more often the case that personal problems can get in the way of making the music.
I want to elaborate on the second point a little more because that is where there is interesting information. When a major record label signs an artist, they are taking a gamble, one that usually doesn’t pan out. Very often it’s tough for a musician to follow up on the popularity of a break out single (see: Macy Gray). They flop and fade into obscurity becoming the butt of jokes about fifteen minutes of fame. Record labels are painfully aware of this so they are conscious of the fact that a majority of signing artists they have will fail to generate revenue past their signing bonus. Even musicians looking for record label deals believe that once they get to the top, the hard work gets easier, so they may become lax with their work ethic only to immediately run into a slew of new problems. Record labels tend to do everything in house so bringing in an outside producer or an outside distributor is out of the question. Record labels like to keep every penny they have and reinvest in themselves (most successful businesses do) but they also stifle the very creative power they pay money for.
What has technology done to improve the situation? Quite frankly the answer is simple: A lot. Visit any sound uploading site: Archive.org, Soundcloud.com, and you can not only see, but also hear what technology has done for the music industry. Instead of having to slave away to save $15,000 to build an amateur studio to record in, producers and artists can now reliably create amazing new sounds from the comfort of their iPad. There are accessories available at the fraction of the cost of a studio session to assist in creating studio-quality sound. Music is no longer about an inner circle. Everyone has access to the tools they need to create new sounds. Apple’s iPad comes installed with GarageBand, which lets you loop, metronome, import any non DRM protected song, and add instruments. Compared to before when you’d have to organize a band, find a place to record, and rent recording equipment, it is now not uncommon for entire mixtapes to be created right in the Apple Store for little to no cost, and they don’t sound terrible. They may not be Kayne West or N.E.R.D. quality but the fact that sound creation no longer exists in a vacuum is all thanks to technology.
The record label is dying, and for good reason. Creatives understand now that they do not need to be slave to some overarching authority that decides when & how music will be distributed & created. Album leaks happen every other week, so exclusivity is a notion of the past. No longer do you have to trek to the nearest record store (unless you’re a vinyl addict (but even e-commerce stores are helping to reshape this mold)) to hear your favorite albums. All you have to do is do a search in Google and everything you could want to hear or know is right there at your fingertips. Is this good or bad? This is great for the avid listener, but bad for people who capitalize on the popularity of music. So it’s great for most of us, but bad for the capitalist vultures. Would you prefer to only have physical editions of music? Or are you happy with the change of the face of the environment? Should record labels cease to exist entirely, and should creatives take it upon themselves to self publish? These are questions only time can answer.