Music: iTunes
This piece in Salon.com by Sahar Akhtar pisses me off. Don't stand there and tell me that selling songs individually is going to precipitate a death of creativity in popular music, because creativity is dead. Akhtar doesn't name any meaningful number of artists who meet the obsurd criteria he lays out in reference to Tool's most recent album:
So Akhtar's entire proposition is that there are artists creating music today that is challenging, complex and esoteric, and music listeners wouldn't encounter that if they weren't forced to buy the entire record. There may be some truth to that. But I think, however, that the following is true far more often: artists today are creating worthless dreck that you wouldn't want to hear in a torture format, let alone an album format. This pile of crap usually includes two radio-friendly tracks that plant themselves in your brain and previously forced listeners to buy an entire damn record (which rings up at around $19 these days) for three and a half minutes of fast-fading pleasure. In Akhtar's world, the other songs are the true hidden genius. Well, maybe with Tool, but not with Train or Pink or Kelly Clarkson or Staind or Linkin Park or many of the other artists on the Billboard top 100, from all reports.
And that's the real rub of this conflict between Akhtar and myself. People have choice. They can choose to listen to other music by an artist, or they can choose not to. This same argument was made by people opposed to music sharing because they thought people were just going to download the songs they wanted, and ignore the crap that nobody wanted. The doomsayers forecasted the death of the music industry.
The response to that has ranged from the mature to the, um, less so. A more mature response says that the record companies should probably take some time to evaluate recordings and artists, and actually give listeners a full album of complex, engaging songs in the style and genre that is appropriate. The less mature answer is that the record industry only has crap (and factory-produced crap at that) to peddle, and it knows that what it needs to do is make as much money as possible from that crap. As a result, file-sharing and independent record labels have thrived while major record labels continue searching for the next Backstreet/Britney and end up dumping huge piles of garbage on American listeners, who stop buying what they can't stand. Both these arguments have a basis in historical fact.
Recent record sales data has looked dismal. Overall record sales went down last year, and record companies executives (all multimillionaires, FYI) immediately went into the street weeping with their pockets turned out, panhandling for spare change. Anyone who stopped to hear their sob story got an earful about Napster this and Audiogalaxy that. Nobody mentioned the fact that George W. Bush has wrecked the US economy, and records are a product that people don't spend money on when money's tight. Nobody mentioned that CDs are now at an astronomical price point, because so much money is spent seeking out the next untalented but easy on the eyes lone performer or terrible group. Also unmentioned is that fact that the record for sales of individual CDs broke records a half-dozen times in the last two or three years, even though overall sales were dropping, because the labels were concentrating on selling 7 million Eminem records instead of a couple hundred thousand records by a few dozen artists. In fact, nobody mentioned that A&R budgets for artists who don't sell a million copies have been slashed, contributing far more than iTunes or Napster ever could to the fact that people don't bother buying unpromoted records full of crappy songs and one single that some record exec knows will at least get put on the K-Tel-like "Now That's What I Call Music XXVII."
This mentality, wherein a record label uses a single, hook-laden song to drive an artist to the charts without working to get a whole album full of songs, and instead takes some warmed-over crap and gets the record across the 11 song-barrier and rushed to the Wal-Mart, is more responsible for the death of the record than any product Apple, Real or even Microsoft could create that allows free-minded consumers to buy one song at a time.
And the history that Akhtar cites demonstrates moreso that this isn't new. Somehow the author manages to alter history to paint the record labels as benevolent actors interested in getting the best music into the hands of America's breathless consumers. In fact, record companies are corporations, and often part of much larger corporations, and they aren't interested in making listeners happy any more than they're interested in making me a pie for dessert. They want to sell records.
If an artist has maybe three good songs in them for a lifetime, because their artistic career is based on their T and A rather than their songwriting chops or musical talent, the labels will gladly sprinkle those three songs over three CDs (often shoe-horning in a greatest hits disk between two and three) and sell three times the product. Akhtar invokes the days of the 45s to rebuke the reality that this is not a new practice:
But that is, unfortunately, utter crap. The 45 was a medium for people to buy records. And if the record label (as in the modern example I cite above) knows that an artist has four hits in them, the label certainly won't put them on both sides of two 45s so that people can enjoy the music! They will put some crap (covers or dreck) on the B-side, and save their four songs for four separate 45s, all of them selling well. Akhtar's logic is beyond flawed on this point.
So goes the rest of the argument. Record labels haven't produced good music for the masses in a long time. Artists who can command the clout (or who make good records without help from labels) are free to do what they want, but everyone else gets pumped through a machine that X-rays them for creativity and distributes their potential over as many products as possible to maximize revenue. If they didn't, their stockholders might be pissed. But because they do, they can't think that anyone who buys one song and leaves the garbage behind will feel any pity for them.
This piece in Salon.com by Sahar Akhtar pisses me off. Don't stand there and tell me that selling songs individually is going to precipitate a death of creativity in popular music, because creativity is dead. Akhtar doesn't name any meaningful number of artists who meet the obsurd criteria he lays out in reference to Tool's most recent album:
After listening to the song over and over, I turned to the other tunes on the album where, I discovered, the real integrity and uniqueness of Tool's artistry resided. In the end, my favorite song on the album, and perhaps the best by any measure, is a track I have never heard on the radio.
So Akhtar's entire proposition is that there are artists creating music today that is challenging, complex and esoteric, and music listeners wouldn't encounter that if they weren't forced to buy the entire record. There may be some truth to that. But I think, however, that the following is true far more often: artists today are creating worthless dreck that you wouldn't want to hear in a torture format, let alone an album format. This pile of crap usually includes two radio-friendly tracks that plant themselves in your brain and previously forced listeners to buy an entire damn record (which rings up at around $19 these days) for three and a half minutes of fast-fading pleasure. In Akhtar's world, the other songs are the true hidden genius. Well, maybe with Tool, but not with Train or Pink or Kelly Clarkson or Staind or Linkin Park or many of the other artists on the Billboard top 100, from all reports.
And that's the real rub of this conflict between Akhtar and myself. People have choice. They can choose to listen to other music by an artist, or they can choose not to. This same argument was made by people opposed to music sharing because they thought people were just going to download the songs they wanted, and ignore the crap that nobody wanted. The doomsayers forecasted the death of the music industry.
The response to that has ranged from the mature to the, um, less so. A more mature response says that the record companies should probably take some time to evaluate recordings and artists, and actually give listeners a full album of complex, engaging songs in the style and genre that is appropriate. The less mature answer is that the record industry only has crap (and factory-produced crap at that) to peddle, and it knows that what it needs to do is make as much money as possible from that crap. As a result, file-sharing and independent record labels have thrived while major record labels continue searching for the next Backstreet/Britney and end up dumping huge piles of garbage on American listeners, who stop buying what they can't stand. Both these arguments have a basis in historical fact.
Recent record sales data has looked dismal. Overall record sales went down last year, and record companies executives (all multimillionaires, FYI) immediately went into the street weeping with their pockets turned out, panhandling for spare change. Anyone who stopped to hear their sob story got an earful about Napster this and Audiogalaxy that. Nobody mentioned the fact that George W. Bush has wrecked the US economy, and records are a product that people don't spend money on when money's tight. Nobody mentioned that CDs are now at an astronomical price point, because so much money is spent seeking out the next untalented but easy on the eyes lone performer or terrible group. Also unmentioned is that fact that the record for sales of individual CDs broke records a half-dozen times in the last two or three years, even though overall sales were dropping, because the labels were concentrating on selling 7 million Eminem records instead of a couple hundred thousand records by a few dozen artists. In fact, nobody mentioned that A&R budgets for artists who don't sell a million copies have been slashed, contributing far more than iTunes or Napster ever could to the fact that people don't bother buying unpromoted records full of crappy songs and one single that some record exec knows will at least get put on the K-Tel-like "Now That's What I Call Music XXVII."
This mentality, wherein a record label uses a single, hook-laden song to drive an artist to the charts without working to get a whole album full of songs, and instead takes some warmed-over crap and gets the record across the 11 song-barrier and rushed to the Wal-Mart, is more responsible for the death of the record than any product Apple, Real or even Microsoft could create that allows free-minded consumers to buy one song at a time.
And the history that Akhtar cites demonstrates moreso that this isn't new. Somehow the author manages to alter history to paint the record labels as benevolent actors interested in getting the best music into the hands of America's breathless consumers. In fact, record companies are corporations, and often part of much larger corporations, and they aren't interested in making listeners happy any more than they're interested in making me a pie for dessert. They want to sell records.
If an artist has maybe three good songs in them for a lifetime, because their artistic career is based on their T and A rather than their songwriting chops or musical talent, the labels will gladly sprinkle those three songs over three CDs (often shoe-horning in a greatest hits disk between two and three) and sell three times the product. Akhtar invokes the days of the 45s to rebuke the reality that this is not a new practice:
The music biz has been here before: during the brain-dead era of the 45. In the 1950s and early '60s, the 45 was the medium of choice for popular music. The problem, at least for innovation, was that the 45 only allowed up to three minutes of recording on each side. This limitation on space sent the marginal cost of selling music soaring and forced record labels to view the B side as another vehicle for mass-appeal music, and not as a stage on which to experiment. Since there were only two pieces released at a time, B sides were targeted for radio play and for popular consumption in the same way that A sides were. Not surprisingly, most two-sided hits in the Billboards rankings are from before the use of the LP, eight-track, and cassette.
But that is, unfortunately, utter crap. The 45 was a medium for people to buy records. And if the record label (as in the modern example I cite above) knows that an artist has four hits in them, the label certainly won't put them on both sides of two 45s so that people can enjoy the music! They will put some crap (covers or dreck) on the B-side, and save their four songs for four separate 45s, all of them selling well. Akhtar's logic is beyond flawed on this point.
So goes the rest of the argument. Record labels haven't produced good music for the masses in a long time. Artists who can command the clout (or who make good records without help from labels) are free to do what they want, but everyone else gets pumped through a machine that X-rays them for creativity and distributes their potential over as many products as possible to maximize revenue. If they didn't, their stockholders might be pissed. But because they do, they can't think that anyone who buys one song and leaves the garbage behind will feel any pity for them.
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