AWmusic

Photo courtesy of BoingBoing.net

Last week I wrote an opinion piece on how I thought Ellen Degeneres was a poor choice as judge on American Idol and how I thought Idol and shows like it were detrimental to the music industry. Cas, one of my fellow writers on this blog, to offer an alternative view wrote an articulate article which you can read here. Now I don’t want to get into a pissing match or to beat a dead horse (and I apologize to Allan if this is in any way hijacking his blog and also that it is so long ed. note: I don’t mind ) but there are a few things I feel need cleared up and some points that need further discussion.

In the spirit of getting to know each other let me just give you a little background information. I had worked in the music industry doing various jobs until 1985. I also worked for CHUMLtd both radio and TV part-time as well as CFUN in Vancouver and I was an active member of the Indie music scene through much of the ’80s. In 2006, I went back to school to study Entertainment Business Management at Metalworks Institute in Mississauga. Metalworks is one of Canada’s premier recording studios and was founded by Gil Moore of the rock band Triumph. It was expanded to include an audio/business school a few years ago. The teachers in the school are all active members of the Canadian Music Industry so I learned about broadcasting from Alan Cross, former programme director for 102.1 The Edge and host of Explore Music on aux.tv, an internet music website; entertainment business from Brian Allen, VP of A&R and music publishing of the defunct Attic Records and currently a music producer and writer; artist management from Vee Popat, Manager of National Promotions for True North Records. Collectively the teachers at Metalworks have worked with just about every major mainstream and indie artist over the past 20-30 yrs. so I have a passing knowledge of the industry, broadcasting, and music history.

There are a lot of different views on the role Idol plays in influencing the music industry and smarter people than I have written better articles both for and against however I think that shows like American Idol or America’s Got Talent are discouraging the natural evolution of music. Trends do come and go but the difference now is that the industry is using Idol as a cheap method of getting market research because they have gutted their own A&R departments and do very little in the way of artist development themselves. When almost a half a million voters are saying that they like this artist over that, the industry will jump all over it like white on rice. When someone like Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson or Jennifer Hudson or Daughtry make it big, the record companies capitalize on it and flood the airwaves with like sounding bands in the hopes that fans will buy it because it sounds like something they heard on TV. I have no beef with record companies making money and I have no beef with people who like Idol or the current mainstream artists. What I don’t like is them making money by discouraging diversity in music. By subscribing to the notion that if a little is good then a lot must be better they have homogenized our airwaves and made music into cheap, disposable entertainment.

In some ways this is much, much different from any other decade. The 60s’ did have their singles-driven market just as today but the difference was that if you bought a record, and I can’t remember what they cost – 50 cents?, you kept it because it cost a lot of money for the times. People didn’t have the option of deleting it if they didn’t like it so they either gave the record to a friend or kept it. Now with p2p file-sharing and the many torrent sites music isn’t as much of an investment anymore. With the sheer volume of free music available, why spend the time looking, and then sampling, for something new and different when there is something more easily available at your fingertips? This leaves Indie bands, who don’t have the funds to promote themselves, at a disadvantage. And this is why they turn to blogs for help. I doubt very much that the music labels think that there is little chance their music will be heard if it is on a blog or they wouldn’t waste their time and money sending free CD’s to them. Certainly, most blogs don’t have the volume of hits that Pitchfork may get but the fact is they get enough to make it worth a band’s, or record company’s, while. The Hype Machine, which is a blog aggregator, did an informal survey asking readers how they discovered new music and out of the over 1,000 responses they received, 89% said through online editorials. Now, for sure, that is to be expected when the ones doing the survey are also the ones promoting blogs but it’s still an interesting survey.

Cas wonders “how many people are watching that show because they have an earnest personal investment in one of those contestants having a successful career.” If you take even a quick look through any of the hundreds of fan forums, such as Television Without Pity (TWP) or any of the fan run Idol forums or any forum of any popular or even barely known musician, you will find people who certainly do feel invested in the artists career. When Modest Mouse made the leap from indie darlings to mainstream hit makers, long time fans were cruel and unrelenting in their disgust at the bands success. They felt betrayed after their loyal support of the band when it was slogging it out on the bar scene. When the Rock Star shows were on (Rock Star: INXS and Rock Star: Super Nova), people were so invested in the outcome that at some shows Marty Casey fans (the runner up to JD Fortune in Rock Star: INXS) stayed for the opener (which was Casey), booed when Fortune took the stage and then left. You can say that they are a small portion of the music fans out there but the thing is that the people who have watched Idol from the beginning and voted for their favourite contestants over the years, do feel that they have a stake in that artists career. And there are millions of them, between 28 and 30 million for the past season, that would boil down to roughly over 2 million viewers per week. Not all vote it’s true but even if only a quarter of them vote that’s still a whopping 500,000 (give or take) people who would potentially buy the albums, buy the tickets, buy the t-shirts and whatever else is out there. So you can bet the record industry is watching!

I took a brief look at the forums on the Idol website to see what they were saying about the announcement that Ellen DeGeneres was going to be a judge. The thing that I noticed was that the overwhelming majority of dissenters stated the reason they disagreed was because she had no musical qualifications. So the expectation seems to be that a judge on a talent show that is about music should have some kind of musical knowledge above what the average viewer has. Simon Cowell, whether you like him or not, does, in fact, know what he is talking about. He has run and continues to run a successful music label and whether or not you like the acts, he has a proven track record of making the hits. I suspect that because it is his money being invested that his opinion does carry more weight but that does not mean he is less credible as a judge. It would mean the opposite, I would think, because he has a higher stake in the outcome. And the fact that he got his start through his Dad’s contacts shouldn’t negate his credibility because he still had to prove himself in the industry.

You say, Cas, that I don’t get it, that we don’t need radio and yet a recent poll in the U.S. showed that almost half the people aged 18-24 listen to internet radio. Bands still, crazily it would appear, try to get radio air play. Band managers implore fans to call their favourite radio stations and ask them to play their favourite songs. Publicists and radio promoters still work their butts off trying to get that elusive #1. And terrestrial radio, although not as popular as internet or satellite, is holding it’s own with about 73% of listeners saying that they tune in the same or more than they did five years ago. And with the iPhone offering a radio station application that will allow the listener access to around 60,000 stations, I’m guessing that the business community is still looking at radio as a viable method of ad revenue and potential sales. According to this article, it seems that a study conducted by Decima Research in 2005 showed that almost 50% of respondents found new music via the radio. Sure this research is out-of-date but I suspect that with the increase in the listenership of internet radio and with terrestrial radio still holding its own, those figures still hold. The article does go on to say that the act of listening to the radio isn’t to discover new music but undoubtedly people do.

Having lived through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, I would never think to romanticize them but to think that the playing field is somehow level now because bands have increased access to the public could be a specious argument at best, I think. The playing field has never been level and never will be as long as the record companies keep turning their backs on diversity and playing it safe. To my mind it is not elitist to demand better from the industry than what they are currently trying to sell. It is like buying a washing machine that doesn’t work. You would demand that the manufacturer fix it, you would not accept sub-standard work nor should you accept sub-standard music. When music all starts to sound the same, when diversity is being discouraged and when the superficial takes precedence over the substantial then there is a problem. And it seems I’m not the only one to think so as this quote from Industry Canada in a larger article on the impact of music downloads and file-sharing on purchasing habits, would indicate:

“…our results for the entire Canadian population who perceived an increase in music quality over the last year prior to the survey reported higher purchases of electronic music from pay-sites and, equally, P2P file-sharing individuals who reported a perceived drop in the quality of music, purchased fewer paid electronically-delivered music tracks.”

The article goes on to say in it’s findings that there didn’t seem to be a correlation between p2p file-sharing, digital downloading and a decrease in CD sales, in fact, they found the opposite, so although on the surface this looks good for Indie music, all things being equal and new music being discovered through file-sharing etc., it doesn’t explain why the top sellers on Billboard’s hot 100 charts are almost consistently mainstream artists who get a lot of hype and radio play and with the top 5 performers from Idol selling in excess of 35 million units it’s not hard to see how it has affected the industry. And you are right in saying that we, the consumers of music, have all the power as Rich Bengloff, president of the American Association of Independent Music, concedes:

“To survive, music labels must get revenue from multiple sources, with the consumers deciding which of these sources they want to use to access music…”

So if all this is so, why do Idol winners, and by extension mainstream music, still consistently do better than Indie bands? Are they more deserving because they are popular and make millions of dollars for the record companies? Are they somehow more talented? Is it just because the Indie market is flooded by everyone and anyone who wants to make a record? If Idol has no influence then how on earth did William Hung sell so many records? When talk shows (like Ellen) TV entertainment shows (like ET & ETCanada), popular TV shows, newspapers, magazines, radio, stores, and anything else you can think of play, write about, talk about, show, or hype mainstream artists because they are the ones that sell, it makes it difficult for anything new to be heard. It’s not a level playing field, not for anyone. You say, Cas, in your last paragraph that we have the ability to change the direction of music. We have always had that ability and in the past our choices did change music. But that is the difference between now and then – we had choices, the industry listened to us and it took risks. Now, when “idols” are served up so easily on TV, and few are taking risks, I think we all lose.

R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe
Digital Primate – On Da Radio
Modest Mouse – Bankrupt On Selling