Shall we Shovel the Last bit of Dirt into the Traditional Music Industry’s Grave?
January 19, 2008
It gives me no pleasure to see an industry that was borne by immense talent take its last gasps, and know that once again, I was right. Today I read Wayne Rosso’s CNET article Recording Industry should brace for more bad news. He’s right too.
Paul McCartney, The Eagles, Robbie Williams, Madonna, Prince, Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Saul Williams, they’ve all done it, walked away from the big labels, and sent shockwaves through the industry. It looks like Coldplay are about to do the same and join the ranks of fierce independents like Korn.
EMI, who are slashing between 1000 and 2000 jobs in the UK, are creaking at the seams and Terra Firma must be feeling pretty bad right about now. EMI had begun its collapse far, far earlier. I knew it would collapse in 1991, when I was in the offices of one of their European subsidiaries. I was listening to their executives tell me what they didn’t know and speaking of their utter incompetence. I began my research into every other aspect of the art & entertainment industry in that year based on EMI’s corporate mentality and lack of marketing knowledge.
It is no surprise to me whatsoever that the company and industry are collapsing. There is still a ways to fall and this will not be limited to EMI alone. Boycott-RIAA are not gloating as one might expect—rather they are lauding Guy Hands as he works desperately and openly to save the Masters Voice as it stops barking and starts to yelp like a dying puppy. I can appreciate someone who wants to clean up something corrupt.
It is hard to think of all those people being out of work. All that knowledge, skill and experience, where it’s not corrupt, going to waste.
The rise of the independent creative artist is going to occur, but it’s going to get tough before it gets easy because most have got a lot to learn about marketing and promotion and law and the market is in pretty sick shape.
The sharks are going to have a feast, and it’s going to be on artistic innocence and ignorance once more for the next few years. So expect some more heartbreak before this debacle finally sorts itself out and some sanity returns. Of course the uncertainty is going to drive emerging talent if not back into the shadows where dreams live with nightmares, then into lifelong obscurity once more. They should be seizing the opportunity, because it is their day that is arriving now.
Schmoo, over at boycott-RIAA.com got it right:
Insiders know for that in excess of a decade, there have been no royalties. Only huge advances. A manager of superstar acts told me that he tells every artist to fire him if they ever get a royalty check, that if the company sends them more money, he’s not doing his job well…
And this:
“Money has ruled this business for so long that its infrastructure, its basic principles, have rotted away.”
But it’s not just that money ruled and still rules the art & entertainment business, it’s that money rules all of this civilization, and hence its current global woes and the precarious position of the human race. It’s the love of money that kills principles important for civilization to survive.
But money doesn’t rule Allforart, what rules Allforart are principles that made the industry of value to society, traditional values and principles that are at the heart of any artist who truly is an artist, though the industry is so far gone as a whole that even artist required re-definition.
What’s happening in the music industry is symptomatic of what is happening in the world, and how the music industry and other Creative Artists resolve this problem will in no small way shape the way the world is going for the next 20 - 30 years and perhaps longer. I think: longer. And providing they get it right, and do pull it together in a good way then I would like to see it be longer.
I hope Guy Hands can clean up EMI and put it back in shape, but he better make sure he groks creative people, who are not how most business people think. I sincerely doubt that anyone who is not a creative individual has the ability to sort out an industry that is driving away the geese who lay the golden eggs.
Only a Creative Artist could succeed in reforming an industry that creative individuals no longer trust. It is businessmen that artists no longer trust and with many good reasons and a ton of evidence to back up such conclusions.
If you don’t get the philosophy right, you’ve got nothing, and no amount of money will fix that - it is in fact, the money that is the problem and the attitudes that come along with it. And those are business attitudes that don’t work in the creative industry.
The way the movie industry is treating writers in the Hollywood Writers’ Strike, it’s going to be the same there as well if the corps(e) doesn’t wake up and realize that that’s a coffin and those are roses fading on the lid above it.
There are attitudes and philosophies that do work, and make fiscal sense but the mindset you need to have is not one that is easily understood by people who haven’t lived it.
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