I'd say there's already a significant movement in the American indie scene to incorporate jazz into their styles. If this form of American indie continues to grow in popularity, it may turn current rock into a full-blown art form, along the lines of Jazz.
Interesting. Now that you bring it up, I have an acquaintance here in Portland who is a jazz singer, and independently releases her own CDs. She sings and emotes in a classic jazz, neo-40s style... yet infuses her music with some modern pop and even world-beat influences from her travels abroad, along with socially-conscious themes (such as the effect of melting Arctic ice on polar bears).Originally Posted by Silifi
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
And? Just because it was "done" doesn't mean it can't return in a drastically different fashion. Besides that, King Crimson and Steely Dan were 2T artists, and we're now heading to the opposite side of the saeculum.
Rock is still the only genre in popular music that has the potential to become high-brow art, and why wouldn't it? It's loosely defined, unlike hip-hop, to the point that any music that uses a guitar can be called "rock."
Furthermore, just because it was tried before and faded doesn't mean it's gone. Up and coming millenial artists that I've met are almost exclusively interested in classic rock, making a return of progressive rock very likely. A blend with Jazz would likely arise, as the market is clearly ready for it, with Jazz sales having gone up recently: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=3186
Romantic replaced Classical as the leading form of art music, and Ragtime/Jazz replaced folk music as the leading form of popular music, during the transition between the Civil Saeculum and the Great Power Saeculum.
Jazz replaced Romantic as the leading form of art music, and Rock replaced Jazz as the leading form of popular music, during the transition between the Great Power Saeculum and the Millenial Saeculum.
Clearly, what happens during a 4T is the merging of popular music with the older art music to create a new genre of art music. In the subsequent 1T a new popular music paradigm is formed, which continues to branch out until a 3T, at which point it converges and merges with art music to create the next saeculum's art music.
What different fashion? Not only has the pool of ideas been drained, no one wants experimentation now. People want Jack Johnson, John Mayer, new heavy metal outfits, fake punk rockers, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. etc. It took the Beatles, an extremely successful and influential not half-bad pop band with a flair for successfully incorporating new styles in their music to usher in a new era. Is there a new Beatles on the horizon?
Not in rock music. It's too late in the game.
No one wants "art" anymore. How well did Zaireeka sell? You can't just retreat to old ideas. Sequels suck. Unless they're better.Rock is still the only genre in popular music that has the potential to become high-brow art, and why wouldn't it? It's loosely defined, unlike hip-hop, to the point that any music that uses a guitar can be called "rock."
LOL. Who today wants to sit through 12 minute songs? Punk effectively killed "intelligence" in rock. It's not coming back, and this is a good thing too. Anyone who tried something would be labeled as pretentious.Furthermore, just because it was tried before and faded doesn't mean it's gone. Up and coming millenial artists that I've met are almost exclusively interested in classic rock, making a return of progressive rock very likely. A blend with Jazz would likely arise, as the market is clearly ready for it, with Jazz sales having gone up recently: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=3186
Huh? The first successful Art (for stiffs) Rock (for the public) album wasn't created until the mid 60s.Clearly, what happens during a 4T is the merging of popular music with the older art music to create a new genre of art music. In the subsequent 1T a new popular music paradigm is formed, which continues to branch out until a 3T, at which point it converges and merges with art music to create the next saeculum's art music.
Last edited by Matt1989; 10-14-2007 at 07:15 PM.
You could have said the same for Jazz or Ragtime during the 1920s and 1930s. But new artists emerged in the late 1930s that completely revolutionized Jazz and turned it into an artform, mostly GIs.What different fashion? Not only has the pool of ideas been drained, no one wants experimentation now. People want Jack Johnson, John Mayer, new heavy metal outfits, fake punk rockers, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. etc. It took the Beatles, an extremely successful and influential not half-bad pop band with a flair for successfully incorporating new styles in their music to usher in a new era. Is there a new Beatles on the horizon?
Not in rock music. It's too late in the game.
Why do you think that history won't do the same thing, like it did in the 1940s and the 1860s?
You're basing this off an album that was released at the height of a 3T?No one wants "art" anymore. How well did Zaireeka sell? You can't just retreat to old ideas. Sequels suck. Unless they're better.
People will move more towards art during 4Ts, as we saw in the previous 4T when Jazz was elevated to more than just popular music, but a true artform.
Maybe start looking at current album sales, which are showing a rise in sales of Jazz music at a time when everything else is declining, rather than looking an albums from over ten years ago to get an idea of where we are right now.
Plenty of people do. Artists within the millenial generation have grown to reject simplicity, that's why classic rock is so popular amongst millenials.LOL. Who today wants to sit through 12 minute songs? Punk effectively killed "intelligence" in rock. It's not coming back, and this is a good thing too. Anyone who tried something would be labeled as pretentious.
What the hell are you talking about?Huh? The first successful Art (for stiffs) Rock (for the public) album wasn't created until the mid 60s.
Jazz started in the 1910s, during a 3T. If you want to trace it back to it's origins, ignoring terminology, it goes back to minstrel music that began in the Reconstruction Era.
Jazz started off being completely pop, it had little artistic substance. They were doing showtunes until the late 1930s, when GI artists began to advance Jazz to become musician's music, with bebop jazz.
That was the point at which Jazz became a truly respected artform, where you could start seeing it studied in respectable universities. Rock is not at that point, but it will be, because it is such a diverse genre.
Not with rock! I expect lightweight music to take people's mind off the troubles.
The best 'classical' music of our day is being written for the movies.
Just my personal opinion. (bops off to listen to John Williams)
How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
Bebop wasn't lightweight music, but it was what elevated jazz into a full-blown artistic style. It was in reaction to swing.
If we take Hip-Hop as a derivative of rock (which it is, as it is a derivative of funk, which branched off from early rock) then we can easily see the more laid-back G-Funk style becoming the equivalent to swing, while new prog rock bands become the equivalent to bebop. And, just like bebop was a reaction to swing, the up and coming rock kids who praise Zeppelin and Floyd are declaring themselves in opposition to modern hip-hop.
And video games.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I like the idea of loose definition, but I'll take exception to one point. Guitar isn't a requirement either, as shown by the band Chase. If you can find any of their stuff, especially the first album, it's well worth having.
And FWIW, the first true melding of pop, rock and jazz was probably Blood Sweat and Tears, though several groups took a run at it even earlier. While later than BS&T, the first serious attempt originiating on the jazz side would have to be Miles Davis' Bitches Brew from 1969.
Last edited by Marx & Lennon; 10-14-2007 at 10:46 PM.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Dancing Mad is awesome!
"The urge to dream, and the will to enable it is fundamental to being human and have coincided with what it is to be American." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
intp '82er
Amy Winehouse (who's actually British) is a current artist who's incorporating jazz into her music. I think she's a phenomenal talent. If only she could keep her personal life together.
Hmmm... dunno. I've listened to Winehouse, and to me she sounds much more neo-soul/Motown than neo-jazz.Amy Winehouse (who's actually British) is a current artist who's incorporating jazz into her music. I think she's a phenomenal talent. If only she could keep her personal life together.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
It always reminded me of Bach.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I don't understand where the correlation that art has to be complicated comes from, for there is plenty of art music that tend to be rather plain or simple in their construction. Of course, it depends on your timing of things.
In the 20th century of classical music simplicity tends to heighten in the 1st and 3rd turnings while complexity reigns in the 2nd and 4th turnings. The beginnings of the strict yet simple Atonal movement from a 3rd turning that transforms into the Serialism of the 4th turning onwards which saw the rise of Neo-classical Modernism that carried into the 1st turning. Cageian experimental music and its associates went into full bloom during the 2nd turning which later engendered Minimalism to come into force during the 3rd turning, only to be further complicated into Post-Minimalism.
As for popular music, that is something I'm not too keen on, and tend to listen to based on a "which one sounds good to me" basis. In fact, I'm more a fan of the pop sound of the 1960s. I also am one of the few Millennials who find nothing interesting about classic rock, which makes for much difficulty connecting to others my age in music appreciation.
Right-Wing liberal, slow progressive, and other contradictions straddling both the past and future, but out of touch with the present . . .
"We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know." - Donald Rumsfeld
The Beatles exemplified a clever synthesis of several different folk traditions with allusions at the least to psychedelic "mind expansion". Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is quite sophisticated. A performer such as Elton John could evoke Wagnerian solemnity in introductions (of course the pure rock that it led to was anticlimax). Need I remind you of the rock operas Tommy, Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar?
That of course was early in the age of Rock, when rock performers tried to impress upon others the seriousness and sophistication of their efforts.
To the contrary, at least as the 3T frenzy undergoes its inevitable trainwreck. A 4T forces patience upon people in almost every aspect of life -- which implies culture as well as economics. People become more tolerant of extended productions but insist that they have substance or spectacle. So it was in the 1930s -- the heyday of the movies -- and so it will likely be in the 2010s.No one wants "art" anymore. How well did Zaireeka sell? You can't just retreat to old ideas. Sequels suck. Unless they're better.
Art museums, especially exhibitions of special programs, have never done so well.
Punk was junk. Its core audience has outgrown it. So it is with empty fads. It might return only as parody of bad 3T tendencies to be pilloried in a 4T. Synthesis on a large scale does well in the community-oriented, something-for-everyone culture of a 4T.LOL. Who today wants to sit through 12 minute songs? Punk effectively killed "intelligence" in rock. It's not coming back, and this is a good thing too. Anyone who tried something would be labeled as pretentious.
Country music is doing far better than rock these days. Having the power of expression that commercialized rockers have abandoned, it may prevail.Huh? The first successful Art (for stiffs) Rock (for the public) album wasn't created until the mid 60s.
Ifyou want to see old music videos, you might wanna look at this Youtube user: Luiscmck70xI, Luiscmck80x1, LuiscmckII, Luiscmck80x3, Luiscmck90ss. Type those in the search bar. He's a '70 cohort Xer. The videos go from c.1965, (Turn, Turn, Turn) to 2000, (Waiting for Tonight).
You win.
Enjoy it.
Of course the Great Depression/World War II Crisis was very different from the Civil War Crisis (even if FDR and other Missionary leaders made as many references to Abraham Lincoln as possible); both were very dissimilar from the Revolutionary War Crisis; those three were different from King Phillip's War and Bacon's Rebellion; those four were all very different from the Armada Crisis. The next 4T has one feature that might mute some of the responses: terror weapons that can bring the devastation characteristic of the end of World War II at the beginning of hostilities. The opposing sides will be very different; I can't imagine Germany, Italy, or Japan as the main enemies of America.
Some patterns are likely to recur -- culture is likely to become more family-friendly even if it becomes more intelligent. Mass audiences will again become the norm, which implies that producers of culture will have to avoid offending the sensibilities of Grandpa and Grandma. If there is to be a gangland depicted, then the "Rocky Sullivan" (James Cagney, Angels with Dirty Faces) gangster will meet a gruesome end that most people think that he deserves. The F-bomb so common in R-rated movies in recent years will be sanitized. Music that Uncle Stanley and Aunt Rosita can't grasp will be very private.
I'm not surprised. I hardly claim omniscience!However, you've made two points that I disagree with.
I concede its power. I also concede the power of hurricanes and earthquakes. I am not surprised that some performers have graduated from punk into music that is either partly derivative from it or a complete rejection of it. I also recognize that the mass culture that eventually prevails begins with small audiences of devotees capable of appreciating a daring experiment.Value judgments about quality aside, punk was one of the tsunamis completely reconfigured the artistic landscape, well beyond music. Most of the major artistic movements of the last quarter of the 20th century (and so far, the first years of the 21st) were influenced by the DIY ethic of punk. For example, many of the arts collectives in the big cities grew directly (and organically) from punk and post-punk performance spaces, and the two are still very closely linked. The rise of independent filmmaking at the tail end of the 20th century was linked closely to the punk/post-punk scene, and some of the movement's patron saints are still connected to it.
I think that such non-American media as manga and telenovelas are likely to influence American culture circa 2015, if not earlier. But cultural patterns are still in flux, one reason for me suggesting that we are still in a 3T.
Whether you're talking stagehands with Misfits tattoos, young fashion designers who listen to Alien Sex Fiend, or avant-garde painters who listen to the Young Werewolves, or whatever, the truth is that wherever art is actually happening the local punk scene thrives -- Even if punk no longer looks exactly as it did in the old days. These days, punk is the avant-garde sound of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the harsh electronic sound of breakcore, the retro party bands out of Detroit and Toronto, and white middle-class rap... er... um... I mean electro-clash and British hip-hop.
I admit; I was never in on the Punk scene. After all, it is quite un-Boom! But I must say this of any "retro" styles: they seem to vanish abruptly in a 4T. People will see enough allusions to the past -- even the ancient past (like the Civil War and the American Revolution) that they won't want any more of it (like fausses antiques) in their lives. I don't expect any return of minstrel shows, for example.
Memphis and Austin are, so far, cultural pacesetters out of proportion to their size, as are Seattle, Detroit, and Minneapolis.This is even true of cities like Memphis and Austin, which brings us quite naturally to the next point...
Interesting -- but it could be the quality of music offered... although technology plays a role. The record industry has been screaming bloody murder about falling sales of recorded music; I blame saturation (how many recordings does one need?) and technologies such as iPods and satellite radio that make ownership of recorded media less necessary. (Heck, even in my case I used to buy two or three CDs a week, and I have bought only six this year for my personal use. Five are a set of Beethoven symphonies for use on the CD player of a new car, the previous car having only a cassette player).Around 2004, contemporary country peaked when producers took the anthem rock quality of late 20th-century country just a little too seriously and veered into self-parody. As far as Country is concerned, 2004 was the high-water mark, sales slowed significantly in 2005, picked up in 2006, and then dropped an unprecedented 30% in 2007. (Up until 2007, country music album sales increased while album sales as a whole declined. So far, this year has marked a dramatic reversal of that trend -- country music sales have dropped twice as fast as album sales as a whole.)
C&W has a marked reactionary streak in politics, and riding the reactionary tendencies of the Bush 43 era implies consequences when the political trends underpinning it disappears. I'm not surprised that country music peaked in 2004. The death of Johnny Cash, a performer capable of putting conscience into his music, didn't help.
Bluegrass is far less suitable for political manipulation -- and less trendy. Again, the classic and timeless tends to prevail under a 4T mentality.This drop is the result of a number of factors: in the South, where Country music sales have traditionally been strongest, the rap style "Crunk" has emerged as a powerful regional style and identifier. At the same time, the urban South has entered into a hard-rock/heavy/nu-metal metal renaissance, which is not surprising given the fact that a lot of contemporary country is simply hard rock with cowboy hats and regional accents. Meanwhile, the bluegrass revival that started in 2000 has continued to grow, and this has eaten into mainstream Country's bottom line.
Likely. But I see country music (even if I don't particularly like it) as more adaptable than most other genres of popular music. Reactionary lyrics will have to go if the genre is to prevail in America.The rise and fall of Country music is reflected in the rise and fall of "redneck culture" more generally. Maybe people are getting tired of the musical equivalent of "Get 'er done!" Or maybe, since popular music tends to be about identity more than anything else, people no longer want to identify with the kind of strident redneck culture that was more popular at the beginning of the decade.
The Music Industry
In the music industry, conditions seem to be continuously worsening. Reading MR, I thought that the Millennial "tremor" would have been solved by now, just as it was for the Silent, Boomers, and the Xers. But what is occurring is not a tremor, but more like a major cyclonic storm (perfect, if you will). CD sales remain in freefall. But now, major artists are starting to break away from record labels.
So far, we haven't seen major new expressions in music. Most of the action has been institutional and infrastructural. In retrospect, this decade may not be remembered for a distinct "style" or form of expression. Rather, it may be remembered as a decade when a decades old economic model of music production and consumption crashed and quickly transformed into a new model. In fact, according to T4T, the Crisis alters the framework for the expression of culture over the next saeculum. The old, dying model was built around radio and records during the prior Crisis, and extended to television by the 1950s. Now, the framework is changing beyond prior recognition.
Is the film industry headed in the same direction?
The day the music industry died
There is no money in recorded music any more, that’s why bands are now giving it away
Robert Sandall
Having waited four years for their heroes to finish another record, Radiohead fans were understandably excited last week to learn that the band’s seventh album, In Rainbows, will finally be released on Wednesday. But what really rocked the fanbase – and heightened the air of gloom enveloping the global record industry – was the news that In Rainbows could be preordered and downloaded perfectly legally for as little as 1p at Radio-head.com.
Currently out of contract and thus entitled to dispose of their recordings as they see fit, one of the most popular bands in the world had decided to let the fans decide how much their latest album was worth. An MP3 file of In Rainbows would have no price tag. Honesty boxes, it seemed, were the new rock’n’roll.
If the Radiohead faithful appeared somewhat nonplussed by this move – “The danger is that people will stop seeing their music as important,” one fan posted in a blog; “I will gladly pay $20 knowing the artist will get the money,” pledged another – the band’s strategy was anything but mad, and not even that revolutionary. Last week the Charlatans announced they would be giving away their new album as a free download. Earlier this year another rock band, the Crimea, did the same.
In July Prince arranged for 2.5m copies of his new album to be cover-mounted on a Sunday newspaper and issued several hundred thousand more free of charge to anybody attending his London concerts in August. The scale of this charitable epidemic can be measured by a quick browse of the Free Albums Galore blog that lists more than 800 albums by a range of artists – from the Beastie Boys to some unsigned metal bands – all of which are free to download.
What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools – useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business – blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD – is a busted flush.
A revealing story doing the rounds in America tells of a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at gigs after they discovered that by offering their CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts. The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio. And even at that price, recorded music isn’t selling.
Album sales are currently in freefall all over the world. The 10% drop in the UK over the past year is dwarfed by a 15% slide in the US, 25% in France and a whopping 35% in Canada. The bankruptcy this summer of the CD retail chain Fopp, HMV’s announcement that its profits halved in the first six months of this year and Richard Branson’s recent decision to dump the Virgin Megastores – which have reportedly lost him more than £50m in 2007 – are only the most visible signs of a crisis that has rocked the music industry on its axis.
The point isn’t just that people are buying fewer CDs; they are paying as much as two-thirds less in real terms today for the music they listen to on their iPods than they used to when the compact disc first took over the market. Twenty years ago a chart CD cost about £14. Today you can buy the same in a super-market for £9.
The online market may have grown recently, but not enough to fix the hole. Here, too, margins have shrunk. A download of a single track now costs 79p against the £4 a CD single cost in 1999.
The impact on the bottom line of the record labels has been catastrophic. When EMI’s subsidiary Virgin put out the Spice Girls’ debut album in 1996 the company cleared roughly £5 in profit on each copy sold. That margin has since shrivelled to around £2 – and only then for albums that are significant hits. Industry insiders estimate that only one of the new British acts that has “broken” in 2007 – the pop diva Mika – will actually make his record company any money.
This has not gone unremarked in the City. When the private equity firm Terra Firma bought EMI recently it paid about a third, in real terms, what the company nearly fetched 10 years ago when a sale to its competitor Universal was mooted. That decline mirrors what has happened over the same period to the retail price of new CDs, and it also reflects the scale of the cull of EMI’s workforce, which has shrunk in 10 years from more than 10,000 worldwide to about 4,000 today.
The mood of panic is palpable, and there are no obvious solutions in sight. In America the recently appointed co-chairman of the Columbia label Rick Rubin, formerly a record producer by trade, has spoken of his ambition to turn the company around by refocusing it along the lines of a cable TV business – making Columbia’s entire catalogue downloadable to customers who pay a monthly subscription.
Another senior figure at Columbia has dismissed this plan as “potentially the last nail in the coffin”. The recent establishment of a “word of mouth” department at the label reflects the loss of control felt within a business that has lost a grip on its market.
One – fading – hope of the major labels is that they can somehow grab a share of the profits their artists make elsewhere. When Robbie Williams resigned to EMI in 2002 for a reported £80m this new deal guaranteed the label a piece of the action from Williams’s highly lucrative concert tours. But many young artists since have become wary of such composite arrangements. Some have decided to bypass the major record companies altogether.
One of the hottest new names to emerge here this year, the rave metal band Enter Shikari, refused to sign to anybody and in March released their debut album, Take to the Skies, on their own label Ambush Reality. In the past these tiny, so-called indie labels have usually been funded by majors anxious to covertly purchase credibility for their products with a young audience traditionally distrustful of big music corporations.
But that is not how it is with Ambush Reality. The marketing of Take to the Skies was largely down to the band themselves, who have played nearly 700 gigs since forming in St Albans in 2003. Word of mouth, coupled with a band presence on MySpace, has done the rest.
In November 2006 Enter Shikari became only the second unsigned act after the Darkness to sell out the leading London rock venue the Astoria. Take to the Skies entered the album chart at number four in March. In May they undertook a major tour of America – the first British band to do so without the support of a big record company.
This upending of the music business was neatly predicted back in the 1990s by the guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax who described their new album as “the menu; our concert is the meal”. This comment recalled the Beatles’ producer George Martin’s observation about his prot�g�s’ first LP, Please Please Me from 1963. It was, Martin said, “just a memento of a concert”. Now, likewise, bands sell CD recordings of their performances at the end of the night.
The reprioritisation in recent years of live music over the recorded variety has been dramatic. Attendance at arena shows rose here by 11% last year. By the time 2007 bows out, 450 music festivals will have taken place in the UK.
Every week brings news of another frenzied assault on the box office. Last Monday Ticket-master reported that 20,000 tickets for the Spice Girls’ first reunion concert at London’s O2 arena in December sold out in 38 seconds, with 1m fans registering to buy. Three weeks back more than a million clamoured for seats at the forthcoming Led Zeppelin reunion. Glastonbury disposed of its 135,000 weekend passes for this year’s event within two hours – taking more than £21m in the process.
Ticket prices, especially for Alist artists, have soared as the price of CDs has tumbled. You could have bought Madonna’s entire catalogue for less than half what it cost to see her perform at Wembley Arena last summer where the best seats in the house went for £160. With the Rolling Stones at Twickenham a view from the pitch would have set you back £150.
Now that live music rules, nobody bothers to complain about what it costs any more. Euphoria at the news earlier this year that the Police had reformed obliterated all concerns that it cost between £70 and £90 to see them play at Twickenham in September. I spoke to many fans at one of those gigs; not one complained about the ticket price.
In the light of these numbers, the probability is that music fans now are spending more money on their passion than they were in the heyday of the CD. They have rediscovered an ancient truth that music is, at root, a communal experience as much as it is something that goes on between your ears.
Interestingly the band now tolling the death knell of the record industry, Radiohead, seem currently to have mixed feelings about live work.
“They probably will be playing some dates next year,” a spokesman said last week. “But Thom Yorke doesn’t like touring much.”
Do superstars still need record labels?
Posted by Mike (Shmoo) on October 14, 2007 at 6:43 AM
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer
Fri Oct 12, 7:13 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - Prince freed himself from record labels years ago. Paul McCartney, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have followed. Now the Material Girl appears to be kissing her big-name record company goodbye for a cool $120 million.
Could U2 be next? Justin Timberlake? Coldplay? Do superstars even need traditional multiyear album contracts when CD sales are plummeting and fans are swiping tons of music for free online, or tuning in to their favorite bands via YouTube, MySpace and other Internet portals?
"There's a prevailing wisdom that many established acts don't need a record label anymore," said Bruce Flohr, an executive at Red Light Management, which represents artists such as Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morissette, and ATO Records, home to David Gray, Gomez and Crowded House, among others.
"This is the new frontier. This is the beginning of a new era for the music business," Flohr said.
Executives at the four major record labels would not comment on the record for this story. But several noted privately that their companies are still the best at artist development, promotion and physical distribution of their product — something even big acts can't entirely do without.
The four majors are Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. They accounted for more than 88 percent of all U.S. music album sales this year.
Still, some headliners are becoming convinced they have the clout to change the rules.
Madonna is said to be close to signing a recording and touring deal with concert promoter Live Nation Inc. after turning down an offer from her longtime label at Warner Music Group Corp.
Under terms of the new 10-year deal, Madonna, 49, would receive a signing bonus of about $18 million and a roughly $17 million advance for each of three albums. Live Nation also would have to pay $50 million in cash and stock to promote each Madonna tour.
Warner Music just couldn't afford to pay that much to re-sign Madonna, Michael Savner, an analyst with Bank of America, said in a research note.
Meanwhile, Radiohead created a stir — and plenty of publicity — when the British rockers disclosed last week they would bypass signing a new deal with a record label and make their new album available online, letting fans decide how much they wanted to pay to download it.
Earlier this year, Paul McCartney signed with Hear Music, a startup label launched by coffee retailer Starbucks Corp. and Concord Music Group, rather than going to a major.
Even the Eagles are going it alone with their upcoming album, "Long Road Out of Eden." The group, which has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide, will release the album exclusively through Wal-Mart stores.
The trend had Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor exulting over being "free of any recording contract with any label" in a recent post on his Web site.
"I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate," he wrote.
Music industry insiders say the bids for independence only make sense for the most popular acts or those with devout fans who fill concert seats, buy T-shirts and seek out their music.
"These artists are in the position to basically set their own rules and set their own course," said Ted Cohen, managing partner of media consulting firm Tag Strategic and a longtime record label executive.
Meanwhile, social-networking sites and Internet distribution are making it possible for lesser-known and unsigned bands to boost their profiles and sell CDs.
"The game used to be really simple," Flohr said. "You get your record played on radio, you get your face on Rolling Stone (magazine), and you get on 'Saturday Night Live.'
"Now, it's you put your video on YouTube, you get your MySpace page happening, you do your deal with Facebook, you tour ... all these things add up, hopefully, to a successful record."
Some established major acts are using the same tactics as their new albums post lackluster sales but their concert tours keep selling out.
The strategy doesn't help record companies. The industry has seen a 14 percent drop in the number of CDs sold in the U.S. compared with the same time last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Sales of digital tracks online are up 46 percent over the same period, but have yet to offset the industry's losses during the past decade.
To adapt, the major labels are trying to cut deals with artists that go beyond album sales and encompass income from concert tickets, T-shirts, music publishing and other sources.
New bands with their eyes on superstardom still need the deep pockets of the major labels to pay for the promotion, marketing and distribution necessary to get heard above the din of countless other acts.
Even superstars can use the boost.
Take Prince. Famous for scribbling "slave" on his cheek during a bitter dispute with Warner Bros. Records in the early 1990s, he has released most of his music over the Internet during the past 10 years while striking CD distribution and marketing deals with different major labels to get copies of his albums in stores.
Radiohead has said they want to get their latest album in stores in a few months and are said to be shopping for a possible major label distribution deal, if not a multiple album contract.
And it's widely expected that Live Nation will have to strike a distribution deal with an established label to handle promotion and get Madonna's upcoming albums in stores.
In theory, that could lead Live Nation back to Warner Music, home of Warner Bros. Records, where Madonna signed as a new artist in 1984.
"It comes down to, do you need a label? Possibly not. Do you need the expertise that a label traditionally brought? Absolutely," Cohen said.
Despite the turmoil in the industry, the major record companies continue to exert considerable influence in the marketplace.
Major labels are not likely to disappear or become irrelevant, although the role they play might change as digital music overtakes CDs and other physical formats, Flohr said.
"I don't think this is the death of anything," Flohr said. "I actually think this is the rebirth of all of us."
"The urge to dream, and the will to enable it is fundamental to being human and have coincided with what it is to be American." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
intp '82er
First, CDs compete with DVDs; they can both be played back on the DVD players. When one can get a reasonably good movie at Wal-Mart for $5 that at least contains a 90-minute feature film (you must watch what you buy, but I have seen some fine ones), then one had better have great enthusiasm in some recorded music to pay $15 for perhaps 30 music of audio without other attractions. That should be obvious. It's the difference between radio and television (sound only versus image and sound), and you aren't going to pay $1800 for a radio when you can buy a 32" HDTV for about $600. What the RIAA (industry group for the cartel) doesn't tell us is that most of the record labels are owned by entities that also own movie studios. They can put the handkerchiefs away, thank you.
If I am able to buy the same opera recording with sound (essentially a DVD) on a one-disk DVD package or the one in a 3-CD set for $45, which do you think that I will get? Nobody owes loyalty to a bad marketing scheme. Because it's tradition? What a joke!
Second, you assess the caliber of music being issued on recorded disks as pedestrian. That's beyond denial unless there's something out there that I don't know about. Where's Elvis? Where's the Fab Four?
Third, cartels tend to break down as they gouge -- and alternatives appear. The technology once necessary for supplying recorded media to old-fashioned Victrolas and CDs in their earliest days no longer requires the big studios with huge pressing plants for gigantic runs. To be sure, the record companies own the copyrights for anything performed by Elvis Presley and the Beatles because they recorded in a time when the technology of recording was costly and mass marketing was a necessity. In short, if someone could sell "only" a few tens of thousands of recordings, then the project was a bust. It's still a bust with the old-fashioned technology -- but the recording equipment is cheap, and recorded music can appear on a computer file to be released individually.
Artists no longer need the recording companies if they have any marketing savvy at all. Sure, Sinatra, the Beatles, and Elvis all did well with the old system -- but those are the spectacular exceptions. Considering that the record companies usually find ways to ensure that artists pay the costs of developing and marketing... a savvy band or one with an honest hanger-on who can arrange a recording and some low-cost advertising (a web site) can do well.
Film industry? It's not so vulnerable. The artists in the film industry have the Screen Actors' Guild; movie making (if there is to be any quality) is far more difficult than is sound recording.
The coming 4T will of course be different from the last one, if only due to the technology and the institutions (such as Social Security) already in place. Responses to economic distress will differ because the economic distress will not be an exact parallel of that of the 1930s. But I wouldn't bet heavily upon the absence of economic distress.
I predict that niche entertainment media driven by advertising revenues will be ravaged. I predict that even if cable TV survives, the selections will be very different. Because disposable income is likely to plummet, I expect much of the "luxury"-driven programming to disappear. Programming might have to either meet a basic need (sports, news, comedy, drama), serve a public purpose (education and politics), or meet practical needs. Niche channels may appear for occupational groups (farmers, attorneys, accountants, engineers, and medical professionals) but those for pure entertainment will be pared back as revenues from advertising and subscriptions shrink. A cable "food" channel might have to show people how to find imaginative ways to make meat loaf and potato salad (arrgh! the banes of HGA life!) instead of showing how to recreate cuisine from Kazakhstan.
People will demand in the 2020s what they demanded in the 1930s -- "bang for the buck".
It's easy to ignore the seedy pulp fiction produced shamelessly by hack writers and sold in small lots. I discovered some of it... and old "true crime" novel called Chicago Murders while cleaning out the drawers of a (then) recently-deceased early-wave Lost grandfather. A cursory reading of the intro and the first pages suggested that this well-hidden object was no buried treasure. It's the sort of object that one buries under clutter to not be found. I can only imagine how it was marketed -- offered in some darkened alcove of a store, and with some shame. One kept such stuff to oneself. It was certainly kept from children, something for private tittilation.The financial barriers to entry for pulp publications were much lower, so profit margins didn't have to be so high. Pulp publishers could focus directly on smaller niche markets and more daring material, and they did that in spades. Between 1933 and 1939, Black Mask Detective was available at pretty much every news stand across the country. And that was one of the less salacious pulps. Take a trip to this gallery of pulp covers and go to the 'S' section, and check out the covers of magazines with the words "Saucy" or "Spicy" in their titles.
I'll pass. I'm satisfied that it existed, and that people bought it with some shame, afterwards hiding it from spouses and children. If I am to see the dark side of human nature, I insist that it be done well.A few years back, a comic company offered reprints of some of the comics and stories that appeared under the "Spicy" imprint. And, well, not for nothin', but the covers offer only a hint at the material inside. And lest you claim that this stuff was aimed at holdover Lost readers, I invite you to do some research into the "men's magazines" and "detective magazines" that continued to do decent business among GI's even after the men of the Lost Generation started dying off in droves. (And if you're a real stalwart, I could point you in the direction of other more esoteric examples of salacious printed material.)
And sports magazines that extolled the feats of baseball and football stars, collegiate and professional. But remember well -- even those were quite tame.For those interested in non-fiction, the movie magazines that were amazingly popular during the last Fourth Turning illustrate that our GI forefathers (and foremothers) were just as interested in the lurid details of the lives of celebrities as most modern Americans. (While not as explicit as the pulps, while I'm busting the myth of the wholesome Fourth Turning, I might as well put a stake in the hear of the claim that we will know the Fourth Turning is here when Americans are no longer interested in celebrities.)
True -- but people indulged in such things on the sly in those days. This is very different from the "Al Bundy" (Ed O'Neill) character from the longtime comedy Married With Children who promises someday to take his pubescent son to the "Nudie Bar".OK. That's a lot to chew on, and I went on longer than I expected. (I hope that you don't mind.) While the movie theater downtown might have been showing Disney, there was also probably a burlesque show going on at the repurposed playhouse up the street, and at the corner newstand, scantily clad (and often bound) women were being menaced by Norse gods, snakes (can you get anymore phallic than that?), octopi (yes!), and even Mexicans.
There will always be a market for low-life entertainment, including pornography and strip clubs, to meet some of the basic drives of people who might find their lives unduly repressed or frustrated. The greater that the hypocrisy of the culture is, especially on sexuality, the more that the illicit and scandalous will be secretive -- and tawdry,
Maybe people were more secretive about their vices in the 1930s than in the 1890s or the 1970s. Burlesque and pulp fiction offered the fulfillment of some basic desire to those who wanted something "stronger" than the refined, expensively-produced (by standards of the time) family fare at the cinema. Considering what happened to the birth rate in the 1930s, I can only imagine the sexual repression.The point here is that I'm not so sure that popular culture during a Fourth Turning is necessarily more family friendly (or less celebrity obsessed, which is a different kettle of fish, but related). The more I research the forgotten popular culture of the 1930s, the more convinced I become that Strauss & Howe missed the mark in some important ways with respect to popular culture during the last Fourth Turning.
I still content that entertainment media are expensive enough to produce that when the ad revenue and subscription revenue that allow their creation and mass-dissemination vanish, then a lot of entertainment on cable TV will disappear. I predict, based on the secretive content of the pulp novels of the 1930s, that there will be cheaply-produced cinematic equivalents of pulp fiction, performed by bad actors with directors intent largely upon churning out great quantities of marketable bilge as quickly as posible. It will be sold in back rooms designated "adults only", the video package plastered with parental warnings, and production values will be dreadful.If I'm right, and the popular culture of the era was more of a chaotic jungle than Strauss & Howe suggest -- even with the significant barriers to entry that the high cost of mass-communications technologies enforced -- then what will the popular culture of our current (or future) Fourth Turning look like when those barriers are removed?
(Note: This has gone long, so I'm going to break up my response into separate parts.)
Maslow's hierarchy of needs will still be in effect; economic realities will drive people to the lowest ones.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 10-17-2007 at 01:03 PM. Reason: word choice
Really, an addendum:
Historical memory is often far from reality. People are more likely to remember what they did with others in public view than what they did on the sly with some shame. Hypocrisy is an indelible part of human behavior because human desires and moral standards are quite different. There's much to enforce memories of what one did in public, in full view of others -- especially loved ones; what creates guilt and shame along with some needed pleasure that one can enjoy only in secret usually vanishes from consciousness unless it results in some personal calamity (such as a jail term or a divorce).
Pulp fiction and stag films fill needs for some, especially when the needs cannot be met with pretensions to cultural refinement. The greater the repression -- especially sexual -- the sleazier the meeting of those needs become, and the greater the guilt becomes in meeting those needs.
Another effect arises: the prohibited desires are shoved into some back room closed off to those not wiling to take the dare. The product that becomes increasingly hollow in its intellectual and esthetic content may be purchased or viewed -- but if someone partakes of it in a movie theater he keeps quiet about it afterwards. If, like some "true romance novel", "detective magazine", or pornography in any form it is actually brought home, it is hidden from general view. One might have a use for it, but one dare not demonstrate that one have the material. As a rule it is regarded as trash -- and after it meets its needs it is cast off and forgotten.
People from a prior time are more likely to remember the better expressions of the time than the bad ones. If children of the time, they are likely to have not seen the trashy stuff read (or in more recent times) viewed behind locked doors or witnessed in adult-only venues. If they partook of the cultural sleaze of the time, then they pretend that they didn't partake or else don't talk about the sleazy stuff they read or viewed. If they didn't partake in the stuff, then they usually fail to remember what they missed. After all, the business that used to purvey that stuff in a back room either off limits or unattractive to women and children has either been put to some new use or been remodeled to obliterate all memories of dealing in the once-profitable, but largely-forgotten sleaze.
Film posters for The Wizard of Oz and It Happened One Night are highly valuable. Those for stag films of the same time aren't even though they are rare. First editions of Steinbeck novels fetch a pretty penny; rare editions of schlock novels -- and they are rare even more than their limited publishing runs would suggest -- are almost unmarketable.
Please look this guy up on Youtube! He's got great music!
