Rick Rubin
- Thread starter MylesBAstor
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Facinating. He predicted the subscription model a year before Spotify launched. Of course the music business had a few years in which they could have taken that model away and buried Spotify, but they blinked. And they continue to decline. But I don't think Spotify is the new paradigm either. It may be subscription, but it has to have enough revenue to compensate artists fairly, and it has to become a powerful promotional vehicle for new music and the shows and merchandising of established artists. An industry is not sales and distribution; it is the product. An art industry? Even more so.
The funniest part of this? The record company thinking they could demand 50% of artists touring and merchandising money. They sat on their fat and let the business get away from them, creating the dynamic that resulted in most artists making very little from recording, and for their effort they thought they could ask for half of what they have nothing to do with? The arrogance is stunning. These clowns deserve to lose their business.
Tim
The funniest part of this? The record company thinking they could demand 50% of artists touring and merchandising money. They sat on their fat and let the business get away from them, creating the dynamic that resulted in most artists making very little from recording, and for their effort they thought they could ask for half of what they have nothing to do with? The arrogance is stunning. These clowns deserve to lose their business.
Tim
Tim,
It seems embedded in human nature not to anticpate fundamental change when you have a long-standing successful model. Witness IBM's near death experience when they clung to the concept of 'big iron' too long. I do agree that it seems a tad presumtuous to demand 50% of artists' merchandising and touring.
It seems embedded in human nature not to anticpate fundamental change when you have a long-standing successful model. Witness IBM's near death experience when they clung to the concept of 'big iron' too long. I do agree that it seems a tad presumtuous to demand 50% of artists' merchandising and touring.
Tim, I don't think it is that simple. And 360 deals really emerged after the record companies were in decline. I started dealing with Internet content stuff back in the mid-90's before the music hit the fan. Hard to compete with 'free.' And there were some great, great people at those labels back in the day. And a heck of a lot of bands did get a shot because the companies could take some risks.
Those were the good old days, for sure, but they're gone. Doc is right that change comes hard to those who've had the successful model for decades. But change is here, ready or not. I don't think the next successful model has been invented yet, because you're right, it's hard to compete with free. Apple did it, but it's hard. Spotify did it, but it's hard. But neither of them have monetized it sufficiently to support developing talent, and it can't last without developing talent. So I don't think the next successful model is here yet. But it's not coming from the majors. They're done. They're on life support and will probably diminish slowly for a couple more decades, but they're not the future of the music business..MHO YMMV.
Tim
One thing that is encouraging to me is how artists are sucessfully using social media to promote themselves and bypass the traditional music distribution channels. I'm an old fart and I hear about many concerts and new music via social media. I subscribe to 'Feedbands" and have been a sponsor for multiple Kickstarter music projects.
One last thing...My son is a freshman at Berklee and they have an army of people working with the kids to help them develop their own webpages, master social networking and self produce/promote their music. Pretty cool stuff.
I can tell you in many ways the new paradigm is a big plus. It is going to filter out those who get into music for the purpose of getting rich and famous.Those will continue to create will do so knowing their odds of making a living are slim, so the creative passion must be an overwhelming desire.
The fact is that many recording artists are taking advantage of new revenue streams that have replaced album sales.
These include flat out selling songs to corporations. The Black Keys said they made more money selling one of their songs to
a car company than all of their record sales combined. It actually allowed them to continue as a recording act. Songs get licensed
to tv shows, video games, and sporting events.
There is also touring revenue for the 2nd tier. The first tier being the band-in-the-van-playing the club situation. Many musicians have realized they may have to make their bread the old fashioned way, and that is by playing every city possible in North America. Quick example. When I saw Jake Bugg, this band honeyhoney opened up. No body had heard of them. The BLEW the crowd away, and immediately after their set, 25 people stood in line to buy CDs and take pictures. That is grass roots my friend.
Many industries and professions have evaporated due to technology. Stock brokers. Travel agents. etc. Adapt or starve.
PS..I bought a few downloads from Bandcamp by an amazing band from Australia called the Dolly Rocker Movement. One of the downloads included a physical CD and Vinyl. I received the package from the band, with a personalized note, all the way from down under. A nice touch.
Try THAT with a major label.
The band I play in is a bunch of old guys, except for our young violin player. She drops the average age in half.
And we only play out a couple of times a month; that's all we want to play out. But we fill the room every time, not because we're so great, but because we've found a niche, we've found an audience, and we stay in touch with them through Facebook. That's it. That's all. No website, no Twitter account, no email list, no CDs. We do have a Reverb Nation page, but that's just a place to send club owners to hear us play. I wish the business had been growing in this direction 40 years ago. It would have been a lot more fun and we probably would have been a lot more successful. Instead, we had booking agents, most of whom were dubious, and there was the dream of getting a record contract and making it big, or the reality of not being able to make ends meet playing music. These days a good band willing to travel could be doing 4-5 gigs and selling a bunch of CDs and t shirts every week on the power of self-promotion alone. I think maybe this business model is better for the local/regional band, worse for the big-time recording acts and somewhere in between, in between,Tim
Maybe. But it doesn't filter out stuff that sucks.
Long tails work both ways. On the plus side, we get to hear artists we may never have heard of. On the minus side, the amount of sheer dreck one needs to wade through to find art that can stand alongside that which has traditionally been discovered, signed, mentored, developed, produced, marketed and supported by major labels historically is almost overwhelming. The signal-to-noise ratio is now much higher. (Of the hundreds of millions of websites one could look at, how many do you visit every day? New paradigms cause shifts in thinking, not necessarily modifications in behaviour).
And Bandcamp? Some tracks from the Dolly Rocker Movement got your dollars - awesome. So that's six-and-a-half million other tracks that didn't. While it's true some artists have left their labels to join Bandcamp that's just the news we heard. What we weren't privy to were the reasons they left, and whether than bands album sucked and failed to deliver, or the band developed a nasty heroin addiction that saw the label's budget consumed in illicit white crystals. What it also fails to take into consideration are the bands that were on indies that left to go back to major labels - Nine Inch Nails, for example.
Like I said, long tails work both ways. But for long tails to exist there still needs to be a common majority in the middle of the bell curve for the tails to be attached to. Columbia right now has not only the hip kids of the new century (Broken Bells, Foster the People, Passion Pit, MGMT) but also has the ones who have seen out the vicissitudes of the industry and maintained their integrity in the process (Dylan, Springsteen, Bowie, Patti Smith, etc...). While many of them make music on their own labels (Bowie's The Next Day was made on his ISO label, under licence to Columbia), many of them still prefer the world-wide clout that only comes from a major.
It's just too easy to point out how problematic the major label system is. Without it, there'd be no Miles reissues with the incredible out-takes, liner notes and multiple formats, no Beatles remasters, no undiscovered master tapes. Of the 136 DSD downloads I could buy from Acoustic Sounds right now, 132 of them wouldn't exist with a major label's master tapes to transfer from.
Yes, there's great indie labels and independent acts producing stellar work, but it's far from true to say only indies and independents produce great art.
I think you missed the entire point. What I am trying to say is that consumers no longer value music as a commodity. So that means artists, major label, indie..whatever..
are going to have to find different revenue streams than albums sales...which many have...detailed above....or continue to make music for the sheer passion of it.
Major labels served their purpose and as you point out they developed talent, funded, and distributed the great recordings of our time...in their day.
I don't think anything was said to the contrary.
I just discovered two AMAZING albums...just through putting my finger to the wind...there is still a TON of amazing music being made, despite
the bottom falling out on album sales. Major labels are no longer necessary except for reissues of historical recordings.
1) Kanni by Tal National in a New York Times write up and immediately bought the album:
Raw, Nigerian funk...addicting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/arts/music/indie-grace-african-funk-whispery-muscle.html
2) Lili & Madeleine, self titled. Magical and mystical from two sisters.
I bought the download from Bandcamp for $8. Plus their EP.
http://www.musictap.net/2013/11/04/review-lily-madeleine-lily-madeleine/
Well, this is what you said:
It strikes me as more of an ignorant oversimplification than anything, and the fact that of all the musicians, bands, label heads, marketing and A&R guys I know at majors as well as indies, none of them ever entered into it with the sole purpose of getting rich and famous. Of those, I know only one platinum selling artist, and while she's certainly done ok from royalties, it's not lessened her creative passion - they're hardly diametrically opposed values. In fact, it was as a result of her creative passion that she became a platinum selling artist in the first place.
So I'm curious to know, of the artists you know signed to major labels, which ones are the ones who "got into music for the purpose of getting rich and famous?"
(I know none.)
The consumer has plenty more things to spend their disposable income on, that's true. But it's not new. The internet, gaming consoles, mobile phones, flatscreen televisions, personal computing and social networking have all been reducing the amount spent on albums for the last twenty years. And yes, monetizing music has been an incredible challenge to the industry in the face of downloading, declining record sales, tour costs, etc.
But it's not an either/or position - sell yourself out or make music for the sheer passion of it. Selling you song to a TV show or a major corporation can be a win in terms of exposure and saturation, but, in several cases I know, it means your candle burns much brighter but for far, far shorter. The buying public have fickle sensibilities and get sick of you. You get known as the soundtrack to a television commercial and you die an unglamorous death when it comes time to release the album and it's got that annoying TV ad music in the middle of it. I know bands right now being courted by ad agencies and clients to use their tracks for commercials (I work in advertising) and the last thing they want is to be known as the Doritos guys.
Again, you seem to know people I don't. I'd love to know which musicians and artists signed to labels who make don't "make music for the sheer passion of it."
No, that's true, you didn't. But you continue to wax lyrical over the abundance of amazing new music available on indie labels, and it doesn't change my previously stated perspective that the signal-to-noise ratio has never been higher.
Twenty years ago I dropped out of university and worked for an independent record shop. We sold more of Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball in one year than Britney Spears' latest. (The fact that we ordered one copy, sold it, and didn't reorder it may have something to do with it.) We had a massive ECM section. We had a massive Trojan records section. We ordered American and German pressings of Lyle Lovett albums and never had less than half-a-dozen Autechre albums constantly in stock. So we focused on not being like all the other record stores and stocked Albert King and Chess reissues instead.
Even then, the majors were struggling. There was a constant focus on pushing their tent-pole artists and neglecting their lesser-known acts (I had to convince a rep from Sony to release Travis' The Man Who in our territory because they wanted to focus on Michael Jackson's 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection instead.) It was unwieldy and top-heavy.
But I can't tell you how many indies I saw come and go in that time. An under-the-radar album or emerging artist you thought was awesome would sell a huge amount of copies until it went on backorder for 6 months, and then permanently. You'd find that the CD had split at the centre hole and send it back for credit and wait forever to get a replacement that never came. Indie's weren't any less susceptible to in-fighting and financial hardship than the majors were. Of all the hip hop and electronica labels that released albums in the 90's (of which I own many) I'd say less than 30% are still here.
So now we have two systems: The major label system and the indie system. Just like we did twenty years ago - surprise! Social media may be more effective at creating hype, but Bandcamp and MySpace (*snicker*) haven't replaced the majors any more than the "revolution" of iTunes has. Think the two-and-a-half million YouTube views of Flying Lotus' Mmm-Hmm meant two-and-a-half million record sales? The map is not the territory.
Quite a statement for someone who's not shouldered with the onus of releasing music. Though kinda at odds with this guy who is:
"Being in control of your own destiny was great," he says of the decision to go indie. "It felt good to have my own neck on the line. But you spend a lot of time figuring out who the influential blogger at some radio station is. Market research is not a sexy thing to think about. More than that, when you're self-releasing, you have this walled garden of people that are interested in what you do, and to everyone else you're invisible."
Meanwhile, as he sought to extend the boundaries of his fan base, he was reconsidering his role as a public figure.
"I was excited about Twitter when we went out on our own because it felt like the most direct way to penetrate people's attention," says Reznor, an early and eager adopter of the platform, who in his mid-aughts guise was quick to volley with fans and fire shots at fellow musicians. "I also got a charge out of people realizing that I wasn't a recluse sleeping in a coffin. But in hindsight, my experimenting with Twitter was a mistake. Oversharing feels vulgar to me now. I know we've been fooled into thinking it's okay to show dick pics and that the Kardashians' behavior is normal, but it's not. I've tuned out in the last couple years. Everybody's got a ******* opinion. It takes courage to put something out creatively into the world, and then to see it get trampled on by cunts? It's destructive."
There's another factor to Reznor's more cautious approach to social media: "I've had the experience over the last few years of liking bands, and then checking what they're up to on Tumblr or something, and immediately realizing, 'This is you?' ****.' I don't want my personality to get in the way of what I'm trying to do musically."
Once Reznor had sifted through the results of his various outreach trials, he decided he needed a hand. In November 2012, Columbia released An Omen EP by How to Destroy Angels, his ambient-pop project with Maandig and Ross; that was followed up with a full-length, Welcome Oblivion, earlier this year. "It was no meddling, a modest advance, we split any profits," he says. "If there used to be 100 people at a major working on a record, now there are 18, but they're the good ones. There's a lean, mean hunger. I'm not trying to be a major-label apologist, I'm just telling you what I saw. Instead of me and Rob Sheridan trying to figure things out, there's an extra 15 people and the sense that someone in France was aware of what we were doing — instead of us hoping we'd remembered that France existed. So when a Nine Inch Nails album was in the works, and the mission was to try to make as many people aware of it as we can, we thought, 'Let's try it. Let's see what happens.'" (Still, he adds that NIN's deal with Columbia is "not long-term.")
But given Reznor's willingness to call bullshit on the corporate overlords, was there any hesitance from said overlords to get into the Nine Inch Nails business?
"With an artist like Trent, you have to trust that they're making the decisions they want to make," says Columbia Records Chairman Rob Stringer. "He's been very smart about building up the demand for Nine Inch Nails by working on so many different things over the last few years — and the new record is so strong — that it feels like an opportunity for us to work with somebody who has an effect on pop culture. There was no trepidation on our part."
So far, so good. "Nine Inch Nails feels bigger than it ever has," says a bemused Reznor. "Is it because we're on Columbia? Is it scarcity? I don't know, but it doesn't feel bigger in the sense that we've desperately adopted some new clothing style. It feels organic, and it feels good not to be worrying about whether or not we shipped vinyl to the cool record store in Prague. I know that what we're doing flies in the face of the Kickstarter Amanda-Palmer-Start-a-Revolution thing, which is fine for her, but I'm not super-comfortable with the idea of Ziggy Stardust shaking his cup for scraps. I'm not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I'm saying my personal feeling is that my album's not a dime. It's not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go **** yourself."
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Sometimes I remember things as much more attractive than they actually were, too. I call it photogenic memory.
But this one I remember pretty clearly; I haven't forgotten, for example, that the majors have discovered, signed, mentored, developed, produced, marketed and supported decades worth of drek from the throwaway pop of the 40s and 50s to Miley Cyrus and the crap that is contemporary country. EXAMPLE: The majors didn't develop The Beatles. They developed The Monkees. They didn't develop Presley, Perkins & Cash (That'd be Sam Phillips), they developed Pat Boone.
The majors are big business looking for quick ROI, and so they typically develop "product" that looks and sounds sort of like something that's already successful; they'll develop that all day because it looks like a pretty safe investment. Anything approaching original has to be fully developed and already have a market to get their attention. It has always been that way. Well, almost always. There was a golden age in 70s when excellent and popular were one and the same for awhile, when legendary A&R men like John Hammond Sr. discovered, signed and developed talent like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Stevie Ray Vaughn....
Rick Rubin works for Sony now. At least somebody has the right idea. But I think I'll count on the truly great art to develop itself and with self production, self promotion, and self distribution viable and growing stronger, I expect an awful lot of them will go that way and the majors will do Nashville, and pop. I suspect they're much more comfortable with it anyway.
Tim
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Arguably, "only" the intermediary for delivery has changed and along with it, the entire economics of the system, at least on the label side. (Music publishing remains, if not more protected from 'free,' then at least able to capitalize on placement in movies, television and commercials). Does big data provide a curatorial function? I suppose there are filters, like the algorithms of Pandora. There has been a lot of criticism that part of the decline of the labels was due to a failure of A&R to discover new talent. Nirvana hits, as a reaction to the banality of 80's pop, and suddenly, everybody is signing 'grunge.' Just remember Mitch Miller (along with such greats as Mo Austin, Chris Blackwell, Ahmet Ertegün, Clive Davis and of course, Morris Levy).
Arguably, "only" the intermediary for delivery has changed and along with it, the entire economics of the system, at least on the label side. (Music publishing remains, if not more protected from 'free,' then at least able to capitalize on placement in movies, television and commercials). Does big data provide a curatorial function? I suppose there are filters, like the algorithms of Pandora. There has been a lot of criticism that part of the decline of the labels was due to a failure of A&R to discover new talent. Nirvana hits, as a reaction to the banality of 80's pop, and suddenly, everybody is signing 'grunge.' Just remember Mitch Miller (along with such greats as Mo Austin, Chris Blackwell, Ahmet Ertegün, Clive Davis and of course, Morris Levy
).
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Sometimes I remember things as much more attractive than they actually were, too. I call it photogenic memory.
EXAMPLE: The majors didn't develop The Beatles. They developed The Monkees. They didn't develop Presley, Perkins & Cash (That'd be Sam Phillips), they developed Pat Boone.
The majors are big business looking for quick ROI, and so they typically develop "product" that looks and sounds sort of like something that's already successful; they'll develop that all day because it looks like a pretty safe investment. Anything approaching original has to be fully developed and already have a market to get their attention. It has always been that way. Well, almost always. There was a golden age in 70s when excellent and popular were one and the same for awhile, when legendary A&R men like John Hammond Sr. discovered, signed and developed talent like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Stevie Ray Vaughn....
Rick Rubin works for Sony now. At least somebody has the right idea. But I think I'll count on the truly great art to develop itself and with self production, self promotion, and self distribution viable and growing stronger, I expect an awful lot of them will go that way and the majors will do Nashville, and pop. I suspect they're much more comfortable with it anyway.
Tim
In a Metal Mood is pretty classic, you gotta admit.
Geez, you reference Pat Boone and talk about the pathetic 'me too' aspect of the big labels during the glory days, but fail to recognize Pat Boone's most stunning achievement- a heavy metal album, replete with Pat wearing spiked dog collar, leather vest and one of the best covers of Smoke on the Water !@#%&**++*&
Sometimes I remember things as much more attractive than they actually were, too. I call it photogenic memory.
EXAMPLE: The majors didn't develop The Beatles. They developed The Monkees. They didn't develop Presley, Perkins & Cash (That'd be Sam Phillips), they developed Pat Boone.
The majors are big business looking for quick ROI, and so they typically develop "product" that looks and sounds sort of like something that's already successful; they'll develop that all day because it looks like a pretty safe investment. Anything approaching original has to be fully developed and already have a market to get their attention. It has always been that way. Well, almost always. There was a golden age in 70s when excellent and popular were one and the same for awhile, when legendary A&R men like John Hammond Sr. discovered, signed and developed talent like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Stevie Ray Vaughn....
Rick Rubin works for Sony now. At least somebody has the right idea. But I think I'll count on the truly great art to develop itself and with self production, self promotion, and self distribution viable and growing stronger, I expect an awful lot of them will go that way and the majors will do Nashville, and pop. I suspect they're much more comfortable with it anyway.
Tim
Hi Tim,
I was going to post a reply to you, based on my experience of working with and making music for majors and indie labels and then I remembered something:
I'm tired of reading about other people's opinion on internet forums. And y'know, if I'm honest, I'm tired of posting my own - though I've tried to tie it directly to my experience, rather than, y'know, whatever I happen to think at any given moment in time.
Look, you probably have a point. Of the 95 posts on this thread, yours probably has some merit.
But I had an interesting Friday. I went to Paris with my family to celebrate my birthday. We spent the day there in minus-2 degree weather, had a nice lunch, some great pastries, and tried to convince ourselves the French know how to make a great cup of coffee. (Don't get me wrong, we live in France, and love it, but I haven't had a decent espresso yet).
When we returned home, I checked my Mac as I always do for work and then flicked through my bookmarks and then...
I just stopped caring.
At first, it was fun being on forums. Advertising is the sort of thing I never imagined I'd do for a crust, mainly because I despise the commodification of art to sell crap nobody needs, so having a distraction - any distraction - was often better than watching a director's sensibilities progressively undermined by an agency hell-bent on adding to its awards cabinet and a client hell-bent on playing it safe. And actually, What's Best Forum is honestly one of the better ones.
But, turning 40 did something to me. Looking into the eyes of my wife and my children as we strolled along the Pont des Arts bridge made me not only incredibly grateful for what I already have, but determined to make the next 40 years more fruitful than the previous ones. I have no guarantee of how many years - or days, for that matter - I may have left, but it occurred to me that those four people were really all that mattered, and were so much more deserving of my time and energy than any career or bank balance or dedicated hi-fi room with Oyaide palladium-plated carbon wall receptacles could ever be.
Debating the pros and cons of the major label system with people who have no real experience of it seemed suddenly... redundant. Superfluous. Tautologically anaemic and frankly, mastubatory.
I'm sure this thread will live on and in all honestly, I wish you and everyone here the very best for the rest of the year.
But life is short. And I've said what I've had to say here.
Shalom.
Excellent post, 853guy. You could substitute just about anything for "the major label system" here, stick a pin in it at the top of nearly every discussion forum on the internet, and close the door....
Tim
Tim
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