In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people…
A little nugget Gary dropped in my lap . . . .
Imagine Elvis never happened. Imagine Elvis Presley recording all his music for a dollar in the little booth where he cut that first 78 for his mother’s birthday. And imagine a music industry which, instead of investing in a single massive star called Elvis, distributed ten thousand stars, all recording for a dollar, in totally different styles, all appealing to small, highly self-conscious cults in a fragmented society. A society in a state of fabulous confusion, exploding into fragments. Our society, now.
The music industry is changing organically, adapting to this new world of ‘cults’ — tribes discovered one by one by the pioneering independent labels of the 70s and 80s. But many major labels still operate in the old way, investing huge sums in relatively few groups which they then try to bludgeon us into accepting as stars on the old model, acts which must cross over to the ‘mainstream’ or be dropped.
[composed and posted with ecto]
Does this, with its allusions to the Long Tail and the end of mass-marketing, seem like it could have been written in 1991?
Pop must learn to accept that it is now doomed to be a related network of unpopular musics.
Scanning my radio dial (or just listening to KEXP for a while), you hear a variety of stuff, not all of it guitar/bass/drums/voice. Perhaps it’s where I live (in this town of folk/grunge/urban beats, to say nothing of stellar classical/”serious” music) or perhaps it’s the times.
Apropos of that, I had some errands to run — chauffeuring someone to an appointment on Capitol Hill and before I hit the Victrola, I went in a <gasp> record store[1]. I haven’t felt so old in a long time š They had actual vinyl records, as well as about a bazillion CDs and DVDs by artists familiar and not so . . . .
It was refreshing to me to see so much music in a big store that was obviously making it work: they offer something more than the mall outlets. Perhaps it’s variety and depth, perhaps it’s knowledgeable staff. Even if I don’t go to them, I still want there to be stores like that which I guess means I want there to be music lovers who care enough to keep a place like that in business, not as a charitable act but because they deliver something of value.
And just now going to KEXP to grab the link, I noticed they offer a “click to buy” option: hear a track, click the link and then find a retailer, traipse over there, hunt up the disc, buy it, take it home, rip it into your preferred digital player, and enjoy it. RadioParadise offers something similar through Apple’s iTMS: I’ve grabbed some stuff that way.
How close are we to ubiquitous works-everywhere music? Any closer than when the above-referenced manifesto hit the streets?
And further afield but possibly slightly related, any wagering on a charting tune that originates in GarageBand? We’ve had home studios forever: I have played around with it enough to think someone could make listenable material with it.
And as a final allusive self-referential aside, I was wearing my “your failed business model is not my problem” shirt and found myself explaining the issues that inform it to a pair of attentive 70+ year olds over lunch. Not sure they get the Remix Culture thing, but it was a good exercise all the same.
1. I note that this same record store has an RSS feed.