The Way the Music Died

A couple of days ago on my personal Facebook page I posted an old video from Bow Wow Wow, the seminal track I Want Candy. That started a debate among the commenters over an inarguably hot topic for elitists, purists and the simply nostalgic: What, if anything, killed music?

There have always been cookie-cutter acts out there, bands thrown together by greedy and opportunistic promoters and musicians exploited by Svengali-like managers. But it seems like now more than ever, the entire recording industry has become one big dodge aimed at cranking out formulaic music, attuned to pounce on any bandwagon, and existing solely for the purpose of raking in piles of cash -- often at the expense of the artists some say it's doing nothing but taking advantage of. Thanks to the Internet and social media, it's easy to create a buzz or a viral sensation (sometimes that sensation creates itself; see: Rebecca Black) and with the use of Pro Tools and the dreaded auto-tune in the studio, the person at the center of that buzz doesn't even need to have an overabundance of talent (see, again: Rebecca Black). It's enough to make a lover of actual art in music crazy, or at least angry and longing for the days when Zeppelin, or even Madonna, ruled the land.

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message," and almost nowhere these days is that more apparent than in the recording industry. It used to be that the record companies, their artists, and the technology used to actually bring music to audiences grew at symbiotic rate. It felt like one never outpaced the other, and this became an easy model for all sides of the triangle to understand and use to their advantage; all three needed each other. But times have changed dramatically. While it's true that a money-above-all ethos -- which admittedly has existed for years and has always leveraged artists like so much chattel -- remains at the core of the collapsing nexus of music and art, there are a lot of other factors which flow from that well. Corporate consolidation, the formation of multi-media conglomerates which can now cross-promote artists over a vast series of platforms, turn them, more than ever, into little more than product to be lapped up by a hungry public until they're burned out due to oversaturation. Very few bands are bred to last anymore. Record companies and the mega-corporations that own them are interested only in striking while the iron is hot and therefore striking it rich; if the artist in question flames out, there's always someone waiting in the wings to replace him, her or them.

Meanwhile, relaxed FCC regulations now allow for two or three companies to essentially monopolize the radio airwaves. Travel across America sometime by car; listen to the way radio stations sound in every single town you pass through. Notice anything different about them? Not likely. That's because instead of allowing for local stations to do their own production and make their own programming choices, which would naturally create vast differences in their sounds, they're pre-produced and pre-programmed at a central hub. The result is that everything sounds alike, from the voices to the music, even down to the way the local ads are recorded. It's all the same. The days of the rebellious DJ in that one little market falling in love with a band and being the first to break them to the world are for the most part history.

Again, the medium is message, and that couldn't be more apparent than with what's become the most popular means of transmitting music these days: the Internet. While the rise of new media worked wonders when it came to cementing the artist's ability to get his or her music out to the public while bypassing the gatekeepers that once had to be appeased and passed through, it effectively was the last nail in the coffin of the music industry as we knew it. It killed the recording industry's two sources of control and guaranteed revenue-generation: manufacturing and distribution. To put it simply, the technology used to deliver music to the masses actually outpaced the industry's ability to get a handle on and exploit it.

It can be good news for the bands, if it weren't for the debate over how to actually get paid and go on tour by putting your own stuff out there over the ether without having a backer, but it's eating the record companies alive. How do we know? Well, because Radiohead made around ten million dollars within a week of the initial release of In Rainbows.

Thing is, they released that album online themselves and invited fans to pay whatever they wanted for it -- even nothing at all. Think that didn't scare the recording industry to death?