…when the strong, gets stronger

Nov 13

Posted by: Michael R. Willow in 2009, Artist and the society, Blog

We saw in the last 6 months that the music industry has not been badly affected by the global financial crisis. Some say it is recession-proof or that the recession has been helpful to them while there are a few reports that confirm that the record industry does suffer but not as much as others who had no choice but to make mass redundancies. What is really going on?

It is well known that the major labels dictate their signed artists and use them as pawns in their profit machine. Most of the album sales (around 80-90%) go to the labels and the musicians receive a small percentage of the royalties. Music and the show business dominate the modern entertainment and lifestyle. We don?t need a strong economy to make people follow their favorite artists. Given the high prices of the CDs, which is very negative while the market suffers and helps only the piracy, more events and more concerts can be organized by the major labels, more aggressive promotions can be launched and larger percentages of the artist’s earnings can be with held by the labels. The labels have several ways to cover their financial loss. Under these circumstances, the artists have to pay the price and particularly the new starters who are not very competitive and have no other option except to follow their labels.

We don?t need to support the Pirate Bay with its anti-artist attitude. Most of its fans are indeed very open-minded and passionate to support a very groundbreaking progressive movement of getting music for free. Indeed abolishing the monetary system and finding new economic models, outside of the corrupted capitalism, is the only way out but this has to happen in every aspect of our everyday life and not only in music. ?Everything free for everyone? is a fair idea that has been expressed by several philosophers and projects such like the Zeitgeist Movement. Isolating music leads us back to the conservative path “arts are not jobs, artists do not deserve to get paid” which we have denounced.

Is the record industry an MLM system? It would be wrong to associate the music industry with the MLM companies but we realize that it does follow some rules of this hard-capitalist pyramid business system. At the top there are a few masterminds who hire managers, promoters, designers, advertisers and the product maker is the signed artist. Some musicians start their own record label, often attached to the major in order to seek other artists and invest on their music getting thus more earnings and more independence. The new artist in the future can follow the same way. That does not mean that the product ? the music is no good (there are more other factors that affect the inspiration nowadays and we have outlined that in previous posts) but profit reduces a lot the creativity especially when even the private life of the musicians is strictly controlled by their ?supervisors?.

What can be done right now? People keep on moaning, buyers are always angry with the CD prices and piracy thrives. Since the beginning of another social model is not an instant solution there are still other ideas. The prices of the CDs cannot be reduced because we have thousands of people involved in the label system. Why don’t we encourage the audience to support the independent artists, who can sell their work much cheaper? We should not fall in the trap “the famous is always the best” which is an idea the big industries has forced us to believe through the media and the advertisement (not only in music but in everything). Where is the freedom of choice when we have only a few choices given by the rich and powerful? Why are we so reluctant to take real action to improve our lives and the worst, why still people support conservative ideas that do not lead anywhere while it has been proven that the current economic system (and the music industry as a part of it) works only for those who are strong?

Rating: 6.0/6 (2 votes cast)