Out With The Old, In With The…Old

I want this post to be about the discovery of new music. That's what I want, but the thoughts in my head are such a jumble that I worry they won't come out right…or, even coherently. Still, we press on.  To wit…

The Nostalgia Part:  How many of you remember when listening to music WAS the activity? Not, listening to music while you work out, or listening to music while you cook, or listening to music while you study…just listening. If you do remember, you're likely at least 35, and you also remember bean bags and dens. You'd get home from the record store, peel the cellophane off your newly-purchased LP, and put that baby on the rec-room hi-fi, passing the sleeve around and gleaning all the details you could. Who was the producer? Was it someone you recognized? Who played what? Who wrote which songs? If you're a little older, maybe you passed around a joint or some beers cadged from your parents' 'fridge. For me, it was just the innocence of being a pre-teenager during the Golden Age of the album: getting high off the music, always the music. Now, of course, it's rare to consider "listening" an activity all its own. Music is so available, so ubiquitous, that we've lost contact with the special nature of it. The magic, as they say, is gone. Instead of a treasured cache of a couple dozen albums, we carry around a library of thousands of songs in our pockets. Music blares at us in the store, on the sidewalk, at the gym. It's everywhere…and it's as nothing.

The Anarchy Part: To use a harsh phrase, we used to be slaves to the record companies. Label presidents - through their A&R departments - decided which bands would be recorded, which means they decided which bands we got to hear. Hopefully talent would rise to the top, but obviously that wasn't always the case. Connections mattered, persistence mattered, chutzpah mattered…geez, if talent was all it took, even my beloved Kiss likely wouldn't have made it! The point is: if it wasn't on the radio or a record, you likely didn't hear it. Period. Now, though…hell, anyone with a laptop can get his music "out there." A laptop, a microphone, some drum loops and any sort of mediocre guitar/piano skills, and with a free Audacity download you can have your album recorded and "distributed" online for the world to hear. It's liberating, it's exhilarating…and it's total chaos.  It's as if we let the lunatics out of the asylum, and they're running rampant through the streets. If all you want to hear are songs based on Dr. Who, just enter "trock songs" into Google and BOOM! instant playlist. Search "Aviator Shades" on iTunes, and not only will you discover an amazing hard-rock band from western Canada, but you'll also be given helpful suggestions as to what ELSE you might like. There's so much signal, it's as if every radio station that ever was, was broadcasting every song ever written, ALL. THE. TIME. It's freedom…and, it's terrifying.

The Sales Part: A recent article, trending all over my Facebook feed for a few days, reported that back-catalog sales eclipsed those of new music for the first time in 2014. It's described as a "worrying trend," but it makes me wonder: who actually BUYS music these days? Anyone under 30? Anyone? Bueller? Okay, you get the idea. I think part of it is the resurgence of vinyl: rather than scouring used-record stores for a "decent" copy of Fleetwod Mac's Rumors, I can just buy a brand-new 180-gram reissue? Yes, please! I think another part of it is the new life "legacy" bands have discovered via social media. What's that? Starz is back in the studio working on a new album? Oh, let me relive my youth by going to iTunes and buying all their old records (less than $40, plus the option of snatching up a whole bunch of live albums). A lot of folks opined that this trend might reflect a lack of quality with regards to new music. But, really: is Rock Or Bust somehow of lesser quality than Highway To Hell? Are you sure that's not just nostalgia talking? Plus, see The Anarchy Part above: in 1985, I had access to maybe ten or a dozen bands whose product I liked enough to actually buy. Today, it's more like FIFTY bands…and, of course, finances are limited. Especially when I'm buying Love Gun in its newly-remastered, newly-reissued version for, what, the fifth or sixth time? Societally, we've devalued music (see the last blog post), so that an album that cost $7.99 in 1985 costs about the same 30 years later. Um…where does inflation figure into that?!? (A quick check reveals that what cost $1 in 1985 should cost $2.23 now.) But, even with the price of physical music cut in half, the amount of music that's available would quickly overwhelm my household budget. 

The Point: As I feared, I've gotten radically off-track. I'm trying to introduce logic and reason into something that ought to be visceral and primal: that listening to music is a thing to do in and of itself. The quality of music hasn't diminished so much as our options for consuming it have exploded. Iron Fist is part of the problem: we're an indie band, unleashing our music into the chaos of the maelstrom. Our solution is to make our songs so good, so positive and uplifting and fist-pumpingly amazing, that we'll cut through the signal and melt your headphones to your ears. All you have to do is listen. Treat yourself: go out and buy a NEW record (or CD, or mp3…), and remember that great music, like fine wine, ought to be worth the expense.

The Price of Art

I recently read a longish article in The New Yorker about Spotify and its founder, Daniel Ek.  It provided me much food for thought, which I'll share below.  I think it's important - but not necessary - to read the original article first, so here's the link to the online version:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/revenue-streams

As I said, it's longish, but if you have an interest in music, or even just technology, I think you'll find it interesting.  These are the ideas that spun out of MY brain after reading it.

Throughout the article, Ek insists on referring to music as a "commodity," and he speaks of his website in business terms.  He paints himself as a "friend" of music, but in all his chosen language I get the sense that what he's really after is a cool thing to do for 5 years or so, a thing that will hopefully net him a hefty paycheck.  That's cool.  I got nuthin' against someone wants to make bank. But I disagree wholly with the concept that music is a "commodity."  It's not: it's an art.  Someone creates something new, where there was previously nothing.  I'd have a hard time coming up with a BETTER definition of "art" than that.  Certainly, the end result of creating art is to have a "product" to show for it:  "Look, I created art, and the product is paint on a canvas! Which I now hope to sell! For a lot of money!!"  I'm not dumb, or overly-naïve:  I get it.  Hey, Iron Fist is in that boat, too!  We want to have a product (an album) that is the result of our art, and certainly, we want to sell it to as many people as we can.  No question.  But missing from Ek's whole hypothesis is the one thing I'm asking YOU, the reader, to stipulate:  that music begins as someone's artistic statement.  I don't really care if you're Igor Stravinsky or Jon Bon Jovi…if your music fills a previous silence, then you've created art.  Next…!

Unlike most other art forms, music is intangible.  There IS an "item" you can hold:  an album, say.  Books are like that, too.  You can go and buy you the newest Stephen King book, and hold it in your hand.  But…BUT!…there are many, many "copies" of that art.  A painting isn't like that:  there is but ONE Mona Lisa.  Oh, sure, you can find that vague smile adorning everything from posters to coffee mugs…but there is still only ONE "real thing."  No one copy of Kiss "Destroyer" is the "real thing," any more than a singly copy of "Cujo" is the "real thing." Each individual copy is the SAME thing…making those art forms more like clones of each other, with perhaps the only "original" existing as, I don't know, a file on a computer.  So: a single copy of Water Lilies, 30-some-odd million copies of "Thriller."

The creator of a tangible art form is paid once for it.  If Monet completed a painting, and then he sold it, that's the only money he ever saw from his artistic statement.  Likewise, anyone who owned that painting, and then sold it later, only got paid once.  It strikes me that that's why some art is, like, ridiculously valuable.  There might be X number of Jackson Pollock "splatter" paintings, but there's only ONE of each.  And, when one sells, it's for tens of millions of dollars.  What if…what if Bon Jovi wrote "Livin' On A Prayer," and then sold it…to JUST ONE PERSON??  And that was the ONLY copy in existence?  I would think Jon et. al. would have been paid a pretty decent price for that song…as would each successive seller.  Seems silly when you apply it to music, doesn't it?  And yet: still art.

What Spotify does is RENT music.  You pay a fee, and then you get access to all the songs on the site. That's what streaming is: renting the art.  What if that worked for jewelry?  ARE there places you can go to rent jewelry?  It seems likely that in fact there are, although I've not heard of any personally.  But, then how does the jeweler get paid?  And I mean, the person who CREATED the jewelry, not the store owner.  A person makes a pair of earrings, sells 'em at an art fair, and that's the money he makes.  If he sells the earrings to a store owner, who then rents the earrings - for a fee! - then what does that jewelry-renting business have to do with artistic creativity?  Nothing.  Just some guy, comes along and says "Hey, I can afford to buy all this stuff from the art fair, now I'll open a shop and rent it all out!"  That's not art…that's just business.  Any profits from which are certainly not shared with the original creator.

That's the thing with music: a musician can only create a song ONCE.  Then, he has to sell it…but, by the nature of musical art, he has to sell it again and again and again, for a little money each time.  The song gets played on the radio: musician gets paid (well, the WRITER does, at least).  The song gets played live in concert: the musician/writer gets paid.  The very intangible nature of music is why you don't have to pay $100,000 to listen to "Livin' On A Prayer."  You buy the album, once, for not much money.  Or, you buy the single, once, for even less.  Or, you just hear it on the radio.  For "free," if you're willing to put up with the inane jibba-jabba by the DJ.  The point is, it's not a one-of-a-kind item, and the artist is paid accordingly.  But he IS still PAID.

Let's reverse this whole thing:  what if, instead of a museum paying an exorbitant amount for a work by a living artist, the artist simply GAVE the painting to the museum?  But then, the museum installed software that calculated how long each person looked at the painting? THEN, the artist was paid for the total number of seconds his painting was looked at? THAT is the closest switcheroo between the world of music and visual art!  That's how musical artists are paid.  Each album or song purchase represents one "look," and the musician is paid for the accumulated number of looks. And, one would HOPE, the better the art, the more looks, and the higher the pay.

Spotify and its ilk want to dismantle this whole system.  And - who am I kidding! - most of society wants to as well.  We've moved to a world where music is just a "thing" you "consume," and we've decided that the price for this "commodity" ought to be "free."  Go down the resultant slippery slope, and you'll certainly find a whole host of amateur artists who are willing to give the results of their hobby away for free; but the really GREAT art, the art that's created by professionals who rely on the income their artistic statements generate…well, that art will slowly wither away.  Music is art; music should not be free.