Subtitle: The Method Behind the Manifesto
After years of trying to "get signed," I made the decision to concentrate on teaching, while still writing and performing on the side. However, I never let go of the "musical dogma" I had developed over those years. That is, the ideas pertaining to the commercial potential of a song, sticking to a certain musical genre, creating an "image" etc. Even though I no longer had a burning desire to get signed, these thoughts still colored my thinking and perception.
Over the past 3 or 4 years, I have spent quite a bit of time researching emerging methods unsigned artist can use to disseminate and promote their music. My initial motivation was that of convincing my students that they don't need to "get signed" in order to have a successful career. I've learned a lot, which is nothing new to readers of my blog, so I won't bore you with the details.
I have also developed a theory, for which I have little or no hard data, only my own observations. I believe that most people are much more eclectic in their musical tastes than the "Music Industry" would have you believe. For example, most of the people I know, whether they are musicians or non-musicians, have a wide variety of musical styles in their ipods and iTunes music libraries. I have also noticed a number of independent artists recently who are incorporating numerous genres into their music. This is most prevalent with artists in the Creative Commons movement (Jamendo,) but I'm even seeing it on MySpace. I've also met many people who are not musicians, but enjoy listening to more "challenging" music.
I also believe that the success of Susan Boyle calls into question nearly everything the industry has asked us to believe regarding "image" over the last 30 years. If you doubt this, go to allmusic.com and look at some of the artists who were successful before 1981 (the year MTV went on the air.) Some of those folks were not very pretty, but they were amazingly talented. In fact, many of them continually evolved as artists as well, and one album often sounded completely different from another. In fact, you might find a wide musical variety on one album. All of those things are "no-no's" by today's major-label standards. Here's a good example: Van Morrison would probably not get signed today.
I think we have quite a bit of ground to cover before we find a working business model for musical artists, but I do believe the old rules no longer apply. It's time to let go of old dogma!
2 comments:
here here!
hear hear!
peace and future....
So much of it seems to me to be about "how you relate to the market." The old rules are so much about a very fixed mass media relationship.. Frank Zappa used to talk about Suzie Cream Cheese.. as the kind of taste maker of the industry.. If we believe that it's essentially only the high school student who's consuming the music.. a person at a life stage where the roll of music has so much to do with defining identity in relationship to a peer group consisting of like.. "pot heads, jocks, preps, geeks, goths," etc.. and one imagines that that life stage, in that condition, might create a situation where genera monogamy makes sense.
Of course.. the internet changes how we form our identity.. not to mention that a side effect of file sharing, and the like.. is more exposure to more types of music, which would seem to lead to broadening tastes.
To further complicate matters.. selling records.. seems to have an unsafe future.. If your idea of how to make a living now comes to shows, merch, and the like.. well.. who goes to shows and buys the merch.. it might not be Suzie any more..
I'm lead into the Seth Godin sorta tribal marketing idea.. which I think is a lot about engagement.. seems to me that the kind of music that makes it in this context is stuff you have a strong connection to.. which.. which is a very different thing then the numbers game of the top 20 or so songs this week..
So the kind of watering down that makes things palatable to the widest possible audience.. and thus makes it.. less engaging to anyone.. (including the artist) seems sorta diametrically opposite to the direction things would seem to be going in..
or that's my 3 cents
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