The Death of the Music Industry

Don't let the title make you panic. It's not really the death of the music industry. Actually, it's very likely that the artists you love will be able to make more money off of their work than ever before. Really what we're looking at is a reformation of the industry*, a trend towards a less and less centralized system.

(*I never did like the term “music industry” on a fundamental level anyway. Just the semantics of it, you know? Music is an art, making cars or canning corn is an “industry.”)

We all know the old model of shooting to rock stardom, since it has been portrayed in pop culture so much it really ought to have it's own entry on TVTropes.org: Broke, starving artist/s is/are playing in some dive/honky tonk/shit-hole when he/she/they is/are “discovered” by a slick fast talking businessman/manager/agent whose connections in the aforementioned industry gets the artist/s on the radio/magazine covers/television interviews/MTV in exchange for eternal friendship a sizable share of the money he/she/they make/s. Oh, and the industry gets a bunch of money, too. Most of it, actually.

This is a solid system that has been proven to work since early last century, right? It's developed alongside modern society: It's how we heard of Elvis, Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and everyone else all the way up to Eminem or even Waka Flocka Flame. 

(Quiz: One of these artists has a name that sounds like something a Muppet would say. Which one? Surprisingly it isn't the one whose name is a homonym with delicious candy-coated chocolate.) 

So what could possibly topple the giants of the industry like Interscope and Atlantic Records from their lofty, diamond-studded perches? If you don't know the answer to that already then I have no idea how you even managed to read this. It's the motherfucking INTERNET, with all them razzle-dazzle kids these days with their memes and their ogre-ing and their Irate Birds. 

The internet has taken this business model and turned it right on its head, and now it's shaking it upside down so that change falls out of its pockets and its shirt falls over its face so everyone can point and laugh at its pasty white belly and unusually hairy nipples. It's an elaborate metaphor, but I think you get the idea. The music industry has served an important function by making use of established media avenues to gain exposure for the artists whose music they're trying to sell, and that's all well and good. 

Except that the very media they have connections with for promotional purposes are ALSO dying. 

Do you read newspapers? 
You're probably over 40. 

Do you go to the record store? 
Still over 40. Maybe 30. 

Do you listen to the radio? 
Dude, get an mp3 player already. It's been, like, a decade or something, hasn't it? 

Do you watch music videos on MTV? 
Where did you get your time machine? 

If you are really passionate about the music you listen to, enough that you follow its progression and keep track of your favorite artists, odds are that you've replaced each of these previous things with one or all of these following things: 

Blogs: 
2dopeboyz, OnSmash (or FreeOnSmash, rather), The Hype Machine, Pretty Much Amazing, etc... (One of my favorites is Pigeons and Planes, for their independent eclecticism) 

Internet radio: 
Pandora, iHeartRadio, Last.fm, Grooveshark, etc... 

Downloadable music: 
iTunes Music Store, Amazon MP3 (legal) OR: TPB, MediaFire, HulkShare, FilesTube, or (as a prominent example) the now-defunct MegaUpload (“alternative”) 

Streaming Video (music videos, footage of interviews, live performances, etc.): 
Freakin' YouTube. Duh. Oh, there's lesser sites like Vimeo, but seriously, YouTube's pretty much the only one you need to know, as long as what you're looking for is “acceptable” according to their Terms of Service. 

Honorable Mention: 
DatPiff, where hip-hop artists release their free mixtapes for streaming and download. Self-promotion, baby, and if it ain't quality, nobody will download it.  Okay, that's not entirely true.  But quality will still tend to attract a lot of attention. Very Darwinian. 

Now, I know what you're saying. “How are the artists supposed to make more money if they supposedly get smaller shares of internet royalties, or if people just download all their music for free?” And that's the big question that still needs an answer. 

Parenthetically, Radiohead was on to something with their album “In Rainbows,” which if you didn't hear about, you should do some reading. 

HINT—Here's the notable quote from the second article: “According to reports most fans chose to pay nothing to download the album. However, it still generated more money before it was physically released (on December 31) than the total money generated by sales of the band's previous album, 2003's 'Hail To The Thief'.” [emphasis mine] 

And it all has an upside: although big artists may not make as much money (though they still might), more small artists will have an easier time getting exposure and becoming accessible to their target audiences. Artists that have shunned (or been shunned by) the mainstream like Tech N9ne or Slug (of Atmosphere fame) had to struggle through local shows and small-time bullshit for years before forming the specific—but very hardcore—fan bases that they have today. With the rise of Web 2.0, the next generation of independent music artists may not have to eat quite as much Ramen as their predecessors did. 

And that's a good thing. Really. It is. 

And beyond that, the internet has made it possible for fans to actually be the financial backers of the artists they adore through crowdfunding. As early as 1996, English rock band Marillion went online to ask fans for money so that they could fund a tour in the United States. What, you've never heard of Marillion? Neither had I, but they still managed to raise $60,000 and go on their US tour. 

All this happened before Kickstarter was even a thing. But now that it is, it's that much easier for artists to ask for and get the money they need to finance their creative endeavors. But what if you're not a very charitable person, and the thought of just giving away your hard-earned money makes you sick? What if you want something back for what you put in? Well, in 2006 the people over at Sellaband must have thought of this because they give you the option to invest in the artist, in return getting free downloads, swag, and maybe even a share of the profits. 

So, is there anything that a big record company can offer an artist that they can't get from people who actually like their music via the internet? 

Hip-hop artist Macklemore, who recently appeared on the cover of XXL as one of their 2012 Freshmen, has insisted in the past that he will never sign with a major label (and he hasn't, to my knowledge). Up until this year, he hadn't even gotten the kind of coverage on most hip-hop blogs (and definitely not on your TV or radio) as other up-and-comers like Kendrick Lamar or Mac Miller. And yet, internet buzz alone helped him to sell out shows all the fuck over the United States. Months before anyone put his ass in a magazine. 

And that's where the real future is. For those of you who buy into the whole “history is cyclical” thing, good news: live performances are coming back into prominence. Recorded music is losing its novelty, and the thrill of hearing a recording is not the same as it must have been when your grandfather broke the seal on his first phonograph record. We're used to that shit now, so for the real fans and the real lovers of music the complete experience comes from seeing the artist perform it live, whether they're as big as Jay-Z or just unsigned hype. 

And we're already seeing signs of success for small artists. There has been a serious explosion of new artists coming onto the scene, so many more than you could really keep track of, and hip-hop in particular has already been branching out into so many new sub-genres that you couldn't really keep track of them, either. The same thing happened to rock and roll: The Beatles and Nirvana were both great rock bands who sounded nothing at all like each other, but both came from the same roots and fall under the same sweeping term. The variety emerging from hip-hop will prove just as rich a ground for innovative new artists to explore the vast frontier that is new music. 

Some people are fighting against this brave new world of information sharing, clawing to keep things as exploitative and bureaucratized as they've been in recent decades, which they do by calling on the US government to shut down their uprising competitors (what exactly it is that places the World Wide Web under United States legal jurisdiction is a debate that has yet to be resolved. It's hard to come up with a compelling logical reply to “Because we said so”). Others embrace the new direction the industry (ugh, what an ugly word) is moving in, like the good (chaotic neutral?) people over at Anonymous, who have recently launched a (rather clunky) beta of AnonTune, what is intended to be a sort of social network combined with music streaming service (which cleverly dodges any legal problems by not hosting any of the copyrighted content, opting instead to make use of existing streaming services like SoundCloud or YouTube). 

Will AnonTune prevail or go the way of Napster and Megaupload? Is it on the verge of discovering the new business model or is it just more floundering through the dark? Time will tell. 

I for one am excited to see the direction that music moves in as the industry as we know it topples and the distance between artists and their fans continually shrinks. I don't see how so many people, even among the more established artists, have been fooled into thinking this is a bad thing. It's not. 

And let's face it, the big labels are kind of dicks anyway. Just ask the-artist-once-again-known-as-Prince, Lupe Fiasco, or any member of Slaughterhouse. 

And for bonus reading, here's an article in which a law professor explains why illegally downloading music cannot possibly constitute theft.