There are no movie stars anymore. Except for oldsters, like Harrison Ford, who is 80, and Tom Cruise, who is 60. The paradigm shifted, the film is the star, not the actor. Which is why superhero movies can succeed. You're invested in the character, not the actor. The actors? They've been revealed to be narcissistic and vain two-dimensional thespians at best. This is what the internet has wrought. With so much information, their foibles have been revealed.
As for music, it used to be based on foibles. Bad boys and girls who marched to the beat of their own drummers. Who were distanced from regular society, who couldn't be controlled by regular society, who never kowtowed to regular society, and the public could not get enough of them. Of course there were two verticals in music, AM and FM. FM was for the mysterious speaking their truth, AM was pure commerce. Of course, FM acts occasionally crossed over to AM, but this happened most when the general public was still addicted to AM, when it had no access to FM, but by the middle seventies... Corporate rock, the invisible hand of the corporation then intervened, saw all that cash, delivered what it believed the market wanted, and it all imploded. Might have taken the better part of five years to blow apart, but 1979/80 was a disaster in the record business, Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" was number one for six weeks, but the story was how few copies it sold compared to its progenitors. And then came MTV.
The change in the movie business happened about the same time, with "Jaws" and "Star Wars" ushering in the era where money was king, basically everything, and the kind of pictures made were skewed. The seventies rode out on a bunch of prestige pictures, but by time the eighties launched, the pendulum had swung. Money came first, appeal to as many as possible.
And television was AM to the movies' FM. But it was in the eighties that cable outlets started to make original programming. Took years to flower, but when "The Sopranos" was launched in 1999 the dam broke, and we've been living in a heyday of television ever since. And like the movies of yore, series are based on story, not star power. With so many offerings people want to watch something good, not the latest project by their favorite star, like they used to do with movies. Will this golden age of television continue? That's questionable, there's sudden attention to the bottom line and Netflix is now focusing on mainstream fare as opposed to the highbrow projects that brought respect in the past ten years. Could this have something to do with the halt in stratospheric sign-ups? Possibly, but just like in the cell phone business, there are only so many customers. However, I've noticed a marked decrease in the discussion of television shows recently. Of course, with the "end" of Covid and a return to normalcy people may have less time to watch, but somehow streaming TV is losing its cachet, and the focus is on politics, which are vital in a way movies and music used to be, so much is at stake, and it's a visceral experience. Used to be you didn't have to pay attention to politics, but now everybody does. Everybody!
So once the internet came along and revealed so much about entertainers, the public became less enamored. There was a flattening of society. People in local burgs believed they had talent and were just as good as the stars and with new digital tools they started to play, to the point where there's so much in the pipeline that it's incomprehensible, one can only take a stab at what's going on, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
So to triumph in today's world you have to employ some of the tricks of the pre-internet era. You have to be less available, reveal less, be less connected to your audience, so you can be believed in. That's one of the reasons the K-pop acts are so successful, they don't speak English, you can invest in them whatever hopes and dreams you want to. Believe me, if you actually meet stars, whether they be actors or musicians, they very rarely live up to the rep, the vision in your head. You may be in love with them from afar, but when you connect you find out they're just like you and your neighbors, only more flawed. It's an image, and not much more. There are exceptions, but few.
So being allowed to expose themselves, everybody in entertainment decided to become overexposed. But none could do it as well as Kim Kardashian, who broke via a sex tape, which used to be a career killer. Almost nothing is taboo anymore, nothing a bridge too far, even racist comments, you may be excoriated by half of the population, but you may be embraced by the other half.
And it's all in the name of money. There's endless begging. Buy this, buy that. The product is irrelevant, you, as a fan, owe me. This is my business. I say the item is great even if it isn't. And then move on to the next. Credibility is history. And when the past president of the United States lies incessantly... What you have is 30% of the public that are blind followers, Trump can do no wrong. Which is the same with BTS and Taylor Swift and so many. They command armies. Cross them at your peril.
And the bottom line is always cash. Always. Record labels remix records not to make them better, but to make them more commercial. Marketing costs are so high they don't want to take a risk. In the old days, the acts were kings and queens, the labels had to put out what the artists delivered, unchanged.
A return to the past is a fool's errand. Certain elements of the past come back, but always with a twist. But there's no way society is getting smaller in the future, no way we're disconnected. The world is shrinking, you can reach out and touch everybody you've ever known. The oldsters tell us about loneliness, but the truth is you know and are in contact with more people than ever before. The media and its journalists are stuck in the past.
When they're not playing to the fans themselves. That's the story of Fox News. The news! Cross the public at your peril. That was the story of the Dominion case. It's all about ratings, money, and if you don't give people what they want... Steve Jobs famously said the public doesn't know what it wants, that you've got to show them, deliver it. That used to be the mantra in entertainment, now everybody and everything is sold out. Funny how Jobs is more memorable than any contemporaneous artist.
And let's not forget that when Jobs owned Pixar every single movie was a success. The focus was on getting it exactly right. And every picture was innovative and different. This is the old music paradigm. But that's been shot to hell. All producers have lowered their standards. And are stunned when some outside endeavor succeeds. It's always about quality and vision. That's the essence of "Squid Game," so innovative that you can't even describe it to someone. And the breakthrough of "The Bear" is the second season is completely different from the first. This is not "Cheers," where the location never changes and it's about petty issues amongst the characters, no, the second season of "The Bear" starts with a new restaurant, new love, characters evolve, you don't think you've seen it before. And with so much today you think you've seen or heard it before.
So the professionals have ceded production to the amateurs. That's where the eyeballs are, on TikTok, far exceeding the time spent on streaming platforms. Doesn't matter what you think, the public is addicted to nobodies being innovative in ways the usual suspect purveyors are not. Furthermore, the music business no longer even develops acts, they just poach from TikTok, you build it and they invest in it, they refuse to take risk from dollar one, that's not the business they're in.
As for the older performers... Everyone in music with a portfolio seems to be selling it. Talking about coming tax changes that have never arisen, just like the carried interest rule has never been changed. They fought for creative control and now they are ceding it. And it's all about business, believe me, Bob Dylan wishes he had held back and sold now, he would have gotten more money, whereas it used to never be about sales/money with Dylan, but cultural impact.
So the movie and music businesses are calcified. Which is why Netflix ate Hollywood's lunch and indies keep gaining market share. The old players want no change. They just want a continuous gravy train.
Meanwhile, the TikTok performers sell out to become actors and it never works, because that's not what they were selling to begin with, which was innovation and authenticity. They needed to stay where they were, but they couldn't turn down the bucks. Then again, everything is about the bucks.
The above leaves lots of holes, many points of entry for outsiders. But to succeed you can't do it their way, but your way. And that means slowly. More slowly than ever before. And it can't be about money, because you can never make as much as the tech titans making music. What you've got is the ability to touch hearts and minds and speak truth to power. Believe me, this is no longer the sixties, the studios and record labels are out of touch, even though they believe otherwise. They're so busy watching their ledgers that they've sacrificed the bleeding edge, the evolution that sustained them. Movies were being killed by TV until the younger generation came along with "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate" and "The Godfather"... Turned out if you gave the young 'uns the reins, you ended up with something better. But it was a risk. And the funny thing is production is much cheaper in the music business, but there's still no risk. Because the labels no longer know how to sell. They know terrestrial radio, which is dying. They have relationships with the music streaming outlets, but none of them break artists, that happens on TikTok and elsewhere online. To start from ground zero and build it, that's just too difficult.
That's your job.
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