It was said at the turn of the century that Napster would be the death of the major labels. That did not turn out to be the case, but Spotify, et al, along with YouTube and TikTok, the internet in general, is destroying the major labels and the only thing they seem capable of doing is doubling-down on their previous paradigm.
Everything was fine and groovy during the AM heyday of the sixties. Top Forty ruled. There were a limited number of hits and singles were everything.
And then along came FM. Which played completely different music, and featured album cuts, and suddenly albums became more important than singles.
And then came MTV. For a minute there, the old acts triumphed, but new acts harnessed the power of the medium to success. The breakthrough was Duran Duran... An expensive, exotic video could drive a hit to the top of the chart. It became about visuals. It became about the track. The single was once again triumphant. Sure, the goal was still to sell albums, but the labels achieved this by cutting out singles, if they were released at all, and making customers buy the entire album. This is one of the reasons Napster triumphed, finally you could get the song you wanted without overpaying for the rest of the dreck. Assuming you downloaded back then, you first went for singles you wanted to own but could never rationalize buying the album for, like "Liar" by Argent... I was never going to buy that LP, even though I purchased the act's third album "All Together Now," I yearned to hear the song on the radio, it had an indelible place in my mind, and now I had it and could play it whenever I wanted to, and I did.
And for a while there, it appeared that the internet was all about the single. But something has happened in the ensuing decade, since the launch of Spotify, the album has become more important.
Don't get me wrong, singles are still stratospheric. But dedicated music fans want more, and they don't even care if there is a single.
But the major labels refuse to feed this growing sphere, believing that a hit single is everything, the only way to drive consumption, and therefore it's best to focus on moonshots, massaging the product, trying to create something that climbs the Spotify Top 50, when hits have never meant less.
Let me be clear, I don't want to denigrate hits, there's nothing wrong with a successful song, but this paradigm of single hits is not the one that will grow the business, and it's not the one that hard core music fans want, the ones who spread the word and keep the business going and growing.
On streaming services everything is equal. Majors and their sycophants don't want to admit this. They don't want to acknowledge that they have no power. But there's no dominant terrestrial radio like in the days of yore, there's no dominant music video medium, like MTV, all tracks begin from the same starting line.
And when this is the case we find that the audience wants a broader spectrum of acts and musical styles.
We only have to look at every other vertical online to see this.
News... Numerous sources, with no overarching outlet.
A zillion different influencers and videos on TikTok.
This is the world we're living in, one of overwhelming choice, one in which you don't have to consume that which you don't like, only that which you do like, and the majors are putting out fewer records in narrow genres. Sure, hip-hop and pop might be the largest genres left, but they're shrinking, and the majors are yielding every other style of music to the indies.
The last universal hit act we had was Adele.
As for Taylor Swift, she actually made her bones in country, in a controlled market, she's more akin to Coldplay and the Dave Matthews Band than the acts of the past decade or so.
No other act sounded like Adele and no act has come along to replicate her success. Think about that, Adele is unique, to the point where she can't be copied.
But don't expect more Adeles, and certainly not more Taylor Swifts. Because the market has fragmented, and no one in the record business wants to admit this. They want us to believe that everybody is consuming the hits, just like in the past, when nothing could be further from the truth. And when you point this out, you're a hater. Look at Swift's chart success, look at her grosses! Yes, but how many people know her music?
And I only single out Swift because she is at the top of the heap, she is the industry's darling, the acts below her have even narrower reach.
Why do Spotify, YouTube and TikTok succeed? Because they're all things to all people. Once again, distribution is king, and they're distributors.
But as far as purveyors go...
Music is akin to tech in that if you're not innovating and growing you fall by the wayside. Unlike tech, in music your past still has value, but the music business runs on the new, and this is where the majors are faltering.
Believe me, people are making new music of different stripes all day long and distributing it via the platforms above. However, the best and the brightest are not going into music because it's seen as a backwater that no longer drives the culture. Today's recorded music business is akin to Biden and his ultimate replacement by Harris, Sure, there were fans of Biden. And his circle, his seconds, were saying everything was great when it wasn't, just like the major labels. And as soon as the screw turned, when Biden stepped down and Harris replaced him, there was this incredible excitement and surge of support.
That was the Beatles. They didn't sound like anything that came before them. They revolutionized the business. They were inescapable, they owned it. They were not created by idolmakers, they were not empty vessels, and they kept on pushing the envelope.
Where are these beacons in music today?
I can't see them.
So there's no one to follow.
The public has been sold the canard that divas are everything. That brand maximization is everything. That merch is a great revenue source. There's no road for and appreciation of people who are just musicians. And therefore inspiration is stilted.
But that does not mean there isn't a latent desire for more on the part of the public. But it's got to be different. This was the key to success of Netflix, its hit shows could not be seen anywhere else, not even HBO. Netflix threw the long ball, made shows the public could not even conceive of. The major labels?
Robert Kyncl has it wrong. He shouldn't have made Elliott Grainge head of Atlantic, but a talent buyer. All the innovation, demonstration of career traction, happens live these days. When I talk to Don Strasburg he tells me about acts selling tickets that not only have I not heard of, but don't have major label deals. This is where the rubber meets the road, at the box office.
As far as finding the rapper du jour, putting him or her together with the producer du jour, after having the song written by committee... That could possibly drive a hit, but the odds of having a career are not long. Furthermore, the more people you put on the project, the more it loses its soul. In tech it's been proven that small teams write software faster and better than large teams. The same rule applies to music, both involve inspiration and creativity.
It all comes down to the talent. If you can find it, it's not that hard to sell. In other words, the major label skill set has never meant less. It's finding an act people want to listen to, want to embrace, that is hard. But rather than looking for this, the majors are looking for shortcuts, instant success, essentially doing the same thing they've done for decades.
But the majors believe their catalogs make them immune, just like the movie studios. And in the past this was true, the largest and most successful independent movie company, Carolco, went bankrupt without a library of old films. And the movie studios put out fewer and fewer high concept films in narrower genres and then...
Netflix came along to eat its lunch. Aided by cheaper flat screens at bigger sizes and higher resolutions. And Covid... Which put the stake in the heart of the theatre business.
In other words, the studios were cruising until they crashed.
Which is the story of Warner Bros. Discovery, which just took a $9.1 billion charge because its traditional TV business cratered. Zaslav cut production, was so busy balancing the books, retiring debt, that he lost control of the entire enterprise. What is TNT without the NBA? Marginalizing HBO. The list goes on and on. It's not like the handwriting wasn't on the wall, Zaslav was inured to the old model and it was dying. As far as matching the NBA's new offer, Warner Bros. Discovery can't, because Amazon has assets and capabilities WBD does not!
How do you lose a fortune? Very slowly, and then all at once.
This is how Biden lost the nomination. This is the future of the major labels. What they are providing is not what the public wants. The public wants a vast cornucopia of music, not all of it accepted worldwide en masse. Then again, it is a worldwide market, and streaming has made distribution and monetization cheaper. The systems keep changing, the audience has abandoned the past and the major labels are still doing the same as they've ever done.
Point me to one other business where this has worked. Eventually you hit a wall, you've got to change.
Maybe Greenwald had to go, maybe she needed to be replaced, but Grainge is closer to her than anything that squares with the new business.
And if you know the road titans... They're anything but flash. Rapino, Marciano, Capshaw, all the people making beaucoup bucks via the road, they're not in the gossip columns, they don't show up in the right places and it's rare that you even see articles about them. They know the penumbra is irrelevant, they're focusing on the business as it presently exists. Look at Irving Azoff... He once ran a major label, had his own independent with a major, but now he's building and managing venues with Tim Leiweke as the Oak View Group.
You've got to put your finger to the wind, you've got to read the tea leaves, the world changes and if you don't change with it...
You die.
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