The Music Industry

[Belated]

I love music, and I'm not a fan of the music industry's business model. Record companies especially piss me off, as does the RIAA. Terrible stuff is cranked out year after year, untalented, autotuned, played on the radio, and marketed to teens. I think we can all agree to this. Meanwhile, indie musicians (I know I'm supposed to call them "independent" because the two are apparently different things now, but I honestly couldn't give a shit) like to try "new" things, play the kinds of music they want to play, and put a lot of value on talent and passion and heart. Which is good.

Now, these musicians claim that the big industry is hurting music. Which sounds logical at first. After all, it's not easy to make it big, or get famous and popular and rich and spread your music across the world, unless you buy into the record companies and make "marketability" a factor in your style. With me so far? Good.

Here's the kicker though: Many of these independent musicians say that wanting to become famous and rich IS the problem. The desire for money and popularity takes the heart and soul out of the music. Wait, what?

Ok, so maybe striving for maximum profit DOES take the heart and soul out of music. But how exactly does this industry harm music any? It only harms THEIR music. It only makes the marketed stuff more likely to suck. The music industry is only hurting the music industry's music. If independent bands don't want to hit it big and get rich, then the industry isn't hurting THEM. They still have guitars and microphones and computers. They can still make music all they want whether the industry exists or not. I fail to see how this affects independent music.

TL;DR for the lazies: If you're a musician who doesn't care about making big money or getting famous, the music industry isn't hurting you any, because it's not stopping you from making music and releasing it the way you want to.

Let me make one thing clear: I am by no means a Conservative. I don't like my market free. I like it chained up and whipped and regulated until it learns to behave like a good girl. That said, I also have a need to make sense. So tell me, am I missing something here?

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

Hey look at me I'm an independent musician! So yeah my band released an album last year, it was alright... it was for fun, not profit. That out of the way...

The problem with the industry is that it's big, really big. When you want to start playing music but you don't want to make money, you usually instead want people to enjoy your music as much as you enjoy playing it. The idea of the performance and recording is to enable those around you to experience what you've created. When the industry gets this big, people stop caring about music as an art form. They hear only what's on the radio and they see musicians as industry workers rather than artists. The ceaseless production of for-profit-only music devalues the art as a whole. So that's perhaps the biggest way in which the industry is hurting music.

One other thing is that if an artist wants to spread their music to a larger number of people than what's available locally, they need a lot of money, a way to book venues, a way to sell tickets, etc. The idea of the record label is to provide that money and organization for a percentage of the profit, without becoming a part of the industry it's difficult and expensive to play a good number of shows outside your local area.

Off the top of my head that's probably my best response, though I'm sure I could go into more detail about the problems with our current system I still feel that the biggest problem is how the industry changes the general view on the artistic value and potential individuality of music as a whole.

 

[Vault101]

I love music, and I'm not a fan of the music industry's business model. Record companies especially piss me off, as does the RIAA. Terrible stuff is cranked out year after year, untalented, autotuned, played on the radio, and marketed to teens. I think we can all agree to this. Meanwhile, indie musicians (I know I'm supposed to call them "independent" because the two are apparently different things now, but I honestly couldn't give a shit) like to try "new" things, play the kinds of music they want to play, and put a lot of value on talent and passion and heart. Which is good.

?

eh?....this is new?

*shrug* its not that hard to find somthing that isnt on the top 40..it only requires alittle digging

 

[Jazoni89]

The record companies are hurting the industry by focusing on image and personality more than actual talent. This is why you see so very few actual bands on the top these days, it's harder to market a conglomeration of personalities to the viewer.

Anyway it's doing damage because talented people are more inhibited than ever before, they can't share their creations with the world. Music is very adaptive in nature, you take something other people did and give it your own flair. What kind of world will we live in where people are putting their own spin on Lady Gaga or LFMAO?

Actually I would say the advent of the internet has made it easier for talented artist's to be known.

While they are obviously Inhibited by the Mainstream, their are people like me, and you, who are willing to think outside the box, and be shown new musical experiences, and that is truly a great thing in and of itself.