What the Music Industry is Doing Wrong

So today, during my daily stroll through the internet I came across a super short article with the headline: Universal Music’s Top Exec Declares Proudly: “We’re Not In The Art Business”

Now my first reaction to this statement was anger and outrage. It proved my idea that the music industry has become an assembly line for bland, over-processed, over-hyped garbage that they call “hits”. These big poop factories known as the major record labels all seek that one artist that will allow them to put any moderate talent (sometimes no talent at all) through the wringer and suck them dry for as long as that artist is alive. They focus on these “hit” artists and use them to drive the revenue of their business. This is how the recording industry got so big, but times are changing.

In college I read a book called “The Long Tail”. This explains that there are essentially two types of products, popular products and less popular products (please excuse my paraphrasing, haven’t read the book in a while). The popular products (Justin Bieber, Jay-z, Beetles,etc) sell in large numbers but the amount of products in this category are low. The less popular products sell in dramatically smaller numbers, but the amount of less popular products is limitless. Here’s a visual of what I’m talking about:

What does this even mean?

Now if I asked you which of these two pieces would you rather focus on, you will more than likely want to focus on the popular products, as they seem to be more profitable. That would be a safe assumption, and one that almost all major business have followed. However, the less popular products making up the seemingly infinite tail in this model has more power behind it than that of the popular products. As far as music goes even some of the worst music has fans, and when combined, the number of fans for less popular music is far greater than the number of fans for those few “hit artists”.

We are living in different times than these record labels are used to. The early industry had limited distribution methods, like vinyl, cassettes and cds, which meant if you wanted your music to be heard by more people than your hometown groupies you had to go through a label that had well established means of distribution. The record labels would bottleneck the artists seeking to make it, only releasing artists that they thought would sell. This worked out well for them until the internet came along. Now all artists seeking to make it have a chance to grow a fan base. Though not all artists will become multi-millionaires, if their product is good, the potential is there for most of the artists to earn a modest living. No more assembly line music. Real artists with real talent are finally going to make a comeback, it’s just a matter of time.

Music is more than a product, but it is more than just art. Music portrays our emotions, our desires, our fears and our souls, or at least the music I like.