Industry information that you can actually use
June 2004
Music In Space (or, Screw the Majors - But Use Protection)
MUSIC IN SPACE
(or, Screw The Majors - But Use Protection)
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By Moses Avalon
June 21st - 2004. History was made this month. A man named Mike Melvill flew a ship over 62 miles above the Earth and returned safely. It's been called "the first privately funded manned space flight" and is being compared to the Wright Brothers historic flight at Kitty Hawk.
It's easy, given the glitz of media attention focused on the War, to overlook the significance of this event for indie artists. So I'm taking a minute to write about it.
Those of you who are old enough to have the word "Apollo" mean more than a club in Harlem will take notice that our space program is in serious decline. If the same government agencies were to unite to put a man on the moon today, it would cost some trillions of dollars, instead of the $5 Billion or so it cost back in the late 1960s. That's why for the past 20 years our space program has moved backwards, turning itself into an annex for the Military. Today's "privately funded " flight cost less than $10 million. Paid for by a co-founder of Microsoft, this small price tag left him enough cash to take everyone out to IHOP afterward.
Back in the day of the moon flights, futurists predicted that by the year 2000 we would have colonies on Mars and space stations where private citizens would live and procreate freely. It was a great time to be part of the future. How wrong they all were. These were pretty smart guys and they were really, really wrong. They hadn't foreseen what one journalist who reviewed Confessions of a Record Producer called the "Avalon Rule of Technology:"
"While technology seems to progress at the speed of light, its application is filtered through the speed of bureaucracy." (I hate quoting myself, but sometimes I got no choice.)
Internet gurus who claimed in 1996 that we'd have legalized music on demand ("celestial jukeboxes" as the saying went) within five years, did not impress me. They ignored the Avalon Rule. (In their defense it had not been written yet.) They still ignore it today, making wild claims about the future of music, misleading artists, ignoring some basic facts of economics and replacing it with a pathological optimism about things that will happen simply because they want it to.
We ARE staring down the barrel of the new music business model- true. CDs will probably be replaced by DVDs in the very near future; there will be much catalog music available via easily accessible and legal downloading stations, but not enough to significantly effect a major artist's royalty statements for years to come. Indie artists, although the internet has given them a great competitive edge, are still faced with the same challenges of getting media attention for their work. Majors continue to bottle-neck every distribution system they touch.
None of this will change much in our productive life-times. (i.e.: the next 5-15 years.) Beyond that, it's anyone's guess. Economics will dictate the future more than innovation. I can promise that.
Case in point: today's "space flight" was not accomplished with new technology. In fact the basic principals go back to the days of dropping gliders off a B-52 (1960s). The reason this thing took so long to reach the private sector was the declassification of certain NASA research and the government licensing for the activity. And why did they finally allow a private company to claim a slice of sky?
So expensive is space flight in the new millennium that even the most highly funded agencies in the US government, NASA and the Military, have all but abandoned it. Today we have shuttle flights that are so routine that we don't even interrupt the news for more than a day when a tragic accident happens. Private industry had to take it over and do for a penny what the Feds can't even do for a dollar. It's going to be grand, and I have no doubt that in ten years or so, when a private company puts a working wheel in space it's going to create a massive movement. The futurists of the 1960s who thought we would already be there, people like Isaac Asimov, will be resurrected.
The futurists of the music world are also exciting to listen to: they talk of a day "soon to come" when major labels will be dead because the artist will be able to distribute directly. They talk of days when PROs like ASCAP or BMI will be dead because people will license their music directly to the end user. Keep dreaming. If this day is to come it is so far down the road that planning your career around the philosophy will surely keep you in the poor-house.
Add this fourth lie to my other big three that are posted on the front page of MusicDish.com this month: "Major labels are dying." So untrue. They are consolidating. There is a big difference. In the long run it usually means MORE power for the entity, not less. Trimming the fat is good, not bad. People who see it as a death march are usually the ones who had high-paying jobs in the old structure. They are the shoe-makers of yesteryear still wishing that cobblers sewed leather and lamenting over the poor quality of shoes today. Poor soles. That crap piece on Frontline about the "dying music industry"?!? Almost everyone interviewed in that piece was an example of what I'm talking about. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/)
So don't alienate the banks of the industry because some unemployed label guy is bitter or some anarchist "futurist" thinks that the company he owns stock in will defeat a 75 year old business model with a few micro-chips. He's dreaming. Look and learn an important lesson from this "space flight" today. It's a new world, but it's an old game.
I don't say "screw the majors." I'm not anti-major label to the extreme. I want to see artists take control of their careers and their copyrights, but I don't want them to alienate their biggest shot at quitting their day job.
I say, "screw the majors. BUT USE PROTECTION." We need these gorillas believe it or not.
Optimists excite us, but are rarely correct when it comes to the time line of things. Cynics, while often discomforting to listen to, are usually more on target.
Whose advice do you want to bank your career on?
OBITUARIES
I'm sure you know this already but... Ray Charles is no longer available for live gigs. It stopped my heart and brought tears to my eyes. The only good news about his death is that it momentarily preempted Fox's one-sided coverage of the War and its relentless medley of Reagan's funeral march. Ronald Reagan - Yes. While we're at it, let's commemorate the death of a former president whose administration was responsible for the largest cut in financing to the arts in the 20th century. This policy forced corporations, who frequently funded the arts and received tax deductions, to tighten their belts. The term "main stream music," was created and along with it, concepts like "bell curve marketing." This lifted the idea of a "single" emerging off an album from a desire to a necessity. His deregulation of the banking industry also inspired the term "debt financing," and "S&L fraud" which continue to this day.However, we artists do have some things to thank him for: don't you enjoy telling people you live in a $2000 a month apartment and smoke $7 cigarettes? Peace,
Moses Avalon
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