Viewing Thread:
"Major Label Stupidity"

Had this emailed to me from a mate that works in Tower Records, California –

“Tower Records is closing 4 stores next month, and possibly up to 25 this year. There's supposed to be a big "financial announcement" on January 31st.
They sold off all of the Japanese franchises, they pulled out of London (sold off the store leases to Virgin), and are probably pulling out of Ireland. Half of the main office was laid off, including employees that had been with the company since day 1.
HMV is most likely not renewing any of their U.S. leases this year, and is closing one of their NYC stores.
Virgin is in trouble, they have this new Boston store which is sucking them dry, and they have put off all plans of expansion this year.
Best Buy is pulling out of the business, for the most part, killing 110 of their Musicland/Sam Goody/Suncoast stores.
Sony, Warner, and BMG all just had another round of layoffs.
Industy insiders warn of a decline in music sales in 2003.”

And as per usual, what’s to blame?
Peer-to-peer sharing. Yup, good ol’ Napster is still haunting the vaunted hallways of corporate music and rattling it’s chains of woe and ill-gotten gains.
All the men in suits are circling the wagons and firing off missives and frighteners to anybody even considering downloaded tracks from the internet because “it’s killing music”.
No it’s not. They said the same thing about cassettes when they were released, they even came with a sticker saying “Home Recording is killing music”.
What seems strange is that you and I both know what is to blame for the decline in record sales and it’s nothing to do with downloading music on your PC.

What is killing music?
Stagnant, clichéd music being pumped into restaurants, shopping centers and children’s ears day after day after day from Radio 1, Top of The Pops and all those other joyless little exercises in performing monkeys.
Vile tv shows like Pop Idol that value a pretty face and “X factor” above someone with actual musical ability.
You know these insects: Gareth Gates, Will Young, Boyzone, Britney Spears, Shakira, Girls Aloud blah blah blah.
One-hit, 15 minutes wannabes that scurry for the ££ whilst their 9yr old fanbase decide it’s cool to like them this week.
“Oh but it’s just harmless pop” is your usual excuse, along with “It’s chart-crap, don’t worry about it”.
If that’s all it was then fine, we could just enjoy the bands we like and leave kids and retarded adults to buy pop crap. But it *is* damaging the music industry. Labels are only interested in signing someone to a 2 single deal, hit hard and fast – make the money and get out.

This is why labels are sinking. This is why they are losing money hand over fist, because they are treating you and I with contempt and disinterest. A kid has a tiny attention span and lose interest in a band faster than you can take your pants off the 1st time you get a woman naked. They have concentrated on hooking kids and moron adults with meaningless dirge and ignored bands out there that could possibly write a song that would change your life.
I don’t like Coldplay, but I respect them for actually writing songs and gigging. I have zero respect for people like Blue or Busted or any other flavour-of-the-week. They do not belong in the music industry for one simple reason – it is only fame and money for them.
It has *nothing* to do with musical love or ability, otherwise they would be too ashamed to show their face around musicians.
The fact that labels are putting out 98 different versions of the same band/song is harming the industry a lot more than you downloading a couple of songs from the web. But they wont admit it, they wont admit they’re money-hungry, soul-less demons that don’t give a hoot whether you’ll ever discover a band you may love.

Look back at the 70s with bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Creedence Clearwater, The Eagles, Lyrnyrd Skynyrd etc. They have careers, they have albums that still stand today.
Why? Because it wasn’t singles-based. It wasn’t just about the immediate profit on sales from a 3 week stint in the chart. It’s so goddam rare to find a band breaking through these days.
Why?
Because bands write songs that mean something to them. A genuine band writes something that affects them and, hopefully, will reach others. It’s a passion, it’s heart and soul. Creating music for the simple love of it. And that comes across to the listener, whether you like that song or not.
But then steps in Mr Big Label with his hundreds of middle-men and A&R and distribution sniffers and pluggers and liggers and giggers and hangers on and WHOMP!, suddenly there are 25 people taking a bite out of any money before the band that wrote the music gets a sniff.
The big labels are bloated dinosaurs with so many parasites it’s unbelievable.
This is why independent labels and stores like Rough Trade survive and flourish whilst mega-turds like AOL and Warner are sinking beneath the surface.

It’s blind stupidity and arrogance on the part of major-labels that underestimate what you and I listen to or like.
It’s high-time they stopped giving £15 million advances to people like Avril Levigne, because the market for that generic pop crap is fickle and album sales will never recoup that money.
Instead of spending that kind of money on an Alanis-lite, they should be investing in 100 smaller bands and offering them £100,000 a piece to sign a 2 album deal.
If out of those 100, say 5 make it then they’ll recoup their money a lot easier than trying to hope one cashcow will bring in a monstrous payload.
By doing that, you would go into HMV and find 100 new albums on the shelf instead of 100 copies of the same artist gathering dust because the kids moved on that week.

This ignorance of simple methods means that these companies will sink to the bottom with a lazy grace and cry about peer-to-peer – leaving behind them tear-stained pretty boys who are now trying to make a living playing La Taverna evenings whilst you eat your pasta and laugh at them.

Peer-to-Peer is free advertising and name-spreading, not a vile money sucking operation by net-thieves. Hell, I’d gladly put my material on there because it would mean people can hear what I do, and that’s why I play in a band in the 1st place.
And hell, I don’t make any money now from it so it’s not like I’m concerned about losing any.

Stupidity, bad business sense, no real-world ideas and an utter lack of respect for good music is killing CD sales. Anything else is a guilty excuse.

Mr Snuggly wrote:
> Tony Blair's latest excuse to bomb Iraq is that Saddam Hussain has
> been downloading loads of stuff off Kazaa. And don't me started on
> Osama Bin (down)Loadin'.

Ahh a classic, hehe.

I've found a way to get round all this, I've started listening to Bhangra.

And it's pretty damn good.

Failing that, just head on over to www.mp3.com There's thousands of artists on there, and with most of them you can stream all the tracks to see if you like them, download a few to keep, and then if you really like the artist, you can buy the album.

That's where I'm getting most of my music from now. There's only a couple of shows listen to on the radio now. The Breezeblock, Monday night/tuesday morning 12-2. And One World, thursday night/friday morning 12-2. Both on Radio 1.

Was thinking back about the state of the pop charts and to be honset there have been a lot of artists who have just come and gone, not just one hit wonders but crappy pop stars who just seem to flop once their craze is over.


I was laughing lately, one of my favourite bands is the COunting crows, recently they were on the Des and Mel show where they had to mime thier cover of Joni Mitchels Big Yellow Taxi. Here is what their lead singer said on the web page about it.
"Miming to a song on a TV show is one thing. I don't really like it, but the fact is that in many countries, that's the only way you get on a lot of their TV shows, so I've learned to live with it.... Some things are worth being stubborn about. There are many moral issues where principles should never waver. Racism is a big deal. TV shows are not a big deal. So anyways, like I was saying, miming normally doesn't faze me."

They also recorded songs for TOTP, again the band didn't play any instruments and Adam sang for the one that will be aired on TOTPs. Why even have bands on a show where they are supposed to be playing live if they don't play any instruments and times don't even sing? Why because the British public allow it.

To be honest it is about time that the industry realised the problem. If they would stop using the excuse of the on-line music piracy then maybe more could be done to get decent bands signed and get good music recorded.

Seems the only way for bands to get a record deal these days is to get a fanbase together from live gigs etc just so the record companies know that they will be able to sell. Or of course know people in the right places.

The charts will soon be filled with manufactured bands, cover after cover by the same bands before their fame comes to an end.

How long has this argument been going on for? Naturally, almost everything ever in the charts is utter tosh, but can we stop it? No. It's not as if we can stop all the 9yr old going out and buying all the singles anyway, so why bother to constantly complain. I can't see what use it'll do. If I have children of my own one day I'll try my best to get them on the decent stuff, but other than becoming prime minister and making a move to banning the stuff, there's nothing else much to do.

It's true, we've heard the "oh, it's piracy that's killing the music industry" excuse so many times, but it's these stupid, talentless manufactured pop bands who are killing it.

Listen to Radio 1 or the likes for 10 mins.
Basically, you hear the exact same song, over and over, but just changed a little. The vocalists all sound the same.

All these pop bands sound pretty identical to me. OK, I can mostly tell the difference between them, but they are all the same (if that makes sense).

As you say Goaty, I don't really listen to Coldplay all that much, but yes. I respect them for adding variety to what is quickly becoming a 'monotonous' industry.

They do their own thing. Write their own songs. Don't have any screaming 10 year olds after them. I've not heard any synthesised voice crap on their records, unlike most of these pop groups. That is something that is really starting to annoy me.

Apparently, on ITV 2, they'll be showing American Pop Idol 2.
Why?

The key things that are killing the music industry are;
Manufactured bands
Shows that keep pumping out these talentless wannabes
And pop basically.

There are plenty more, but I just can't be bothered to list them all.


By the way, good post Goatboy.

£80 million to Robbie Williams.

For what, 5 albums?

Now using Goatboy's number of £100000 per artist, that's giving 800 bands/ artists a chance.

I can't help but feel that 800 bands with varying levels of fans would make more money than one bloke whose last single didn't even get to number 1.

Good post, anyway, interesting points, and they should put you in charge of one of these big companies, you could hardly do a worse job than them...

i guess groups like Blue are jus**t plain lucky. They have no real talent but they were in the right place at the right time with the right face. As a consequence they earned a sh*t load of money for it - doing nothing.

Tony Blair's latest excuse to bomb Iraq is that Saddam Hussain has been downloading loads of stuff off Kazaa. And don't me started on Osama Bin (down)Loadin'.

What I was meaning is that I don't care if companies are failing and constantly blame it on internet sharing... big deal? I don't actually give a damn.

And I don't care anymore about moaning to people about boy/girl bands and pop idol and all that crap... because it's as if you're talking to a brick wall and the usual reply is 'ooohhh people like their own music', which gets me angry.

Crap luck for loads of unsigned real bands... but heh I cant do jack about that.

Fair enough but I bloody do.
Imagine you've found the perfect thing you wanted to do as a kid. With me, that was play drums in a band.
Now imagine knowing you've got the songs and you love doing it.

But you are prevented from doing so because no-talent prettyboys want to "be famous" and stifle the opportunity for myself and thousands of others working their guts out to create something more than smiling and dancing like a good little performer.

It's infuriating to have seen and played with so many bands that could have a perfect song, write something that stays with someone for their entire life and to know that those bands will never ever be heard outside of The Dublin Castle.
It's going on tonight and every night of the week, all over the country and planet. People in rehearsal rooms and venues, playing until they sweat through their clothes and spending hours trying to find the perfect line for a song.
And they'll eventually give in because yet another teeny outfit have been groomed, dressed and handed a song to bark on command.

I'm glad that these companies are failing.
This is harkening back to the late 70s/early 80s when punk exploded. Music has become a stifled wasteland.
But something will break through and free it up again, be it another Nirvana or Sex Pistols.