We've got an underground.
The underground disappeared in the nineties.
Actually, it started to disappear in the eighties. With the advent of MTV. Still, there were acts that MTV wouldn't play. At first, they wouldn't play black music. And, after adding Michael Jackson, they still wouldn't play punk. But, lo and behold, the nineties awoke, and they added that too, with Nirvana. But then things took a really strange detour. They added the boy bands. USED to be that radio had a backbone, there were certain acts they wouldn't play, for fear of alienating the audience. Sure, those stations aged with their audience and died, but none of them singularly represented the cultural zeitgeist. When MTV showed that it was only about the number of viewers, it was truly disillusioning.
And then MTV essentially stopped airing music altogether.
Interestingly, this was just when the "New York Times" added a music video review section to its Sunday newspaper. Sheer indication that a trend is over. When the Old Gray Lady jumps on it. Because music, when at its peak, has always been a cutting edge medium, testing limits, offensive to the mainstream. Like video games.
But concomitant with the rise of MTV came the sophistication of hype. Prior to MTV, it was hard to get an act NOTICED! You had to go on tour because there was no other way for the public to SEE YOU! But MTV proved that if you could just get pretty boys and girls on their channel, their records would sell. Like Duran Duran. Then, as MTV created cultural icons, and baby boomers gained control of other media, it became legitimate to hype musical acts in heretofore taboo realms. Not only TV newsmagazines and newfangled entertainment news shows like "Entertainment Tonight", and then "Extra", but the STRAIGHT NEWS, and sitcoms. And the music could be used in dramas. And with the rise of celebrity journalism the music industry decided to jump on the bandwagon. And you got not only Jon Bon Jovi in "People" and "Us", but every wannabe act known to man.
We had a machine. A stardom MACHINE!
Not that the major labels called it this. They called it MARKETING! They said they needed vast sums of money for MARKETING! That you couldn't break an act WITHOUT this machine. And that by stealing the music, the public was fucking with the economics of their business. But the question arises, what came first, the decomposition of the machine or the P2P trading?
The major label cartel is based on control of distribution. As long as it's almost impossible to sell AND GET PAID as an indie, then they control the marketplace. But suddenly, they're losing their grip on distribution.
Distribution is king. Just ask the movie studios. How do you think they make so many shitty expensive movies and stay in business? Because they control DISTRIBUTION! An indie can't GET in the good theatres. If they were truly interested in cracking Internet distribution, they'd establish a plan. But they can't get it together to do this. Because they like the old model too much. Oh, make no mistake, they don't really care that people are downloading movies. They're often shitty copies, people go to see the flick in theatres anyway. No, they're pissed that they're losing control over DISTRIBUTION! They don't dictate the terms. And someone else can immediately come in and play on an equal basis. They don't have CONTROL!
But the movie business is just a couple of years and a couple of changes behind the music business.
You don't need a million dollar marketing campaign to reach the public anymore. Just put your stuff up on a Website. Let it be traded P2P. Sure, you won't blow up overnight, but if you're any good, word will spread like WILDFIRE!
And it's spreading already.
I got e-mail from Tony Brummel asking me yesterday why I hadn't done a chart analysis recently. I told him because those records DON'T COUNT!
Make no mistake. It's 1968 all over again. The target audience. The people that move the business. The TEENAGERS! They want nothing to do with the mainstream. They knew Ashlee Simpson was a phony who couldn't sing before she was on SNL. They don't trust the music business the same way baby boomer Democrats no longer trust the government. They believe their voice is not heard. And, they don't want to be associated with all the dreck. They want to be INDIVIDUALS!
The talk of the business is UPSTREAMING!
If the major labels had decent A&R, there would be NO NEED for upstreaming. FURTHERMORE, the acts that are upstreamed ARE NEVER MAINSTREAM! Coheed & Cambria. Los Lonely Boys. And the one that eluded the upstreaming contract, Taking Back Sunday. NONE of them sound ANYTHING like what is on the chart. What the major labels are selling. Their so-called bread and butter.
AND, after upstreaming, most of these acts don't go megaplatinum either. Because their audience is two steps ahead of the mainstream. And megaplatinum was for the nineties. When we were one homogenous society. Mariah and Celine can't sell ten million copies anymore not because THEY'RE done, or they're recording shittier music, but because the PARADIGM is done. People don't want bland pop. And certainly not the same bland pop EVERYBODY ELSE has. P2P was just the right application at the right time. IT didn't kill the business. The business IMPLODED! People have rebelled against having crap jammed down their throats. AND, they don't want to be like everybody else. They want to be UNIQUE, INDIVIDUALS!
Clive Davis is too old to know. But YOU remember having posters on your wall. Of acts that only YOU knew. So that when people came over they'd be quizzically AMAZED! Who IS that guy with the top hat (Leon Russell!) Who IS that guy with his legs spread wide and the rooster haircut (Rod Stewart!) Who IS that guy with the snake around his neck (Alice Cooper!) Yes, I had all those posters on my wall in COLLEGE, they were badges of IDENTITY, almost NOBODY knew who these acts were, and if they DID, we became instant friends.
It's the same way today. Amongst teenagers.
They're on a scorched earth rampage digesting forty years of American rock and roll. The classic rock. They're downloading THAT! And discovering new acts, that you haven't even heard of.
But when distribution is flattened on the Net. When ANYBODY can be distributed and get paid on the Net. THEN, the new managers/labels won't even make DEALS with the company-owned indies. There won't BE any upstreaming.
It's as simple as Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss starting A&M. Better yet, it's Chris Blackwell starting Island, selling music people supposedly didn't want. Even though, over time, Bob Marley became arguably the biggest act in the world.
But today's musical entrepreneurs have an advantage. They don't have to play by the old rules. They've got new tools. Technological tools. That make it easier and cheaper to reach their target audience.
Whilst the majors complain in an endless circle jerk that costs are high and sales are down cottage industries are developing which are selling and breaking music that sounds NOTHING LIKE what's on the chart. And, in time, this burbling, percolating cauldron will overflow and BECOME the mainstream.
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