The “Death” Of Music?

Sarah Clemence recently wrote an interesting article for Condé Nast about what is probably the true status of the mainstream music industry. In it, she makes the case that in fact the music industry is not doing that bad, because while individual consumers aren’t buying CDs in droves, there is still revenue to be made from alternative outlets, like music publishing and rights for putting it in movies and on TV and in cell phone ring tones. All of this along with the now-growing legitimate online music business, slowly but surely overtaking the free underground market that Napster and Pirate Bay inspired. Whether you want to believe it or not, iTunes makes money. Wal-Mart’s online music store makes money, and with the growth of DRM-less music for sale online, it’s fast-growing market.

For years, we’ve been hearing about the “death” of the music industry. “Oh, online music sales will kill the independent record store. The cost of making CD’s is keeping small indie labels from competing. People downloading music these days, often illegally, is stealing from artists who work hard for their art. It’ll never be the same again!”

No, it won’t, to be honest.

And yet, music is still there. The CDs still arrive in the mail for me to review, and the bands still show up putting on shows for fans in basements and VFW halls. MTV is still on and major pop and rock icons still manage to thrive, spending money that has to come from somewhere. Large-scale ticket promoters and venues can still justify charging you a lot of fucking money for a ticket that people, amazingly, are willing to pay for. If anything, Clemence makes a valid point in her article about what if anything DID kill the music industry;

“There was this imperative that started to emerge: ‘”You must fill up a CD with as much music as possible,’” [musician and producer Joe Mardin] says. ‘The rest was filler. You ended up with albums that were one or two hits and a bunch of wanna-be hits.’ The record industry itself killed the album, trying to maximize profits.”

It’s an interesting point, and if you consider how a luxury market is always susceptible to an overflow of goods lowering the price and wrecking the profit income. The diamond industry or gold works this angle well. Controlling the flow of available material of value is how you make it work. The comic book industry fell victim to this exact same thing during the 1990’s speculative boom, when people actually thought that buying a dozen copies of a “Spawn” or “X-Force” comic was going to put their kids through college.

Seriously, Spawn was going to put people through college. I know, insane, right? And what happened there? The bottom fell out of the comic book industry, a fall that they’ve only recently began to overcome and learn from with adaptation towards the new market and new media.

The fact of the matter is, the music industry isn’t really dying. Clemence is right in that the industry is slowly but surely adapting, having realized that while there will never be any more “giant” sellers in pop music, there will always be consumers and music fans. There will always be a niche outlet for vinyl enthusiasts, for people who still buy CD’s, and for those who will buy band t-shirts and want to put their favorite songs in the TV shows they work on and the movies they make.

I know this somehow bursts the bubbles of everyone who still thinks that Anti-Flag are right and that everything is going to be overthrown, including the “big bad” mainstream music industry. But the fact of the matter is that it isn’t. It’s more than a giant monster that could theoretically be “conquered.” It’s more like a collective conscious, constantly changing as time passes around it and it not only exists but also learns, albeit somewhat slowly.