present state of the independent music economy

D84

Well-known member
That Carl Craig interview that I mentioned in the Roots of Techno thread also has this comment which chimes with my view of things presently:

Unfortunately, the independent dance music economy isn't what it once was, and Craig finds himself wrestling with how to interpret people's changing ideas about buying music, in particular the impact of file-sharing à la Napster.

"I think the idea of music and buying records now is that it needs to be a major event. There has to be some controversy or something to make it important.

"I think it's also partly because of the recession. Since Bush came into office, things have been pretty tough. A few years ago a kid would think nothing of going out and spending $100 on eight records, but now it's all about that one album."

What do you guys think? Are any labels doing really well out there? Have any independents started making money out of downloads?
 

swears

preppy-kei
Dance and electronica have failed to position themselves as the new "alternative" since indie rock became the new prog/MOR. It's just business as usual, and hardly anyone female or under 30 is interested.
 

D84

Well-known member
yeah yeah dance bad, rock good... four legs good, two legs better etc...

I realise that Carl Craig was talking about dance records but I'm interested in independent music generally.

Sure the majors are taking the lion's share as usual through "indie" rock etc perhaps but what about the rest?

In Australia independent hip hop is doing relatively well but even there some people are saying sales aren't as good as they used to be.

It could be a musical/artistic failure rather than a business one but I'm not interested in that aspect.

I think internet downloads, and new toys like mobile phones and iPods have a role but is it that it? In the early `80s there were expensive Walkmans and cheap cassettes but independent music was thriving.
 
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mms

sometimes
Dance and electronica have failed to position themselves as the new "alternative" since indie rock became the new prog/MOR. It's just business as usual, and hardly anyone female or under 30 is interested.

that's just not true.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Why not? I saw Carl Craig DJ in Liverpool last year, and there were no girls my age, every body was at least five years older than me and my mates, (we're all about 23-24) and it was half empty with no energy at all. Carl Craig played a good set, though. If we'd have gone to an indie-rock club most of the crowd would be younger. (I'm not being ageist here, just suggesting that they're isn't much of a future for a scene with no new blood.) And a bunch of cocksuckers in Topman suit jackets and jeans dancing badly along to new bands that sound like Menswe@r, smug in the satisfaction that what they like is "cool" and everybody is making a fuss over it, and there will always be another shitty band on the production line for them to get into.
 
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mms

sometimes

there hasn't been any opposition since the 70's between guitar rock and dance music so why position themselves as a new alternative when they aren't., and there were 3 mixes last month alone by female djs. Plus there are as always loads of kids going to dance music events.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Why not? I saw Carl Craig DJ in Liverpool last year, and there were no girls my age, every body was at least five years older than me and my mates, (we're all about 23-24) and it was half empty with no energy at all. Carl Craig played a good set, though. If we'd have gone to an indie-rock club most of the crowd would be younger.
Carl Craig's a bit of a special case though, isn't he? Oldskool legend, purist techno etc. The young people and the girls were probably off listening to funky house or anthem trance or something...
 

swears

preppy-kei
Carl Craig's a bit of a special case though, isn't he? Oldskool legend, purist techno etc. The young people and the girls were probably off listening to funky house or anthem trance or something...

Yeah, but that's just the functional, mainstream, cheeseball stuff. I'm talking about the innovators that everybody else feeds off. We are sorely lacking any new sounds or ideas in popular music (part of this problem is people insisting there can't even be any now anyway.) and indie-rock isn't going to be where these changes occur. It's almost reactionary by definition. Electronica may mostly be running on the spot at the moment, (acid jungle, anyone?) but at least it has the potential to throw new things out there.
 

D84

Well-known member
swears, I agree with everything you're saying (I saw Carl Craig too last year: not a great gig, bad venue etc) but I think we've rehearsed these arguments enough.

What about the influence of the economy on music production/creativity?

I feel that blaming genres for being boring is identifying more a symptom of cultural malaise than a cause of it. I heard on the radio once that musicians' ability or creativity doesn't ever really peak (they keep getting better supposedly) as opposed to mathematicians or gymnasts who are supposed to peak in their early 20s.

So obviously something else must be going on. Does the general lurch to the Right in the West have anything to do with it (as I suspect)?

Or am I imagining all this and really the music business is booming - just not for selling records outside the major label orbit? If so what is so special about that?
 

Leo

Well-known member
What about the influence of the economy on music production/creativity?

Does the general lurch to the Right in the West have anything to do with it (as I suspect)?

Or am I imagining all this and really the music business is booming - just not for selling records outside the major label orbit? If so what is so special about that?

the "lurch to right" has oftentimes led to better things around the corner (punk as reaction to reagan/thatcher, etc.), so fingers crossed something's on the way.

and this weekend's news that tower records has been bought by a liquidator and is closing up 80+ superstores (including the iconic sunset blvd. store) is a sign that the major label orbit has also been knocked out of whack.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Or am I imagining all this and really the music business is booming - just not for selling records outside the major label orbit? If so what is so special about that?

I think it is quite simple: more music is produced than ever, people access more music than every, there's more diversity in music than ever, and thats GREAT!

however, (1) because of this diversity, and (2) because of significantly reduced profit margins in the music industry, there is less marketing effort being expended per musical unit, hence less promotional effort on the radio, in the press, in the clubs. all that leads to less hype, smaller scenes, and maybe, to a comparativly decining enthusiasm per musical unit. after all how good one finds a piece of music is generally not independent of how others like it, and how many (although this is rarely admitted to).

i think it's like after the invention of the printing press: much more literature, but less singlehanded devotion to a few sacred texts.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I feel that blaming genres for being boring is identifying more a symptom of cultural malaise than a cause of it.

Yeah, there seems to be a major cultural malaise over the last few years. Surely this affects musicians. Has there been a worse period in living memory? I hear the mid-eighties (pre-house and pre-hip hop crossing over) was bad, but it couldn't have sucked as much as now. Music, art, politics, the enviroment, all going downhill.
I think my previous post was relevent to the music industry, because without any "new things" to leech off, how will it manage to flog as many records? I understand that so many popular new acts are wilfully retro, but there must be a market share of people out there, perhaps not really into music so much (an older friend of mine said that before rave all he was interested in was sci-fi and commodore64 games) that don't even know what they're missing. I think we need a really amazing new label, like Warp but with hits or something, to get music (in the UK at least) exciting again.
 
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blunt

shot by both sides
i think it's like after the invention of the printing press: much more literature, but less singlehanded devotion to a few sacred texts.

I think this is the nub of the matter, and I think it's interesting that independent labels like Warp, which used to have a very distinctive label "sound", have branched out in recent years. I'd say that has to be significant in its still being around after all these years.
 

tate

Brown Sugar
Yeah, there seems to be a major cultural malaise over the last few years. Surely this affects musicians. Has there been a worse period in living memory? I hear the mid-eighties (pre-house and pre-hip hop crossing over) was bad, but it couldn't have sucked as much as now. Music, art, politics, the enviroment, all going downhill.
I think my previous post was relevent to the music industry, because without any "new things" to leech off, how will it manage to flog as many records? I understand that so many popular new acts are wilfully retro, but there must be a market share of people out there, perhaps not really into music so much (an older friend of mine said that before rave all he was interested in was sci-fi and commodore64 games) that don't even know what they're missing. I think we need a really amazing new label, like Warp but with hits or something, to get music (in the UK at least) exciting again.
Has it not occurred to you that perhaps it is your responsibility to seek and find the interesting new music rather than repeatedly complain on music forums about the music in your particular city, in your particular country, among your particular age group? As borderpolice said quite eloquently above, there is more music available than *ever* before, from micro-micro-subgenres of the 'ardkore continuum to vast storehouses of old classic vinyl made available again in numerous genres from numerous countries thanks to digital technology (cue Woebot's blog, or all of that amazing tropicalia that was posted a couple of months back on zhao's blog and elsewhere).

Since you keep talking about "15 years ago," I for one can tell you that in 91-93, in Chicago, we would go out to dance to house one night, industrial the next (ministry/pigface/rev co etc, lol), then hear some albini-type band the next weekend, hip-hop nights on mondays at lower links, ken vandermark and all that free improv stuff at hothouse, the CSO occasionally, etc etc. Then, as now, mainstream music pretty much sucked and that was simply the way that it was, so we built our own musical universe to inhabit -- the idea that some magical mainstream development would provide us with our musical elixir or disseminate progressive values by way of music was almost unthinkable. So rather than see the world through some sort of ultra-restrictive lens of, say, "electronica vs. guitars," we would seek out as much music as possible, then explore outward from there. And this was at a time when people relied on word of mouth, cassette tapes, CDs, and records . . . .

As I type this, it occurs to me that the *best* answer would be to channel your energy and frustration into your own music, which you've obviously been making. There's no reason why we shouldn't be discussing the latest swears track in a couple of years! :D
 

swears

preppy-kei
There is a lot of music that is enjoyable to listen to, but there's no narrative, no sense of progress, no excitement. It's just an adequate smorgasboard of different flavours. I'm trying to narrow my musical tastes anyway, I think the future lies in refining things down to the essential, dismantling a style like techno or r'n'b and putting it back together again. Everybody likes lots of different things, maybe it's time to focus a little more. There seems to be this weird assumption that ecelectic=good, but maybe musicians could limit themselves to two or three genres they can take subtle cues from.
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
Since you keep talking about "15 years ago," I for one can tell you that in 91-93, in Chicago, we would go out to dance to house one night, industrial the next (ministry/pigface/rev co etc, lol), then hear some albini-type band the next weekend, hip-hop nights on mondays at lower links, ken vandermark and all that free improv stuff at hothouse, the CSO occasionally, etc etc. Then, as now, mainstream music pretty much sucked and that was simply the way that it was, so we built our own musical universe to inhabit -- the idea that some magical mainstream development would provide us with our musical elixir or disseminate progressive values by way of music was almost unthinkable. So rather than see the world through some sort of ultra-restrictive lens of, say, "electronica vs. guitars," we would seek out as much music as possible, then explore outward from there. And this was at a time when people relied on word of mouth, cassette tapes, CDs, and records . . . .

Erm... but clearly what is in discussion here is the existence and (limited) success of the kind of stuff you describe. The point is that 15 years ago you could enjoy a week such as the one you describe. Is that true of now? For all the omnipresence of music, there are only a handful of musics that could have similar levels of excitement (Waiting, waiting, waiting...) Sure, you get the occaisional piece of brilliance (I've enjoyed a few choice pieces of excellent live music this year), but there certainly isn't much around.

As for the economics, it seems to me there are lots of processes at work. To break it down.

You can happily break the music industry into two sectors: Majors and Independents.

I see the following trends:

1) Proliferation of indie labels

I'd say there are probably more labels now than ever before. If we assume the majors take a constant amount of the total music revenue pie, then more indie labels will be sharing the same chunk, giving them all less. The TOTAL amount made by indie labels may well be the same, but they each get less.

Net result, less investment per artist signed to an indie > less time to make music for each artist > poorer quality of output

2) Proliferation of artists

Ditto above, due to cheap recording technology.

3) Majors taking a greater market share

Don't know if this is true. But it could be, mainly because of their marketing budgets.

Put in very crude economics terms, if you allow yourself to think of much of the output of major labels as essentially all the same, i.e. products which are undifferentiated, (which i think i'd happily say about a hell of a lot of indie rock) then the ONLY WAY to compete in market is through marketing, creating a brand around the band, that extrapolates the tiniest of USPs as much as possible.

4) File-sharing and generally very cheap music

> less of an attachment to music
> less time devoted to an individual composition/artist > less critical analysis > poorer quality of output
> difficult to weigh up financial effect on labels: (+ more people hear your music, and some may go on to buy) ( - they may not buy)

5) Demographics

Not to be under-estimated. The power no longer lies with youth. It's far easier to sell the same music back to people in their 40s than come up with anything new. And its far harder for youth to muster any sense of rebellion because they are continually squashed by grups, or whatever people are calling them now.


There's a lot going on here - think we need to distinguish between whether this is going to be another conversation about how shit everything is (or isn't, depending on your point of view), and an enquiry into the profitability/sustainability of independent music.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
@tate: It remains a truism that there will always be good music, somewhere, and this becomes ever more so the further we go into leaving the narrowcast era and the greater the global total output of music becomes. You are correct that it is possible at all times to find something to be at least moderately excited by, and easier still the more catholic ones tastes are. But I think Swears alludes to a key point, and one which is readily apparent to most observers... on a macro level there is little frisson or dialogue between the mainstream and the non-mainstream, a result of the broadening out of the total spectrum of available media, (from an era 50 yrs ago when almost everything had to be squeezed thru relatively few label/channels etc) and the proliferation of (relatively) profitable niches. There is also on a micro scene-by-scene level a sense that the techno-cultural evolutions and leaps apparent across the 20thc have slowed, and that we have entered an era (post modernity) wherein the only narrative left is consolidation... a final shuffling thru of the components available, or a perfection of the particular vocabularies of a given genre... The key drivers of change were demographic (post war boom etc), technological (both in terms of generation of music and in distribution- distribution technology continues top change but production? pretty much since the late 90s it does everything better, but not really much new), and cultural (the discovery of new musical systems by different parts of the world). All of these are still in motion, and there is perhaps hope enough that global population shifts will create new surges in creativity.
 
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gek-opel said:
and there is perhaps hope enough that global population shifts will create new surges in creativity.

If art imitates life and life in the UK ain't so hot, then I'd suggest looking towards somewhere where life is not so bad and checking the art there. With that in mind you could do worse than exploring the musical diversity in lil ol NZ. From hiphop to reggae to indie to rock it's smoking I tells ya and reflective of a nation redefining it's identity and asserting it's place in the grand global scheme ;)

Heres as good a place to start as any. An ongoing myspace database of only NZ artists irrespective of genre.

footnote records
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
but production? pretty much since the late 90s it does everything better, but not really much new


I think grime was (is) notable in how it challenged this. Otherwise can't really think of much else in US and European popular music that hasn't fallen into what you describe.

The thing that comforts me is that we won't see 'it' coming - either new form, or new sense of purpose or direction - but when we look back on 1998-2006 we will be able to discern the seeds of change and prophetic gestures in the music that was made then, in retrospect.

So to address the question direct, I think the economics of small record companies, distros etc isn't particularly relevant. In lean times they survive by scaling down, which is what has happened in UK dance music. Like swears says, I think the cultural malaise is the root of it all. Sometimes I think the west has been shaken up and down like a snow globe since (say) the dot come crash, web coming of age, 9/11 etc and people have spent a quite confusing decade figuring things out again. Politics, in Britain at least, reflects this.
 
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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
If art imitates life and life in the UK ain't so hot, then I'd suggest looking towards somewhere where life is not so bad and checking the art there.
I'm not convinced by your premise, to be honest. By that argument we should have ignored the deprived areas and social groups that produced blues, jazz, reggae, ardkore, rock and roll, hip hop, funk, punk, house, techno and so on...
 
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