When we look back on 2011 in time to come we’ll see it as a watershed year for the music industry, when amidst all the confusion and uncertainty the success of Adele will be recognized as either a turning point or a last gasp reminder of what was lost. Adele’s ‘21’ not only defied all the odds – the biggest selling album in the US since 2004, the UK the biggest selling album of the 21st century – when all the indicators seemed to be pointing in the other direction. And it’s a global story, so universal there’s no escaping its significance. Not even Kanye West would dare grab a Grammy from Adele’s hands in February.
Adele’s is a story without the celebrity seeking Twitter fuelled orgy surrounding her contemporaries, an oasis of reality in a sea of falsehood and audience manipulation, a distinctive voice in a time of autotune mediocrity. Adele has charmed the world with honesty all along the way, a refreshing nakedness. Our every contact with her has shone with integrity. It’s in her songs. It’s there with every performance, on stage or on television. It’s there in her every contact with the press.
As the major record companies shrink in number and pour their dollars into fewer artists, Adele has risen without them and amongst them, like a flower from a wasteland.
While Adele MUST be celebrated, at this point in time an aspiring musician coming into the “business” can’t hope for a living. A recent study told us that for an American artist to make minimum wage ($US1,160 per month) by just selling downloads, they would have to move 12,399 tracks on iTunes. There you see one of the problems. While the U2s and Paul McCartneys praised Steve Jobs loudly after his death, Jobs can be seen as one of the great villains in this story. When the record industry was at a loss at how to handle the digital age, running around like the proverbial headless chickens, Jobs offered them a one-fix solution – iTunes. In reality iTunes was a Trojan Horse. Apple’s priority wasn’t and isn’t selling music. iTunes exists to provide content to Apple’s other products. The cheaper the music the more viable the phones, etc etc. The record companies just handed over the whole shebang, getting sued in the aftermath for violating contracts they had with their artists.
Yes there’s been other successful artists in 2011, each of them in some other way illustrating the state of play. Lady Gaga’s multi-media assault. Her songs, her albums are one part of a complex success equation. Gaga’s using what exists to her advantage. Rihanna is slave to it. Katy Perry is a more playful participant. LMFAO point to the trend towards a single track music industry rather than one based on “bundled” albums. Good for the record companies, not so good for creativity and building careers. Harder for us to form relationships with artists and their music, artists becoming as disposable as hit songs.
Once apon a time a successful artist opened doors for others. A record company with a successful artist found themselves in a position of strength, able to grow and take chances. Those days are gone. Successful artists are now enterprises in their own right. That’s where the growth will go. There’s no trickle down.
The digital age has also made music much more global at the top level. If you take a look however you’ll notice that the world’s audiences are in fact quite territorial. Wherever we live we are very still and increasingly keen to enjoy our local produce, but we have to do so under the growing weight of the need of the major international labels to make as much out of their stars as they can – and that (Adele again against the tide) means American stars.
So here’s another problem for the rest of the world. What America wants is not necessarily what the world wants. Country music is an American staple. It isn’t and never has been for the rest of the world. Same applies to a lot of rap. This is music that America wants, needs and will support, so that’s what THEIR record companies NEED to and DO provide. That’s THEIR territorial music, but because of the American industry’s strength and place in the music industry, THEIR record companies are also EVERYBODY ELSE’s record companies. Adele could not have come out of America!
That’s leaving less and less room for what the rest of the world might want. What we’re looking at is what Hollywood has done to the movie industry. With Hollywood dominating available screens other countries struggle to sustain healthy movie industries.
At the end of each year there are the inevitable ‘best of’ lists. 2011 wasn’t an impressive year for music. It was out there but we’re being denied access to it, and it’s being denied access to us – an ironic thing to say in the days of YouTube. Five minutes of fame is not what we’re talking about.
Music is in era of great change. We’ll look back and see this time as being as significant (maybe more) as the change from 78s to 45s, vinyl to compact disc. Change is change. It isn’t necessarily progress. The introduction of the CD was when record companies started killing our engagement with music, not intentionally but in effect. The change into the digital age could have been exciting. It may still become exciting. But it didn’t have to be like this. It didn’t have to force so much out of reach of consumers. It didn’t have to drive so many of music-makers into poverty.
There were a lot of factors, but a lot of the blame has to lie with the music industry itself. No courage. No imagination. No love for music?
