The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.
- Hunter Thompson
It’s a question of extreme pricing and sale. If there is no indie retail to help build new bands, we are left with MySpace, the unfiltered Internet, and ad/TV/movie placement to introduce people to new bands. Retail would be left to the Best Buy/Starbucks axis. That’s not too appealing of a scenario to me.
- Patrick Monaghan, President, CTD, Ltd.
Is there no alternative? The parasite’s only fear is the death of its host. Mairead Case’s article at Pitchfork on Best Buy’s loss leader maneuvers illustrates how desperate the record industry has become in recent years. But as I mouthed off at Her Jazz, not only is there a bigger picture, there are many pictures.
The music industry, along with other facets of the entertainment industry, is at a crossroads of profitability. With catchphrases like “flat is the new up”, it’s becoming more evident that supply and demand aren’t what they used to be. Well, at least demand isn’t. In recent conversations with Chris Dahlen, it became clearer to me that all the King’s men don’t even really care about Humpty Dumpty’s triage anymore. I mean, they know he’s cracked, but how exactly to put him back together again? Is it worth it?
According to some, it isn’t. Even after corporate scandals like those at Enron and WorldCom, shareholders continue to dictate the terms when it comes to management decisions, not managers. That being the case, publishing companies are looking to find ways to liquidate their unprofitable holdings, music chief among them. What may happen is that D.I.Y. may come to full flower as major labels find themselves an unprofitable, byzantine cultural bureaucracy. The industry is still aligned against the artist, and acts like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah demonstrate that an ounce of media and marketing savvy goes a long way.
This sort of model undoubtedly frightens those persons ancilliary to cultural production, viz. anyone other than the artists themselves. But just as Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life pointed out, artists have long been in the micro-market avant garde, and it was their entrepreneurial spirit that calcified as matured into the indie label panoply and the promotional orgies at SXSW and CMJ Festival. Mr. Monaghan’s concerns are half well-founded criticisms of retail’s Evil Empire (see also Neighborhoodies/Amp Camp for further details) and half paranoid assertions that the “unfiltered” internet is somehow all bad. In fact, it’s the latter that produces the most democratic outcomes, those which are also most difficult to identify and segment into demographics for marketing.
Businesses at all levels make bad decisions. Indies and the Big Four sign awful bands with unreasonable expectations. Independent retailers make awful decisions too, most of which are made with an even closer eye on the bottom line than their seemingly monolithic competition. That translates into paychecks off the books, to go along with no healthcare and no security. Small businesses are used as convenient examples to give big business a break (seriously — no, seriously).
Paraphrasing what I wrote much more eloquently elsewhere: business is a racket, period. Independent records stores have plenty of wonderful things; I wouldn’t be listening to these two great Marble Sheep discs if only Best Buy, Circuit City and Target existed. But business is what it is — a framework wherein reactionaries and charlatans make bank. Best Buy scaled back its efforts after overexpanding in the early ’90’s, and they may be headed back there before long. Let’s be honest: offering goods with some elasticity (i.e. CDs, DVDs, consumer electronics) has more appeal than inelastic white goods. If the entertainment market fluctuates as much as everyone says it is, their overhead costs alone will bury them.
Finally, collusive behaviors are safe bets. Price wars are hell in retail. As in elections, predictability is key. When consumer spending finally hits bottom — when credit indebtedness and inflated mortages reach their peak (or trough, depending on where you’re standing) — we’ll see just what shakes out.
Marble Sheep — “The Night of the Shooting Star”
entreating “little” labels like matador is kinda like admiring marie antionette’s manicure. it keeps growing with contemptible predictability.
sure indies will die before the industry biggies, but only as a portent. christ, we like cat power’s new record! tabula rasa is a compassionate gesture of euthanasia. carole king’s tapespy is now a punk reference point; shake the cage and you’re liable to jostle the paisleys…poor delicate paisleys!
okay, from now on i’ll keep my record store malaise to myself…
thanks for writing this.
and of course, i agree that there is a bigger picture. the goal of the pitchfork article was not to state a personal opinion; it was to (hopefully) alert some of these deep-pocket/post-napster college spenders to the tangle that is –to use yr phrase– the racket. of course, too, the piece was substantially edited, both on amy’s part and mine.
there are two points that i wanted to make/underscore. one of ’em is hinted at in both posts above — not only is matador not a “little” label, but it’s also not “truly” indie (i apologize for the link’s misogynist rhetoric– but it’s mmr; what can ya do?). and frankly, i adore the constantines, and listening to sub pop gives me more “cred” than, say, listening to columbia, but at the same time, even the plop has some racket in its blood. the only problem, i think, is ignorance in regards to the true source of your music — hence, hopefully and eventually, the pitchfork article.
the other point is simpler — it’s a rant, pure and simple. since when did “indie” become a genre? since when did it become code for a‑political, jangle-pop-zach-braff-changed-my-life-sparkle? damn you, steven malkmus …
i think Stink’s comments allude to more of what i had in mind, viz. that there are people who are collecting a paycheck involved in this, not just lawyers, owners and consumers. i’m hopeful that my interview with Steve Gordon will attenuate what has been up to present a pretty dehumanizing, indeed criminalizing, portrait of the American consumer/citizen, to say nothing of the impoverished notion we have about the industry itself.
the energy if not my point (a rant about a rant is intrinsically double-irrational which makes this kind of rationalization–pun intended–a little difficult) was originally directed to the consumer end of the best buy issue. i have no good idea how big or small matador records his–the quotation marks encapsulating little in that instance were meant to suggest that though quite large in terms of capital, holdings, etc. they have the trappings, the air we’ll say, of being an independent label. i’m right in that observation i think?
even more to the point i so drunkenly, pantslessly failed to express is that it’s, in my opnion a consumer issue. i view best buys suicide pricing (the term loss leader is painfully inadequate) as in a way comparable to buying a bootleg dvd, or speakers from the back of a van. the great price comes with the understanding that you’re robbing someone.
like wal-mart before it best buy is in the business of underselling–which is legitimate business practice, but as with coffee from starbucks, or a Colt twelve guage from Wal-mart you’re cutting out locals–the true indiies whom you can now count on your fingers and toes (an arthimatical feat recently executed by the los angeles time. proud to say our beloved a.k.a. was mentioned).
we all gotta do what we all gotta do. but i think it makes perfect sense, and is the honorable thing to do, to buy local and indie as often as possible. after all its our money best-buy buys its music with in the first place.