Why the Music Industry is So Screwed Up

(and why it’s not going to change any time soon)

by Scott Hefflon
illustrations by Rich Mackin

The music industry is trying not to go belly-up. If you didn’t know that the music business has been fucked up for years, losing money, power, fan’s interest and loyalty (but most of all, money), well, now you do. They scramble to shovel out what they think “the kids” want (signing 10 bands at a time, throwing embarrassing amounts of money at everything initially, then ignoring the nine while focusing on the mega-selling one that, for one reason or another, struck it big. Specifically, The Backstreet Boys and the mad rush to sign anyone sounding or looking even remotely similar, and the fact that Ugly Kid Joe was allowed to put out three records cuz they had a contract and it was probably cheaper just to release them quietly than to drop the band), and “the kids” – whose only avenues of “information” is the same big money game that only major labels can afford – buy the shit that seems to suck the least.

But seeing as we’re in a singles market (the same set-up and low batting average as lonely, old people trying to meet someone outside of the workplace – if you don’t believe me, read a band bio and see how close it is to a personal ad), when you actually buy a record based on something you hear on the radio, yer chances are very, very good that the rest of the record is lame. If no one else is bothered by the fact that Smashmouth, Sugar Ray, and the Offspring had their biggest hits with songs that sounded nothing like them, well, spank me and send me to bed without dinner cuz yer stupid, your food is bland (or poisoned), and you can fuck off for all I care. Smashmouth bitched about “the label’s” choice for single, but then they wrote another one just like it. Reminds me of Coolio bitching about not giving “Weird Al” permission to parody “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Funny thing is, Coolio’s not getting nearly as much press as “Weird Al.” At least, not in the media mediums that I absorb like so much car exhaust.

Albums/records (yes, they’re on CD, but they’re still called albums because “the world” couldn’t be bothered to mouth “full-length release,” and then there’s the issue of cassettes…) are a vehicle to show what a band’s about. I think of them in terms of a photo album (choose yer own metaphor on yer own time, just go with me, huh?): a few photos with the family, a few with friends, a few happy, and a few sad or just kinda there. (Most of these never make the “for posterity” cut cuz who wants memory-triggering snapshots of trauma/loss/sadness, who’s the sick fuck – aside from tabloid “journalists” – who sees someone in bad shape and reaches for the camera, and ever noticed how when not posing all smiley’n’shit for a photo, not only don’t you really look all that pleased to be alive, but, um, you really look kinda troubled or vacant? What’s it say when your off-guard expression is one of mild pain or dull apathy? Shiver. Don’t answer that.) I see albums as pages in a photo album, with each record adding a few more pages and a little more time, history, perspective, etc. That metaphor fails, first off, because bands in this day and age have no security in their record contracts, so there’s no room to experiment and expand over the years. That shouldn’t be news to anyone, but the psychological impact of that is partly to blame for what’s crippling the music culture of the late 20th century. And everyone is at fault.

Fans have short attention spans. And we don’t cut anyone any slack cuz there are so many options in this world. I’ll turn the cold shoulder to a band I once liked if I don’t like the direction they’re headed (either on their own or at the “request” of their label trying to increase sales) as quickly as I’ll change to another long distance carrier with a better offer. We switch services as quickly as we suddenly hate Jewel after she made that comment that she’d rather act than write and perform music. It doesn’t take much by this point to go cold and search for yet another warm body to rub up against for a while and pretend is pure and perfect. “The Culture” has shortened our attention span and made us quick to turn our backs.No one ever called Tide a “sell out” for becoming new and improved, and honestly, most probably don’t give a shit as long as it costs the same. But people don’t want bands to change. And if they do, they want the bands to change the way they’re changing. As you grow up, you want your bands to grow up with and like you. At the very least, you want your bands’ records to be consistent within themselves and over the years, having a few songs that really say something to you and a whole buncha songs that are basically useless but can be played without leaping across the room to get to the next song.

A friend of mine (I’ll introduce him that way cuz I don’t remember who said it and I talk to far too many people in “the biz” who aren’t actually “friends” but we get along well enough to chat amicably as long as we’re on the clock and someone else is picking up the phone bill) recently commented that he attributed much of the suck ratio of a CD not to the singles-based pressure of the industry, but to the consumer’s ease of skipping tracks. Consider: as opposed to the above, somewhat-flowery tale of “leaping across the room” to get an annoying song off the stereo, now we simply lean over to the remote and switch instantly to the next track. (They’re called tracks now, not songs! Hell, I’m into the goofy musician talk of sessions, gigs, cats, jamming, and “laying it down,” but calling songs “tracks,” to me, is too clinical, too techie. It’s unromantic. [Don’t get me started on how important the unquantifiable, irrational, gut-level Gee No Say Kwa – it’s French or something, it means essence, I think – of music is.]) So now, thanks to modern technology, bands are allowed to write bad songs. Hell, people can either skip to the next track or, for those with forethought, you can even program the CD player to play only the songs you like! But despite the “freedom” to write songs consumers can skip past, most bands just write “bad” songs as opposed to cool songs that just don’t strike the fancy of some listeners. They’re called filler. They’re mediocre or just plain bad songs that should never’ve been recorded, much less captured forever on CD. (And non-rewritable CDs at that. Cassettes you could at least tape over if you plugged up that little hole on the top.) The songs usually sound like early attempts at the single. Failed attempts. Also (man, don’t get me started on this one…), seeing as there’s 650 MB of memory – about 74 minutes of music – on a CD, why the fuck do bands only give us 30-45 minutes of music? And why is so much of it sub-par? I just don’t get it. To me, the trick is to use a medium for what it’s good for. (I just got my first porno [I get ’em free, OK?] on DVD. That’s not a joke. Why does anyone need a porno in super fidelity, with top-notch film clarity, and plenty of additional room for director’s cuts, interviews, original trailers [that come at the beginning of movies – go figure], and all that happy horseshit?) But see, if you have the space at your disposal, why not use it? Various unsigned bands have told me it’s because of studio costs. That way of thinking is probably one of the reasons they’re still unsigned. CDs give “artists” – I’ll be generous to bands for a quick moment – the outlet for their single (usually the first track), and other “priority tracks” (advances, stickers, and bios usually point them out so you don’t have to waste your time thinking) which are mostly within the first five songs. That, really, should be considered the CD. But then, bands should offer “bonus tracks.” And I mean real bonus tracks, not just another fuckin’ song the band wrote or a cover of a song (their tribute) that was just fine without being covered. Fuck around a little, play with some influences, take some chances. If you can’t afford studio time (meaning you can’t sucker a label with more money than sense into picking up the studio tab), give fans demo versions and assorted four or eight track recordings. Hell, why not? Seeing as how – as mentioned before – most songs on the CD are, for the most part, filler, test-runs for The Big Single, or “artistic” stabs at breadth, depth, and diversity, hell, why not fill the whole fuckin’ CD with interesting shit only true fans are going to care about?

My philosophy is that there are too many bands with too little to say. And those with something to say usually have a pretty bad ratio of when they hit versus when they almost hit. (Bad bands – that’s the majority – miss, good bands almost hit.) But seeing as CDs have so much space to offer, I feel cheated when I don’t get enough of a good thing. And I’m unaffected by long CDs from bands I don’t like because I don’t waste my time on them. People have told me it’s hard to write a great song. Really? Then why do bands knowingly release not-great songs? That’s like publishing a rough draft or a sketch book and passing it off as the final masterpiece. It’s fine for the die-hard fans and collectors, but it annoys the rest of us. If you can’t write enough good songs, you’re in the wrong fuckin’ line of work. Go away. Don’t put out CDs with mostly shit cuz you have nothing else in you. Christ, how do you live with yourself!?! You’re showing us, in no uncertain terms, that you just don’t have it. So step aside and give someone else their 15 minutes.

CDs are so easy and cheap to make, hell, anyone can afford their 15 minutes. Seeing as any dipshit can:

1) either buy recording time or find a friend with a four or eight track (if you don’t have a friend with either, you just don’t have the right friends, do you?),

2) pour their heart out for posterity,

3) dupe it at home or on a friend’s computer who has a writable CD-ROM drive (see last comment about friends),

4) copy the artwork at some copy shop (or take it to work with you the next day cuz you either work at a copy shop or you work at a place with decent computers and copying machines now that they’re so fuckin’ cheap – if not, refer yet again to above friends comment),

5) sell it on their website (and all your friends’ websites, seeing as they’re almost as commonplace as phones by now), having a CD on yer resume is about as impressive as having a name. It’s too easy, there’s too much of it, and it makes it hard and demoralizing to slog through all the complete shit to find great CDs.

Which leads to the question of how and where you discover gems. Basically, which of the many forms of bombardment – advertising, word-of-mouth recommendation, reviews, DJ banter, radio play, video play, etc. – do you trust? Trust. That’s almost a foreign fuckin’ concept when it comes to music, isn’t it?

You see an ad telling you about a new record. Of course it says it fuckin’ rocks. That ad was paid for.

A friend mentions some band’s new album fuckin’ rules, dude, so you buy it. Your friend still thinks Pearl Jam is rad, so you just bought the new Creed record at full price only to discover that it sucks bad and the used store will only give you a few bucks for it cuz everyone is returning that over-hyped piece of regurgitated dogshit.

Reviews? Hell, not to crap where I eat or nothin’, but writers are under a lot of pressure from a lot of sources, and shit, we can’t spare the time and energy to really absorb the nuances of yet another store-clogging CD that sounds pretty much like the other 10 we have to crank out reviews for by deadline. Hell, we wanna write. Ya think we got into this racket expecting to feel so little about what used to be the joy of discovering a great new band? It’s downright depressing, kids, and the ratio of god to false icon (not to mention the practically criminal waste of mostly unrecyclable, somewhat-natural resources) is getting worse and worse.

As for DJ banter (on the lower rungs, it’s much like the plight of reviewers), shit, I can’t listen to the blather of most DJs. Not everything is a great new song by a great new band from their great new CD coming to town on a great bill. They have to keep you interested in what’s really not very interesting, so they lie. Flat out lie. Most of this shit sucks, and they know it all too well. But they’re told to play this crap cuz someone somewhere thinks this is what you want (or it’s what’s currently paying the most of the options made available – but we’ll get to that), so they try to make yet another forgettable song from yet another forgettable band sound enticing. But there’s not a lot there to trust, cuz there’s really not a lot of them involved in what they’re saying. Radio play and video play can be summed up simply: Who has money? A LOT of money. Why radio time is so fuckin’ expensive is something I’ve never understood. I don’t know anyone who could explain it to me who’s not trying to sell me air time, so I’ll probably never know. That’s the thing: you’re buying air time. Sounds funny when you think about it, that’s why you don’t. Air and time are not often thought of as commodities. They’re both perishable consumables, so I guess it was only a matter of time, so to speak, ’til someone figured out a way to sell them. When thinking of radio ads, I always think of Billy Crystal in City Slickers. He’s a radio ad salesman who’s having a mid-life crisis because he’s going to Career Day at his kid’s school and can’t figure out how to describe (much less to himself) how and why he gets paid so much money for selling air.

When MTV started to suck hard (about the time they stopped playing videos, but that’s only part of it), I always wondered why dozens of video shows didn’t pop up. Either regional or national, hell, that racket reeks of big money, huge stakes, and so much payola it’s absolutely mind-boggling. But no takers, huh? VH1 stopped sucking to pick up some of the slack, and I’m sure their power (not to mention their net worth) sky-rocketed accordingly. Still no takers, huh? Shit, how hard can it be to do reasonably well? And how many people would watch a semi-decent station (even just a show, fer crissake!) to catch cool videos? And how long do you think it’d take for “the powers that be” (actually, just the fuckers with a lot of money) to see people tuning in a cool show before buying it out or at least throwing gobs of money at it in order to sponsor (attaching your name to something cool, thus hopefully making people think that your company/product is cool) it? Then, of course, it’s on the downhill slide because big money always corrupts, but hell, another cool indie no-budget station/show should appear about then anyway! No? Still no takers, huh? Either I’m missing something (doubtful – I believe where there’s a will there’s a way, especially if there’s a lot of money to be made), or the Gen-X slacker tendency runs a lot deeper then I thought. Put it this way, young upstarts, the big money can’t create cool (never has and never will, it’s not in the DNA), but it can sure as shit buy it and fund it to get name recognition. And you just take the ride until you get disgusted and walk away very, very rich (or the weasels’ll find a way to sue yer ass and take it away from you, but I don’t want to discourage anyone with a good idea by being practical).

And that leads us to money and options. Here’s the bitch of it (well, one of ’em, but it’s a pretty fuckin’ big one): In order to get something across to a lot of people, it takes a lot of money, so only certain people get the big exposure. There are only certain powerhouses in the media, and they cost a truly frightening amount of money. Try to place an ad in your local daily newspaper for a tagsale, your band’s show, whateverthehell you do. But do it while sitting down, K? They have the power to charge ungodly prices because someone’ll pay it. Just not you. Honestly, hell, you get away with what you can, right? So why be surprised when others do it? Same goes for all forms of big media: daily papers, weekly “alternative” papers (sorry, I live in Boston and just can’t rightly call The Boston Phoenix “alternative” with a straight face, even in print), monthly magazines, radio, network TV, and cable TV. They all charge a lot of money because they can. But the people/businesses that can afford it are not necessarily the best at what they do, they’re just the ones that can afford it.So, to bring it all back, the record labels that can afford to buy lots of big print ads, lots of radio time, lots of TV ads, maybe some billboards or something (not to mention posters and endcap placement in stores – those things sure as shit ain’t free, you know), ARE NOT necessarily supporting the best bands out there. They’re just the bands on the labels that have the money. Why are they spending the money? Because they want to push what they’re selling in your face so you’ll buy it instead of something else which is just as good, and perhaps better. Better is an odd word to use when talking about music which is a matter of taste (or lack thereof), but you know what I’m saying. And why are these specific no-better bands on the labels with all kinds of money? I’d like to be flippant, shrug, and say you got me there, but unfortunately, I know. I said it in one of the first paragraphs but I’ll repeat it so you don’t have to backtrack: Major labels sign a bunch of stuff, throw money at all of it, and see what sticks. Ain’t much of a science, is it? Thing is, to the labels, it’s cheaper to throw “a lot” of money at something, realize no one gives a shit, drop or ignore yet another loser band tied to a label that doesn’t care about them but is contractually obligated to them and can’t release useless records with anyone else (I’m being unnecessarily hard, but I’ll get to that), and focus on “where the money’s at” because MY GOD is it a lot of fuckin’ money. That’s why I said “a lot” the first time. Man, that ain’t squat in comparison. And the big labels know it. They’re not stupid, just fat and mean.

As for the unlucky pretty-decent bands that get lost in the shuffle as some other band makes enormous cash, well, it’s been explained to me that major labels are under-staffed and can’t work every record to its potential. Again, I don’t get it. Hell, I’d hire some semi-flunky to work the semi-important bands to make some semi-decent money. But that’s the way I see things. I don’t like loose ends, and if it doesn’t take a lot out of you, hell, why not take the money? Money’s money, and just cuz it ain’t a TON of money, you might as well fuckin’ take it. Farm it out and take a cut, why not? But that, evidently, is the little guy way. The big guys can’t be troubled because, as I say, there’s huge money to be made elsewhere. Also, and this is where my little guy mind starts to lose interest, there’re easy write-offs to think about and something called “investors” to consider. Stock options come in here somewhere, but I don’t know how it all works and I don’t want to. That’s the real business side of things, and I think this business is gross enough without knowing about it.

Thing is, if someone’s going to buy it, someone’s going to sell it. It’s as simple as that. When you look at all the bands that’re still making records and you say to yourself, “Does anyone still care?,” I guess the answer is yes. Somewhere out there, someone will buy it. They say people will buy anything, and that’s proven to be true. Realistically, you can laugh all you want at, say, all the old hair bands from the ’80s who’re either getting back together or never stopped releasing records, but it’s so fuckin’ cheap to make CDs, somebody somewhere is gonna buy it (you can sell it on the web, like Andrew “Dice” Clay, seeing as no one else’ll put money into him anymore), and most of the bands (either hair bands or bands that’ve gone through the grinder at least once) are so beaten down, they don’t really ask for much in return, they’re just thankful someone’ll give ’em a fuckin’ break. So why not? Clog the market that much more, make back yer minuscule investment, and make a few bucks. It’s the American fuckin’ way.