Tales Of Industry Idiocy: An Occasional Series. Number One, Unavailable Faves.

The record industry in 2009 is a shambles, illegal downloading has crippled an already embattled economic sector, the album as a physical object is dead, and music as a whole is steadily dropping in popularity and sales.

Hello conventional wisdom. Glad to see you making an appearance. Now step off down to the bar, leave us in peace, and let's talk reality, shall we?

See, I'm a music obsessive (as should be obvious if you're reading this). I've clocked well over a decade working in record stores, dealing with customers face-to-face. I collect CDs and vinyl, go to live shows (usually one or two a week), and am in constant search of new and exciting input. I scan news sites, read all sorts of magazines (online and print), deal with people on different levels of the industry on a fairly regular basis. All this is just to explain that I have a bit of experience, and my opinions expressed here aren't just born of idealism and naivete, I fancy I know a bit of what I'm talking about... And here's the honest truths: People like music. People are not averse to physical objects, provided they're of quality. And people will pay for good things.

But here's the kick... Music is an individual taste, and culture is fragmented. There will never be another Elvis, another Beatles, another universally accepted THING YOU NEED. The closest we've come in this day and age is a Justin Timberlake, and that's an order of magnitude different. It's a different world now. Media saturation these days is near-total, there's an endless amount of input available with next to no effort, and the scale of innovation is far lesser than it used to be. There's no next punk revolution on the horizon, the big labels focus increasingly on pushing fewer acts harder and trying to homogenize the culture, and it completely fails to work. I mean sure, once in a while there's a Justin, or a "Crazy In Love", or a "Umbrella" or a Coldplay (ugh), but that's increasingly rare. The vernacular isn't universal anymore, and you're left with being stunned by the occasional aberration that nobody sees coming and can't possibly analyse closely enough to repeat. Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", for example. Or the gold standard of post-millennial WTF pop moments, "Hey Ya". (It became so ubiquitous that it's sometimes tough to recall how weird that one sounded when it first touched down, but man... It still defies logical explanation. "Okay, a southern black rapper decides to write a ghetto surf-twist song with echoes of Buzzcocks and Motown and tops it off with 80s synth new wave sparkles and hand claps and a video aping the Ed Sullivan show? Really? You're kidding, right?")

So yeah. Increasingly, the market is about specialization and individuality, with only the one-in-a-million lightning strike or all-out large corporation media blitz saturation records as an occasional exception. And the major labels flounder and struggle and reissue old favorites and look for the one thing they can sell to everyone and hope vainly that a miracle will recreate the golden days of multi-platinum records.

And that's not the way it is. Music (hell, ANY retail these days) is about catering to the smaller sectors, pinpoint marketing, building an audience and giving them something quality. Find good things, then find the people who like it. Look to sell less copies of more records to more people, and create the new economy.

Let's take an example of what's horribly wrong with things as is. Here's sixteen records I dug from last year...



















Of these, five are on indie labels. Three are long-serving established artists with built-in audiences for anything they release, "sure things" on at least some scale. Three (TV On The Radio, The Black Keys, Gnarls Barkley) are fairly new acts built by an indie label and word-of-mouth before signing to a major. Two are major label hip-hop releases (though the Kanye West certainly NEVER would've gotten a second glance from Universal if he wasn't an established hitmaker). One (The Wombats) is a new artist on a major label subsidiary. And three (Cajun Dance Party, Primal Scream, Martina Topley-Bird) are completely unavailable in the US.

Hold on, let's take a closer look at those three. These records are made, completed, and only available as illegal download or insanely expensive import:

Primal Scream has never been a huge-selling act in the US, but they're guaranteed at least decent numbers. Nobody's licensed it, there's no label willing to spend a little to make a little and go slow and steady.

Cajun Dance Party is a new act from London. I've mentioned them here before, teenagers with guitars making insanely fun heart-wrenching pop. They've had a couple UK chart singles, great reviews, and zero attention in the US. Nobody knows about their record, but nearly everyone who hears it digs it. (I sold upwards of 50 copies of this in six months last year, working in a tiny-ass store, simply by playing it for people. It's quality.)

And lastly, Martina Topley-Bird. This seems like a no-brainer. She was the vocalist on the first few Tricky records. Her new album that mixes trip-hop sounds with a singer-songwriter vibe and giant splashes of 60s girl-group melodies. It plays equally well to the music snob and the starbucks crowd, and would be an ideal fit for the NPR market. And just to top it off, it's produced by Danger Mouse. (Who, in case you need a brief resume, produced the above Black Keys and Beck albums; is half of Gnarls Barkley; produced The Good The Bad And The Queen and Gorillaz; made the Dangerdoom album with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and MF Doom; collaborated with David Lynch and Sparklehorse and a cast of many on a new project that had its release blocked by EMI for dubious reasons, etcetera etcetera.) It's an awesome, awesome record, and IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET LEGALLY FOR LESS THAN TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. (Like the above C.D.P. album, I sold boatloads of copies of this even at an insane price point. I can only imagine how it would've done if it were available in the $10-15 range.)

So anyhow. Great music that people like, that major labels have and don't release in the biggest market in the world. Time to ditch the old business models and start over, maybe?

[to be continued in future posts, no doubt.]