Category — music

Hello book publishers. You’re starting to scare me.

I work in publishing but was a record label executive from 1990-2001 and am fascinated by parallels between the two industries. When it comes to the digitization of product and attempts to master/mangle the phenomenon of social media, the publishing business is where the music business was about 10 years ago. And although publishing probably sets its collective IQ (not to mention good manners) as superior to the music business, I can’t find evidence that their reactions to industry sea change are substantially different.

While attending this week’s O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference, I heard a lot of this:

There is still time to change course and we’ve got to do something now—but we don’t know what.

In the meantime, let’s co-opt whatever new trends we see out there by assigning some low-level marketing person to troll Twitter or hiring a social media consultant.

Please, please don’t let us end up like the record business.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent past, it’s that none of these thoughts are worth pursuing. The “somebody do something” mentality duplicates the kind of hoping-for-the-best attitude espoused by long-time executives in music who simply could not or would not question the viability of the professional cocoons they’d built for themselves. And who can blame them—corporate mega structures are schooled in consolidation as the primary means of growth, not fleet-footed, shape-shifting responsiveness to change. But now we’re in a world where getting bigger is not the answer, getting smaller is.

The question I hoped would be addressed at the conference was: How will publishing avoid being trapped by its own environment? But it never was. Instead, I noticed a lot of talk of waiting and seeing how things are going to work out before making any earth-shaking, world-class responses to a world that has already changed.

At the conference, I was excited for a keynote aimed at comparing the music and publishing industries. Although entertaining, it lacked vision. The speaker talked about how only wimps fear the freedoms of the digital marketplace and attempt to control intellectual property rights and that at least we’re not going to start arresting people like those thugs over at the RIAA. I was disappointed not to hear a more sophisticated dissection, beginning with debunking the idea that digital downloads killed the music business, or could kill publishing.

Downloads did not kill the music business. Shortsightedness and turf-protection on the part of music business executives did. Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

What offed the music business—and what the publishing industry is facing—is a corporate structure built to churn out hits to subsidize an entire product line. (For more detail on how this happened–boring to everyone but me–see this 2007 post.) Rather than developing artists, exploiting regional marketplaces, and building financial models that can support a mid-range list, both industries sold their souls out to entertainment at the expense of art and expression. Both are in the business of selling many copies of a few items, not a few copies of many items—the kind of product that can be shot out of a cannon, dominate the retail market, and then basically disappear—because anything else is simply too complicated for a similarly bulked up corporate retail environment to track. The appearance of downloads and file sharing could almost be seen as a desperate measure on the part of consumers to listen and read in an un-mandated manner.

Commodification of bookselling is the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room, not e-books or DRM (Digital Rights Management) or the Kindle.

Without making friends with this beast, my guess is that in 2-5 years we’ll see a publishing industry that looks like the music business does today: Super-downsized major companies selling a product line aimed at an older demographic and a jillion new companies creating the next generation of publishers, retailers, and readers. Just like in the music business, some in publishing will be mourning the death of the business while others will be wildly excited because all they see is opportunity.

At Tools of Change, Sara Lloyd of Pan-MacMillan nailed it when she said, “Publishers understand markets, but not customers.” As anyone in the music business could have told you years ago, the customer is now a human being, and publishers—who still see retail as their customers—don’t know how to build products for individuals who might want to discuss, interact with, congregate around, or add their own $0.02 to the content. The customer has stepped out of the bookstore and into the foyer of the publishing houses, they are knocking on the doors of authors, and asking to be addressed as individuals. They will consent to purchase, not when coerced by a front-of-the-store display or fabulous media coverage, but when their friends start talking about how awesome/helpful/inspiring/powerful the actual book itself is. And this—the book itself—is what publishing has lost sight of in the attempt to build market share. To change this kind of corporate culture will require super-human “change management” to flip a mega-entity staffed by people who are petrified of losing their jobs into a business that can be one step ahead (instead of ten steps behind) consumption trends.

Ultimately, the music business sacrificed music to save the business. Hopefully, publishers will realize that if books are similarly sacrificed, what will be left is an industry that doesn’t care about its product, focuses on creating grandiose supply chains instead of amplifying demand, has no idea what its customers want, sees value only in commodification, and has to keep spinning out hit after hit after hit just to keep the doors open. The result? A beast that consumes itself. I truly wish I had heard some mention of this at the conference. Maybe next year.

I think we all know the answer to that now…

(skip first 1:05)

Check out “You Are Too Beautiful” from what may be my favorite recording of all time. Called “the greatest album ever made” by Esquire Mag in 1990. Only recording Coltrane ever made with a vocalist. Supreme, supreme, supreme. Makes me weep. Literally.

Click on album cover to hear the track:

Check out the whole recording here. Please. You will be so happy.

Jimmy Ruffin

While writing my book on heartbreak (”The Wisdom of a Broken Heart,” due out in September ‘09), I’ve turned again and again to that time honored source of knowledge and solace: music.

Here are the lyrics to my current all-time fave. It is just so wrenching and poetic. Grab a kleenex and enjoy.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED

Songwriters: James Dean/Paul Riser/William Weatherspoon

As I walk this land of broken dreams
I have visions of many things
But happiness is just an illusion
Filled with sadness and confusion

What becomes of the broken hearted
Who had love, that’s now departed
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind, maybe

The roots of love grow all around
But for me they come a tumblin’ down
Every day heartaches grow a little stronger
I can’t stand this pain much longer

I walk in shadows searching for light
Cold and alone, no comfort in sight
Hoping and praying for someone to care
Always moving and going nowhere

What becomes of the broken hearted
Who had love, that’s now departed
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind, help me

I’m searching though I don’t succeed
But someone look, there’s a growing need
All is lost, there’s no place for beginning
All that’s left is an unhappy ending

Now what becomes of the broken-hearted
Who had love, that’s now departed
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind

I’ll be searching everywhere
Just to find someone to care
I’ll be looking everyday
I know I’m gonna find a way

Nothing’s gonna stop me now
I’ll find a way somehow
I’ll be searching everywhere

Betrayal. Love lost. Murder. Sweet sorrow. Haunted voices speaking from beyond the grave… This song (recorded by the great, great Johnson Mountain Boys) has it all.

No, brother, I'll never grow better
'Tis useless to tell me so now
My broken heart is only awaiting
For a resting place under the snow
I was thinking last night, dear brother
How happy our home was with joy
When a serpent crept into our Eden
In the form of fair Christine LeRoy

I was thinking last night of our wedding
One year ago only tonight
When we stood 'neath the gaslights so happy
In jewels and garments of white
When she came with the face of an angel
To wish us a lifetime of joy
My heart sank within at the malice
In the face of fair Christine LeRoy

Diamonds gleamed high in her tresses
Falling back from her ivory brow
And glistened like stars in the heavens
On her fingers as white as the snow
When she gave her white hand to my husband
I knew he thought me a toy
By the side of that radiant beauty
That beautiful Christine LeRoy

Time passed away and my husband
Grew thoughtless and careworn each day
I knew 'twas the wiles of the demon
Who so artfully lured him away
When at last one bright evening I found them
'Twas a sight all my life to destroy
Hand in hand with her head on his shoulder
Sat my husband and Christine LeRoy

Now brother, be kind to your darling
For my heart has grown sick now and faint
For the thoughts of the wiles of the demon
In the beautiful form of a saint
When I sleep 'neath the snowdrifts of winter
Where no sorrow or pain can destroy
Just tell them they've murdered me, brother
God forgive him and Christine LeRoy

Satta Massagana

The Abyssinians

So beautiful. Such harmonies. So ridiculously laid back. National anthem of reggae, some say.

I hear that the non-English sounding lyrics (Satta Massagana Ahamlai, for example) are Hebrew. But I speak Hebrew and I don’t understand these words. But what do I know. Jah Rastafari.

08-satta-massagana.mp3

I usually don’t play music when I write–too distracting. With one exception. When I want to get serious, I put this on repeat and listen to it over and over. I don’t know why but for me it’s perfect–perfect tempo, perfectly spacious. Love.

From the “Diva” soundtrack from about 20 yrs ago.

sentimental-walk.mp3

Please watch this.

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This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.

Upside Down: What Really Killed the Music Business

In 2000 I said to a friend, “the music industry is dead. It’s just a carcass that hasn’t been drug away yet. Little things feeding off the remains but soon it’ll just be dust.” Not a pretty image, but not inaccurate either.

When I expressed this sentiment to longtime fellow-music business colleagues, about ½ of them scoffed, ¼ nodded in agreement, and another ¼ had the saddest response of all: belief in the system. Belief that some fresh form of music would act as a rising tide that lifts all boats and “save the business,” just as disco, hip-hop, and punk did in the 70s/80s, and as the introduction of the compact disc did in the late 80s/early 90s. Then we grownups would shake our heads and go well we sure didn’t see that coming but let’s make hay with the recordings and the radio promotions and a zillion endcap displays in Musicland and Walmart.

Whenever someone said something like this—that a new kind of music would rise up to save us—I’d ask, do you see any signs of this right now? Any underground club scenes? Regional sound that’s got good buzz? Crazy stuff coming out of the radio at 2 AM? Kids speaking some incomprehensible music scenester-inspired lingo? No, they’d say. But we’re too old to know. Anyway there’s techno and electronica and we hate it so maybe it’s the next thing… It’s got to be happening somewhere. Well, it isn’t, I’d say, I don’t care how old I am. There is no next thing.

A “next thing” isn’t a derivative mix of existing sounds, no matter how mind-blowingly creative, beautiful, or shocking. A next thing is like Rock and Roll. R&B. Reggae. Soul. Disco. Funk. Metal. Hip Hop. Punk. We got all these forms from the 50s through the early 80s. And since then?
No new forms have evolved since the early 80s. Go ahead. Argue with me. Tell me that Alternative or Grunge or Techno or Emo or House are new forms and we can be certain that even now the young people of America are experimenting with music that is going to blow us all away. Go ahead. (They’re experimenting all right, but with how to share music, not how to play it…) And I’ll tell you what I would have said to a classical music aficionado in the late1800s: no new shoots are going to grow on this plant. You had your Medieval, your Renaissance, your Baroque and what have you, but after the Romantic period, what new forms evolved? I’m not talking about the occasional astonishing instrumentalist or crazy avant garde soundtrack that catches mainstream attention. You classical people, you had your—what?—500, 600 years of evolution and we popular music people had our 30 years. For both of us, it’s over. All there is to do is mix existing forms together to create hybrids or play the old stuff in new ways.

I’m not saying there aren’t amazing musicians making extraordinary music. There are.

I’m not saying people don’t care about music anymore. They do.

I’m not saying extraordinarily interesting and creative new amalgamations of sounds aren’t being produced. They are.

But it’s still not a sign of evolution.

For the music business, new forms of sound are not the future. Delivery systems are.

How did it get this way?

It’s very popular—and understandable—to blame the stunning rise and fall of the music business on digital downloads and the hubris of record labels execs. But this is not sophisticated enough. The decline didn’t happen because kids started downloading music and old guys didn’t get it; the seeds had already been planted. Downloads are the symptom, not the disease.

Downloads didn’t kill the music business. It killed itself long before downloading became widespread.

Here’s how it happened.

Shift in purchasing patterns from regional to national. In the 90s, there were things called record stores. They sold recordings. There were things called appliance stores. They sold appliances. There were things called grocery stores. They sold food. Somewhere in the early 90s these things started to get all mixed together. When it became apparent that the CD was for real and not only were people going to buy new releases in this format but also replace every single thing they already owned, the industry kaboomed. In a good way. Suddenly every retailer wanted to stock CDs. (I’ll never forget the time Rounder Records got a 3000-piece bluegrass catalog order from Blockbuster video stores.)
Around the same time, we saw the rise of big box stores selling music. The famous phrase “loss leader” came into our lexicon. CDs became those inglorious leaders. They were imagined to be just the thing to lure unsuspecting customers into the big box with the hope, I suppose, that they’d realize they needed a new washing machine while shopping for Nirvana’s Nevermind, or perhaps the other way around. To capture market share, Best Buy, Circuit City, and others priced music below even wholesale costs in some cases. What knucklehead thought of this, I have no idea, but this was the beginning of the end. Suddenly regular record stores had to compete on price in order to survive. But they couldn’t achieve the economies of scale, so instead they ate each other. 20-store chains became 100 store chains. 100-store chains became 800-store chains. Independent stores began to die. First individual stores and then small chains.

So what, you might think, it’s the American way to compete on price and anyway bands were still making music, so what’s the big deal. The big deal is that purchasing became centralized. This had two important consequences:

One, Regional bands or labels couldn’t sell records to a buyer in their own hometown, thereby building a local base, and, drum roll please,

Two, Central buying can only succeed with hit-driven product. When one guy in an office in Albany is deciding what’s going to go in 1200 stores throughout the country, he can’t buy this for Miami and that for Ann Arbor. He doesn’t have time to buy 500 copies of a new release this week and then monitor sales patterns and buy another 500 (or 10 or 1000) the next week and then keep 2 copies in the bin just in case someone wants to buy it in a year. Too labor intensive. Plus he has no idea what people care about in Miami or Ann Arbor. He needs quick turns on music that’s going to blow up out of the box and then be gone. For good.

Buh-bye developing artists.

Nationalization of music distribution. Central purchasing systems do not thrive on having a multitude of vendors, each with different terms, sales cycles, pricing structures, and styles of customer service. They want to buy a bunch of stuff from as few people as possible. Distributors had to figure out a way to do business with retail behemoths. They had to become behemoths themselves. Major labels actually began scouting indie labels and offering distribution deals to the bigger ones. Smaller indie distributors and one stops began gluing themselves together to form national distribution companies. Though they were once the bastion of new music, indie labels and distributors had less and less time for developing artists themselves.

Buh-bye regional music.

Nationalization of radio. The final nail in the coffin came in 1996 when President Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act removing ownership restrictions for radio stations. Instead of being limited to how many stations one company could own in one market, they could own a whole bunch. Programming decisions would no longer being made city-by-city, but format by format. You could turn on the radio in Sacramento or Scranton and hear the same exact thing. Local radio lost its local-ness and all the pride, quirkiness, and opportunity for new artists and creative programming that went with it. Again, a few people making decisions for a huge number of outlets. And, again, only hits serve an infrastructure like this.

Buh-bye new music.

Shift in creative locus. Hits, hits, hits. Have I made my point? Instead of a record label being able to survive by selling a few copies of a zillion different recordings, they had to sell a zillion copies of a few recordings. Product lines became less and less diverse, less and less risk-taking. What can sell a zillion copies without artist development? Only already-established artists or those lucky few who a label would choose to get behind and push, push, push until they made it to the top (as long as it happened within the first month after the record came out). To do this would literally require millions of dollars. To spend millions of dollars, you have to have a sure thing. To have a sure thing, you look at what has already succeeded and try to copy it by going out and finding an act that fits the bill. When you copy others, you end up with bullshit.
So at this point, instead of music coming off the streets and up to the marketing office, it was imagined in the marketing office and then shoved out onto the street. Of course with this kind of creative process, someone new is going to win the popularity contest today and by tomorrow, Mr. Today will be Mr. Yesterday. It’s just what happens when instead of starting with the musician and working forward to find the audience, music starts with the audience and works back to what kind of artists it will sign.

This is the only model the industry can support now.

And the saddest thing of all? We didn’t even notice that music itself was dying. We can no longer tell what is music and what is posturing. If we could, when it came to A&R decisions, we kept it to ourselves.

The introduction of digital downloads could almost be seen as a desperate measure on the part of consumers to listen to music in an unrestricted, un-mandated, un-stuffed-down-their-throats, tits-and-ass-flying-every-which-way-to-get-their-attention way. When you add to this the rise of social networking as the distribution means of the present/future, and word of mouth as the primary marketing took, I think we have an incredibly hopeful and optimistic situation. For music. Not for music executives.

Mother Earth
Memphis Slim
I was working as a bartender at Antone’s: Austin’s Home of the Blues when blue piano player and shouter Memphis Slim came to play, which was a big deal for blues fans—it was his first stateside gig since he had expatriated himself to Paris in the 60s. And his gig fell on my night off, so I’d really be able to listen. On the appointed night, I banged in through the screen door in the alley out back, found my favorite seat stage right and took Ecstasy.

The band played a few numbers before bringing Memphis Slim up to a standing ovation. He sat down and began with “Mother Earth,” one of his best-known songs.

I don’t care how great you are,
Don’t give a damn what you’re worth.
When it all comes down,
You’ve got to come back to Mother Earth.

His playing was completely relaxed and his voice boomed out, commanding and round. My new boyfriend, the guitar player in the house band, was on stage backing Memphis Slim, and he sounded like a genius to me—knew exactly where to fill, where to lay back, where to mimic the old records, and where to throw in something completely new. Between numbers, he would look to make sure I was still there and wink when he saw me.

I began to feel happier and happier, maybe even beyond the beyond of any happiness I had ever experienced. Was it the drug or was it the music, so present and real but about to pass out of existence altogether? Maybe it was my new boyfriend, on stage, playing like a dream, so subtle, so exact. With each note, each perfect fill, each full stop, my sense of happiness escalated. There was nothing but happiness everywhere I looked. Happiness didn’t feel like I imagined it would, all giggly and bouncy. No. It was quiet and deep and completely everywhere. Tears began to stream from my eyes.

Why couldn’t it be like this all the time, I asked myself and the moment I did, it was. Something ceased to be and its cessation is what caused me to notice it, like when you turn off a television you hadn’t realized was on. I realized that I had spent every moment until that point fighting some kind of fear. Every job, every boyfriend, every haircut, phone call, and trip to the market had been motivated in some way by fear. In an instant, it all disappeared. I stopped being afraid. I drew in the antenna that checks the environment for malicious content and saw that everything was actually okay. Then, like every moment, it passed into non-being—along with the song I was hearing, the song I wasn’t hearing, along with Memphis Slim, the Blues itself, and all those friendly waves and winks. I was alone again with my conventional mind. So I exhaled and came back to Mother Earth.

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