Entertainmentbizz Music & media on a social level

I want my MTV

By Bob Lefsetz - Lefsetz Letters

I'm reading an oral history of MTV. I find these
off-putting, good for bathroom reading but disappointing as books, but maybe
the hit and run nature of "I Want My MTV" works because that's just
like the station, it lacked depth, it was in your face, it was the opposite of
classic rock.

MTV changed music. I'm not talking about the music
business, but the music itself. Suddenly how you looked was important. And you
had to fit the genre the station was promoting. Which went from Brit art school
to flash to rap in a decade. Suddenly, music was all about the
heavily-promoted, the heavily-marketed, it was made by beautiful people for
everyone, and the people who weren't beautiful, who'd lived a life of
rejection, who considered music their own private playground, tuned out. It's
like you discovered baseball when everybody was playing cricket, only your
friends and you hit the diamond, then it went on TV and everybody was playing
the game and no new sport could get traction. Either you were on MTV or you
were history. Either you were monstrous or you were irrelevant.

The Web is gonna change the kind of music we listen to.
As a matter of fact, it already has. Lady Gaga is the first Web star. She
wasn't broken by radio, but by videos online, she established that paradigm.
But even more important Gaga was the first social network superstar. She
realized it was about the relationship with the fan first and foremost. You
could create that kind of bond online, the customer wasn't the label or the
radio station or the TV outlet, it was the end user. As for the music itself,
that came last.

In the MTV era the music came first. If it wasn't an
approved genre, you were SOL. Sure, you had to look good and have money behind
you, but if you didn't sound like what MTV was playing, you had no chance. Now
just the opposite is true. The way you connect with your fans comes first. The
bond is the initial attraction. The music comes last. The point is the music
can sound like anything, there are no limits, no rules, no genres you must fall
into. You've just got to have a relationship with your fans and consistently
honor it, put them ahead of all other interests.

Concomitant with the rise of Lady Gaga, we've seen the
decline of the mainstream. Despite what the players and the media have to say,
a mainstream hit means less than ever before. You couldn't be alive in the
eighties and not know Culture Club, you'd seen the video for "Do You
Really Want To Hurt Me". Either you had MTV and watched incessantly or
whenever you went to a friend's house with cable, you turned it on and wouldn't
turn it off. But today an album can go to number one, never mind a single, and
a great swath of the public can have no clue who the performer is, never mind
the kind of music this person makes.

This is a big change.

We might still have mass artists. That's what Gaga is.
But there will be fewer of them. And until there's an MTV of the Web, one
outlet we all gravitate to, and that could be in the offing, we'll have the
niches. Niches guarantee you a small audience. But crossing from niche to niche
is like trying to convince a Jew to become a Mormon, almost impossible.

So instead of being a follower, music online is all about
being different. If you're me-too online, no one wants you. There's only one
Amazon, one Google, one iTunes and there's no room for number two. But if
you're brand new and capture people's fancy, you can become Facebook. Maybe not
that ubiquitous, but Facebook is nothing like Amazon, Google or iTunes,
certainly not up to now, and people clamored for it.

1. Dream small.

This is the opposite of the MTV era aspiration, when it
was about getting on television and reaching everybody. Today your goal is to
reach somebody, a single person, and then have the word spread from there. You
can build something completely new or tap into a niche, but if you're playing
for everybody online doesn't want you. Online is about the site that only
appeals to you. Mass is a lucky accident after the fact.
2. Success is bidirectional.

You must know your audience and listen to it. If you're
playing to everybody you're gonna reach nobody. Try to excite one listener who
will spread the word. And it doesn't matter what age you are, oldsters are the
fastest growing demo on Facebook, they've got iPhones too.
3. The music is important.

But it's not the only thing. If you're waiting for
someone to write you a check so you can stay at home and create and they can
sell, you're missing the point. You rehearse in public. People weigh in on you
along the way. You grow with your audience. And money comes at the end of the
game. Instead of going for a big advance, be your audience's friend, they'll
end up giving you all their money via Kickstarter and concert tickets and merch
sales thereafter.
4. The music must be available.

Never say no to your music being exposed online. Unless
it's tied in with a product or pitch. Yes to YouTube, yes to Spotify, yes to
iTunes. With so much information out there, it's hard to get noticed, don't be
your own worst enemy.
5. Creativity is king!

It's the sixties all over again. The era of Frank Zappa
has returned. You want people to check out your music to see what you have to
say, to marvel at the insight, the outrageousness. One striking concept is more
important than tens of thousands of dollars in promotion.
6. Different is a badge of honor.

People embrace the outlier. Music has become foreground
once again. Unlike the hits du jour which are used as dance club fodder and
workout inspirers, people are now paying attention to what you have to say. You
can't do skin deep unless you're purveying irony. You've got to go for the
heart and mind.
7. Growth curves are different.

In the MTV era you were a hit overnight. If you're a hit
overnight today, you're gone tomorrow. That's what a YouTube phenomenon is
about, that's Rebecca Black. If you've got millions of views, you're on your
way to irrelevancy. You're better off with fewer hits generated over a period
of years. Your stuff is always available online, you never know when a new fan
will encounter you and decide to check out your entire output. They don't have
to sit in front of the TV and wait for your video, it's all sitting there
online, like a land mine.

The reason records sell fewer copies today is more about
the above rules than theft. Most people just don't care about what you're
selling. If you're striving to become a rich rock star, the Web audience is
laughing at you. What makes you so special? Your pure desire? And you want to
leave us behind? We're right there with you, the more you promote yourself, the
more we're gonna make fun of you.

As for television music competitions, they're the last
exponent of a dying game. And since the acts break all of the above rules, they
don't break, and if per chance they do, they don't last.

Don't forget that the music business was in the doldrums
prior to MTV. It was rescued by something the established players did not
understand.

The same thing is happening today. Not tomorrow, but
right now.

If you want to have a career, play to the Web audience,
don't care what the mainstream says, don't release music based on holidays and
other arcane data. If you wrote it at midnight, have it out tomorrow. Even if
it's Sunday. Your audience is online. Ready.

Do it for them.

They'll do it for you.

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780525952305,00.html

http://www.amazon.com/Want-My-MTV-Uncensored-Revolution/dp/0525952306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318820250&sr=8-1

Music Industry Sighs No More

After a Decade of Decline, Album Sales are Starting to Rise and New Artists are Turning the Tables

By ANDREW MCKIE - The Wall Street Journal
KP Wilkman
U.K. band Elbow play a concert at Finland's Ruisrock festival in July.

"ABC, Easy as 1, 2, 3, Simple as do, re, mi..." This cheerful, uncomplicated sentiment, expressed by the Jackson Five to a melody itself so simple that it might have been an attempt to provide a blueprint for the pop song, went to the top of the U.S. charts in 1970.
Some four decades later, the music industry looks a good deal more complicated. There is probably no other business that has suffered quite as much commercial upheaval at the hands of digital media. The recording industry's mood in recent years could be better summed up by the opening line of the song the Jacksons knocked out of the No. 1 slot, The Beatles' "Let It Be": "When I find myself in times of trouble..."

Rex Features
Musician PJ Harvey, the bookmakers' favorite to win this year's Mercury Prize, performs at the Primavera Sound Music Festival in Barcelona in May.
After a dramatic decline in album sales during the past decade, there are signs that things are changing in the world of popular music. This week, Nielsen SoundScan's midyear report announced that album sales in the U.S. have risen for the first time in seven years, thanks to albums by artists such as Lady Gaga, Adele, Katy Perry and Mumford & Sons. Indeed, that target would have been reached even without Lady Gaga's album "Born This Way," which sold a million copies in its first week of release in May.
There is cause for optimism, too, on the other side of the Atlantic. Two of those success stories—Adele and Mumford & Sons—hail from the United Kingdom, which remains the dominant territory for European pop music. In particular, Adele's second studio album, "21," has been the phenomenon of the year, selling more than three million copies in both the U.K. and the U.S., and topping the charts across Europe and as far afield as Brazil and New Zealand.

Rex Features
Rapper Tinie Tempah at the Wireless Festival in London in July.
The singer is also featured for the second time on the shortlist for this year's Barclaycard Mercury Prize, often seen as a barometer of the health of the British music scene. The list, which was announced last week and has traditionally been viewed as a showcase for innovative new acts or critically acclaimed artists who may not have commanded mainstream attention, even found itself the subject of some grumbling on the Internet from those who thought "21" had, by dint of being too popular, ruled itself out as a candidate. Interestingly, the bookmakers concurred, swiftly dropping it as favorite and installing instead "Let England Shake" by the alternative rock singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.
But then, attempting to second-guess the Mercury prize is a mug's game. The shortlist also includes the stadium rockers Elbow (who, like Ms. Harvey, have won before) and Katy B (who, like Adele, trained at the BRIT School for the Performing Arts in Croydon), whose "On a Mission" is an out-and-out pop record. They sit alongside urban hip-hop from Tinie Tempah and the folk music of King Creosote. There used to be the odd nominee drawn from the world of modern orchestral music, though none has featured for some years now. A jazz album—this year it is "Good Days at Schloss Elmau" by the pianist Gwilym Simcock—also usually features on the list, though so far none has ever won.

Rex Features
James Blake performs at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland last month.
It may be that this very diversity is a key factor in the relative health of the British music scene. UK Music, the umbrella body that lobbies for the industry as a whole, estimates that music contributed at least £5 billion to the country's economy last year, with £1.3 billion coming from exports. While this makes the country second only to the U.S. as a source of repertoire, 81% of the country's music companies now employ fewer than five people.
The primary reason for this shift from the traditional model, in which giant record labels controlled every aspect of a band's career, is technology. While online music piracy has greatly reduced the income from album and CD sales, the same phenomenon has actually increased the market for music as a whole.
In fact, the Nielsen figures suggest that—even before considering the income from direct-to-fan sales, public performance royalties, advertising from sites like YouTube or Internet streaming services—overall music revenue has increased by more than 50% since 2006. At the same time, recording and distribution costs have fallen to near zero. When I interviewed Daniel Ek, founder of the Internet music-streaming company Spotify, last year, he argued that, like home taping in the 1980s, these changes had actually greatly increased the appetite for music.

Rex Features
Adele gives a concert at the Tabernacle in London in January.
"The changes have certainly been complicated, and I'm still in the middle of them," says Pat Kane, of the band Hue and Cry, which had several Top 40 hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s. "We now run our entire business by using what is ubiquitous to drive people towards what is scarce; that is, as everybody knows, what capitalism is all about. The ubiquitous thing now, because of the ease of copying, is recorded music. The scarcity is in live stage performances and unique objects with our imprimatur on them. For example, for our next album, 'Hotwired,' which comes out in January, we might issue the chance to buy, say, an original vinyl copy, with handwritten lyrics and a personalized message, all framed."
This model is an inversion of what was previously the norm, when bands would stage tours, often at a loss, in order to promote a record. With the shift within the industry and the culture at large, however, even the biggest artists have embraced such innovative commercial models. Four years ago, Prince caused outrage in the music industry by giving away three million copies of his new album with U.K. newspaper the Mail on Sunday, and not even offering it for sale in shops. But the artist, whose previous record had sold only 80,000 copies in the U.K., went on to sell out 21 nights at the giant O2 arena in London. Sales of his back catalogue also boomed.
Rex Features
Anna Calvi performs at the Southbank Meltdown Festival in London in June.
"It's very definitely the case that people are considering things that they wouldn't have thought of when we started out 20 years ago," says Craig Potter, the keyboard player with Elbow.
"Putting songs in adverts, licensing, ringtones, that's all part of it now," he says. "We were actually worried about stepping up to arenas, because we didn't want just to do 'fist in the air' anthems, but luckily our more mellow stuff still seems to work with those audiences. But even then, I think we would have struggled if our last album hadn't broken through. For most of our career, people thought we were Manc miserablists." The band won the Mercury Prize in 2008 for "The Seldom Seen Kid," and their latest album, "Build a Rocket, Boys!," is on the this year's shortlist.
Mr. Potter, who is also the band's producer, acknowledges the changes that have been wrought by the ability to record an album on an ordinary laptop computer. "These days, bands can totally do it themselves. And even if producers are brought in, the record company often don't fund it," he says. "People talk about whether labels will even exist in five years time. But when we began, going into a proper recording studio was almost as big a deal as getting signed."
For Elbow, live performances and recording sales have become a virtuous cycle—sales of their latest album skyrocketed after their performance at this year's Glastonbury festival. But both Messrs. Potter and Kane point out that their bands had an audience created under the old models.
"It used to be that 'Top of the Pops' on TV and airplay on [BBC] Radio 1 were what mattered," says Mr. Kane. "People in the business still expect some macro-level solution for the industry. That may come, but I think it may be wishful thinking. Whatever, it has to be a solution that respects a generation that sees universal copying as a reality."
Mr. Potter also points out the disadvantages for bands setting out on a career in the new reality. "Not everyone is going to be entrepreneurial, and getting recognized in the first place is the hard bit," he says. "It's difficult if you're going down to the Job Centre or working in KFC to turn down a wedge of cash that will keep you going for the next year or whatever. And there's a reason why studio recordings work, and it's partly knowing you've got to get on with it because they're expensive. It's a bit different if you're at home with no time constraints, and you decide to go and put a wash on in the middle of a track."

Rex Features
Metronomy play at the Reading Festival in Reading, England, last August.
"The creative challenge is to respond to the new commercial environment," says Mr. Kane. "It is actually reintroducing elements of craft and care and design that have been relegated since the days of the triple-gatefold album."
Anna Calvi, whose eponymous debut album was released by the successful independent label Domino, and whose atmospheric, Gothic music received a boost from videos posted on YouTube, also sees new technology as a boon.
"I think that the Internet has allowed for a lot more diversity in music," she says. "It is a healthy part of the artistic process to be able to show your work, and this is now possible for everyone. Perhaps this has filtered through to labels, and more diverse music is subsequently being signed. It's obvious that independent labels are leading the way in Britain."
Even so, within such a dynamic and changing industry, it may be worth remembering that the same Michael Jackson who topped the charts 41 years ago, and went on to sell more than 61 million albums in the U.S. alone, ended his life with unsettled debts of $500 million. At the time of his death, however, he had hit on a way to settle those liabilities. He was planning on staging a series of 50 concerts at the O2 arena.