Simon Says Doom and Gloom for Music. Nobody Follow.
TechCrunch has posted an interview, conducted by Andrew Keen, with a pompous ass named Simon Reynolds who has been writing about music since the 80’s. He’s one of the overly nostalgic types who can’t seem to adjust to the new internet culture. He actually struggles, as he states in the following interview, with all the information available to him. Toward the end of the interview he slightly redeems himself with some truths about how bands handle their influence overload, and the future of music related businesses. But his view of the future remains all doom and gloom for artists. Watch as he sits atop his imaginary horse to tell you that you aren’t as good a listener to music as he was in the 80’s, or something.
“It’s just been cataclysmic I guess, in mostly negative ways….It’s obviously been really bad for record labels. It’s been pretty bad for artists. I mean some artists have made it work but not a lot….It’s much less likely that you’ll be able to make a living doing it.”
Simon Reynolds, who is supposed to have his finger on the pulse of music, has decided that no new artists are making a living off of music. There is no point in wasting the energy to rebut this obviously ludicrous assessment of today’s music climate. It’s more accurate to say that it’s less likely for an artist to make a living playing bad music. That’s probably what he meant, right? (Nope.)
In response, Keen asks Reynolds if “piracy” is to blame. Reynolds continues on his pompous streak:
“…a generation’s come along who don’t think they should pay for music…It’s irresistible isn’t it? In fact I have downloaded records in a naughty way…I’ve actually downloaded records I already own ‘cause it’s more convenient than trying to find the CD, and I’ll actually, you know, rather than go waste 20 minutes going through my boxes for a CD I’ll just download it.”
It appears Simon feels guilty. As he should. How dare he cross an industry he has supported for so long with his boxes and boxes of purchased CD’s? Why would he embrace the technology that provides a new and better way to acquire and listen to music when the industry would rather consumers buy CD’s for $15 bucks a pop?
The truth is that people want something different. The culture of downloading music for free, and then supporting only those artists you truly love, was birthed by an industry’s game of baiting you into buying a whole CD’s worth of songs with only a few good tracks. It was a system of control which could profit from the mainstream masses and the hardcore fan alike. The resulting culture of downloading exposes the truth of the matter, which is the mainstream casual listener, who occasionally puts on CD’s and radio for background music and doesn’t quite worship any musician, doesn’t feel the need to spend a fortune on a huge music collection made up of CD’s of which only 10% of the songs are good.
The pre-internet-era’s equivalent to today’s casual listener and die hard fan is the teenage girl with ten or fifteen pop CD’s and a twenty-something guy with 100+discs in boxes. The latter being the type that is this interviewee, Simon Reynolds. But today’s die hard fan knows he doesn’t need the clutter made up of so many bands. The die hard needs the best of the best in their collection of vinyls/cd’s/legally purchased mp3’s. The rest is either casual listening or good enough for a t-shirt or two, and catching the concerts when they come around- a larger stream of income for any successful musician.
Reynolds says his major interest in downloading lies with rare gems from the past, out of print music and such. Presumably, this is as far as his narrow thinking will go to justify downloading: Downloading from the dead (This does ignore the fact that publishing companies and heirs can still profit long after the deceased artist).
The conversation moves into psychological motives when Reynolds speaks of the “left-wing”, that is, people who are “reflexively anti-capitalist” and “rejoice” in ripping off the record companies and corporations who have “prospered off the back of musicians for so long”. This doesn’t come off as a defense of the corporations, but he doesn’t really swing the other way either. The other way being the record corporations’ recent lack of even trying to seem like they care about nurturing new talent, and instead their focus on finding the next Gaga to bring them millions for a few years, until the next ball-of-clay replacement shows up at their door.
Reynolds continues:
“But I think the de-commodification of music has actually not been very good for fans, either. I think there’s something about paying for music that makes it more intense; you’ve got to listen harder to music. If you pay for it you’re going to pay attention to the record you bought and get your money’s worth. Whereas I think people who download a lot, I’ve just seen from my own habits, you listen distractedly. You might never get around to playing it, you might listen to half of it then stop and get distracted.”
Let me just go over this hogwash point by point:
“I think there’s something about paying for music that makes it more intense;”
Nope. Paying fifty dollars for a brown paper bag filled with dog shit will not enhance the effect and cognitive response that a brown paper bag filled with dog shit is capable of eliciting.
“…you’ve got to listen harder to music. If you pay for it you’re going to pay attention to the record you bought and get your money’s worth.”
Again, money has got nothing to do with how much you pay attention to a record. You either pay attention to the music or you don’t. But let’s pretend money DID have something to do with it: You listen to the record very intently and decide you didn’t get your money’s worth. Do you get to return it? Or are we just paying for the privilege to spin a CD?
“Whereas I think people who download a lot, I’ve just seen from my own habits, you listen distractedly. You might never get around to playing it, you might listen to half of it then stop and get distracted.”
Sounds like a personal problem, Simon. You can’t control your impulses to download senselessly with no direction. And when you do listen you feel your email is more important? If your listening habits are as you say they are, then I’m not sure I should trust your work in the field of music criticism.
The interview starts coasting into a broader territory of internet information abundance. Reynolds says “You can access it all. But it’s too much to process.” Reynolds’s point is valid, yet it is quite possibly a dated issue. Something that, as a culture, we will grow out of as time goes on. More and more people will become comfortable with the fact that they can’t process it all. It’s someone’s personal flaw if they think they are going to see every movie and hear every song now that it’s all there. We are in the midst of a giddy jumping-up-and-down-with-joy phase of the internet where it amazes us and makes us scream “look! look! it’s all here!”. But when the internet and it’s fast growing capabilities becomes the norm in 20 years or so, people will have hopefully learned to manage their interests.
Keen then asks Reynolds about a theory of the disappearance of original music on account of the internet. Reynolds brings up some points about young bands being possibly overwhelmed by the number of influences they try to accumulate. For the first time in this interview, a statement with some truth. How could a band shape their sound if they try to be influenced by sounds from all over the world and all over time? The best of musicians were brought up on the music in their geographic area that attracted them. A few specific and powerful influences that can be used to create a unique sound, rather than picking from every genre and era. It’s like taking red paint and mixing it with blue to get purple. But if you try to mix all the colors of the rainbow, then you’ve got black. Black is nothing.
Reynolds uses the Rolling Stones as great example:
“If you look at what the Rolling Stones did, what they struggled with, they were super inspired by Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf and Robert Johnson. They had to really search for the records. It was hard to find them. They start up quite imitative and then they basically would go off on their own original track.”
Given those points are true, it is still up to the bands of today to discern how they should go about pulling from their influences. The bottom line is that good music will survive and good music will stand out. If you are “over-influenced”, if there is such a thing, then you might make some bad music and you’ll probably never gain any traction with fans.
Moving on from the subject of broad influences, Reynolds digs into the genre of mash-ups and how it is a “sterile genre”. Then Keen decides to steer the end of the conversation into a more positive direction:
“You said that the internet has had some positive impacts on music. Are you encouraged by Spotify and these new models that seem to be more viable business models for enabling audiences to access music and realizing some revenue at least for the industry?”
Reynolds responds with a vague answer stating that “I think a lot of people probably would like…the idea of artists making a living.” But anybody who spotted that recently highly publicized post by the band Uniform Motion on their earnings from the digital world knows that Spotify alone gets you nowhere in the way of dollars-for-plays. The conversation steers away from artists actually making money, and toward the companies doing the curating. The way Reynolds discusses it, he acknowledges that Spotify and companies like it stand to reap most of the monetary benefits of that system. He says:
“You have such an abundance of knowledge and data and cultural stuff. So that requires things like Spotify or aggregation sites.”
To which Keen asks “Do you think that’s where the business opportunities in the future of music lie? With curators?”
“That role of being a filter seems to be one viable future for the critic and, suggested there’s some kind of future for that profession, I think just generally anything that sort of directs people to the good stuff is going to be original.”
Curation may be one path for the critic, but also it seems like a huge opportunity for the Music Industry of tomorrow. The major record labels that still exist today aren’t necessarily out to tell you what they think is good, because they don’t know what is good. If they told you what was good and what was bad, then they’d be undermining 85% of their product. They look to the past and see what has sold and they find a sound that’s familiar and “safe” and that will sell. And they sell it to anyone who will passively listen. The up and coming labels of today would benefit greatly from a huge communication effort by way of social media and blogging to express appreciation for specific influences, and, as a by-product, calling attention to the label’s own roster of bands.
You need to look no further than Jack White’s Third Man Records(TMR) for this type of behavior. White is making a whole other career out of curating by way of vinyl single releases from a great variety of artists, and also a handful of albums from the past that he considers to be legendary. Jack White of course was a living legend himself before the major activities of his TMR label began, and had the cash and the fan base to start off with instant success. But a new label starting out with the goal of emulating TMR can, bit by bit, make their way to be the ultimate curator of their fan base. A label with no cash can’t necessarily get the attention of larger acts to show up at their makeshift unknown studio, but they can start by making some phone calls, reviewing shows they went to, and, at the very least, recommending their influences. All avenues with the potential to pull in fans of those recommendations to the label’s site where their roster of bands are the main attractions.
Reynolds finishes with this statement:
“So anything that kind of can take on the role that radio used to have, deliver new things to people [that] they’re gonna like. it’s gonna prosper.”
Really, Simon? That’s your summed up prediction for the industry and the artists?
The interview finishes on a positive note more intended for those out there who wish to “prosper off the backs of musicians”, than for the artists themselves, and so there seems to be no good news for the artist in Reynolds’s vision of the future of music.
Leave the naysayers behind, kids. As long as you are targeting the people actually interested and paying attention to music, and you are able to deliver good music, you’ll be the ones to prosper.
