Different Ways To Skin A Cat, Musically Speaking

Anyone who has spent even a moderate amount of time with me knows that a lot of my life revolves around music. I went to school for Music Business, worked at three different record stores for a combined tenure of almost a decade, promoted concerts for several years, managed bands, worked at a couple of music venues, and own more music than I could ever imagine listening to. You know John Cusack’s character from High Fidelity? I’m pretty close to being that guy minus having hallucinations that feature Bruce Springsteen (I want one SO bad).

I’ve watched the music industry spin downwards over the last 10 years and somehow I’m still not worried that it will ever go anywhere. When I started studying the music business I was buying CDs every week and spending about $20 a pop after taxes. I distinctly remember midnight releases at Tower Records and showing up to be the first one with the new album from [insert alt-rock band here] and being incredibly excited to tear off the plastic and pop it in my CD player. I remember the dawn of the “Deluxe Edition” and the adoption of the digipack which, although very cool, really messed with our security protocols and resulted in a LOT of stolen CDs. I remember digging through the used section at Great Escape in Nashville, TN and finding a copy of Wreck Your Life by the Old 97′s and listening to it, non-stop, for the next two weeks.

Then one morning, after sitting through a Microeconomics class that directly mirrored the Macroeconomics class I took the previous semester, my roommate told me about a little program called Napster. I embraced the user-fed filesharing aspect of Napster and immediately grew my fledgling MP3 collection from a few dozen to multiple gigabytes of completely random music that I had never even thought about buying. Some of the first bands that I distinctly remember downloading were bands that we’ve all forgotten by now (or should have, at least). Bands like Everclear, Bloodhound Gang, No Doubt, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Sugarcult, etc.

Napster was blocked and we moved to Limewire, from Limewire to Audiogalaxy, then to Soulseek, and eventually to the BitTorrent standard that has become the default method of downloading free music. Somewhere along that line I stopped buying CDs and I honestly can’t remember the last album that I bought on CD. Take a walk through your nearest big box store and try to find the CD section. I guarantee you will find about 50 MP3 players before you can locate a copy of The Eagles Greatest Hits.

The funny thing about all of this is, no one stopped listening to music. It invades every single second of our lives and we made it this way on purpose. We also, as consumers, have an insatiable need and desire for something new to fill our ever shifting attention span. The record companies know this and have, for some reason, failed to see what was so obvious to all of us as consumers. We no longer have any need for a CD beyond those that are burned off of our digital collections. That tiny little booklet and the airbrushed artwork that adorns it no longer entices us. The general public dismissed the CD right around the time that broadband internet plugged us into as much instant gratification as we could ever possibly need.

So what do the labels do? They attempted to force both the MiniDisc and USB drives down our throats, ignoring the fact that most people had little to no need for physical media any longer. When that didn’t work they sued every single deep dark corner of the internet they could find which only forced us to look in other places or crawl deeper into private filesharing havens. Finally they came to their senses and signed on with iTunes and a few other select digital retailers. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, it seemed that an even better idea 5 years earlier when they could have stemmed the bleeding instead of essentially conceding defeat. The labels held so tightly onto the old model because they never learned from their past mistakes. Since the 50′s the full-length LP, 8-track, cassette tape, and CD-R have all been hailed as the death of the music industry and the labels have always come late to a party that they knew they couldn’t stop.

So now they’ve done the only thing they know how to, they have stayed the course and are suffering for it. The same stable of high-profile artists are paraded in front of the public with multi-million dollar marketing schemes that continue to follow a pattern that is nearly a half-century old. Lady Gaga is merely following the Madonna-model and Justin Beiber is nothing more than Leif Garrett minus the ginger and too young for a burgeoning drug habit. Labels are no longer building career artists (Dylan, Springsteen, Costello, etc) and have focused on their one/two hit wonders that will inevitably be tossed aside for the next flash in the pan “sensation” that tweens can latch onto. Two years later and instead of pushing a possible legacy artist like Norah Jones you are going to see Waka Flocka Flames who, I’m sorry, aren’t going to make it to the end of the world in 2012.

Where’s the silver lining to this horror story? Well, the silver lining is just below the corporate media surface and far beyond your average music consumer. The saving grace of the music industry will be it’s demise and the rise of true independent music, media, and art. When there isn’t a concern about stockholders or profit margins you will truly begin to see beautiful music rise from bands that will come from the farthest corners of the earth.

The pay-what-you-want model of Radiohead’s In Rainbows has been talked to death but is still awe-inspiring. I remember feeling the same way upon the discovery of that release as I felt at a brick and mortar store at midnight waiting for new releases. Through text messages, internet posts, and every other possible form of communication I discovered the mere existence of that album. For the listening public that was a momentous event that will, more than likely never be duplicated. It was Christmas in October and we didn’t even know that Christmas was coming!

I find it almost impossible to believe that it was more than three and a half years ago when that album fell into my lap and my perception of the music industry completely changed. I saw them do it themselves, for themselves, and in a way that no one could have ever seen coming. I knew then, right there, that not only was the music industry doomed but that the musicians themselves were going to be the ones bringing it down.

Yesterday, one of the most anticipated releases of 2011 leaked to the internet. I find it amusing that we are no longer interested in release dates but rather that they suggest the expected date that the album will leak onto the internet and be disseminated to everyone with interest and a broadband connection. I was excited not only because of the album’s content but also the method in which the artist rose to prominence and how he went about getting his music, his art out to the masses.

Tyler, The Creator is a self-made star with nothing more than a manager and his friends, most of whom can’t even purchase alcohol. He produces his albums, designs his cover art and merchandise, handles his own press, and somehow finds the time to make some of the most refreshing (and disturbing) hip hop of the last decade. I haven’t heard something this immediately impressive since the Madvillain album blew the back of my head off 7 years ago. Best part about the whole thing? This album is self-released and will only use a major label’s distribution to sneak it’s way into every big box and independent record store in the country.

Tyler and the rest of OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) know that a major label would NEVER allow them the kind of artistic freedom and expression that recording and releasing their own music will afford them. What label, in their right mind, would allow an artist to say “rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome,” or name a song Bitch Suck Dick? Strangely, without a line like that in the album it just wouldn’t feel right. Disturbing? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely.

So if we’re lucky, artists that have an absolute need to fulfill their artistic vision will finally be the ones to take down a music industry that has done little more than to force the Pussycat Dolls, Toby Keith, and a countless number of Christmas albums down our throat since the invention of recorded music. I’ll be the first to salute the independent artist and the last to pour out a drink for a fallen industry that only has itself to blame. If you won’t give the people what they want then they will find it from someone who will.

Quick question, does anyone still have a portable CD player?