Here's an interesting article from the Quartz website, titled "An Epic Battle in Streaming Music is About to Begin, and Only a Few Will Survive." I'll pause while you read and absorb.
This article is a fascinating examination of the current and coming changes in the music industry, vis a vis the shift from CDs to digital downloads to various types of streaming music services, from the business perspective. What I find really interesting -- no, kind of appalling -- is that the word "musician" is only used once in the article, and then only as a descriptor for an industry advocacy group. It's all about the business models, with no regard at all for the people who create what the industry politely refers to as "content."
The article bemoans "the costs of the content," in that the poor big streaming music companies are forced to pay royalties on the "content" they deliver. There must be a way to drive down these costs, argues the article, or else the poor big streaming music companies will never make any money. (The payments for "content," according to this article go to the "content owners" -- record labels and publishers. Not musicians, apparently.)
This, I argue, is today's problem in the music industry. The companies trying to make a buck off the music -- today, they're tech companies -- have no regard or affinity for the music itself. It's just "content" (of which "a large proportion of those songs are apparently never played"). It's not art, it's not inspirational, it's not personally touching -- it's just content for their customers to consume. Musicians are apparently nothing more than workers in a factory producing this anonymous content. It ain't the Beatles, it ain't Dylan, it ain't Nirvana, it's just "content," who cares where it comes from?
Putting tech companies like Google, Apple, and Spotify in charge of the musical art form is about as bad as it gets. At least the old school record labels actually recognized that they were selling music from musicians to people who loved music. To the tech companies, this is just another scheme to enlarge their portfolios, "control the Internet," and enhance their stock price. If it wasn't music, it'd be ball bearings or digital widgets or whatever.
And when these yahoos are done playing around in the music industry playground, they'll just move on to something else, leaving behind the rotting corpse of everything we love about music. The tech companies with their deep pockets won't even notice; the musicians with much less cash on hand will not be able to survive.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
The Great Eight
Take a look at this:
Great Songwriters: Who Are They, and Why Haven't There Been Any for the Past 20 Years?
I just stumbled upon this very well reasoned and detailed blog post about songwriters, by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash). Cilliers comes to the conclusion that there are only 8 great songwriters in the 20th century (Paul McCartney, Richard Rodgers, John Lennon, Jerome Kern, Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin), but 200 almost-great ones, and no great ones writing today. I find his reasoning interesting, and agree with most of it. To get his "great eight" he focuses on quantity as much as quality.
With that reasoning, you can understand why McCartney and Rodgers come out on top. It makes perfect sense and it's tough to disagree with that. But this approach also relegates many worthy songwriters to the almost-great 200 list. For example, he looks at Jimmy Webb's output, finds only a half-dozen great songs, and says that's that. Now, I'd look at Webb's output and find a dozen great ones, but the quanity qualification still holds; Webb hasn't written near as many memorable tunes as Paul McCartney or George Gershwin or Irving Berlin.
Where Cilliers fails, IMHO, is with Bob Dylan and Burt Bacharach. He looks at Dylan and sees dozens and dozens of great songs. I look at Dylan and, while recognizing his tremendous influence he had on songwriting in the 1960s and beyond, only see a dozen or so truly great songs that have made it into the public consciousness. I have to look at the music as well as the lyrics, and Dylan is more of a lyricist than a composer. Also, even though the poster might like a large number of Dylan tunes, not that many (again, probably about a dozen) have made it into the lexicon and are well known to the general public.
Bacharach, on the other hand, truly is a great composer. (Not a lyricist, of course.) His melodies are legendary, he writes songs you can hum and remembers days and years later. And I can name several dozen Bacharach tunes that everybody and their brother knows, many more than I can name from Bob Dylan. Based on this combination of quantity and quality, that would put him in the great eight for me -- bumping Dylan, unfortunately.
But these are quibbles. I find this an interesting way to evaluate the songwriters of the 20th century, and admire the poster for comparing both pre- and post-rock songwriters, which is seldom done. You really can't argue much with his choices.
Anyone care to chime in?
Great Songwriters: Who Are They, and Why Haven't There Been Any for the Past 20 Years?
I just stumbled upon this very well reasoned and detailed blog post about songwriters, by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash). Cilliers comes to the conclusion that there are only 8 great songwriters in the 20th century (Paul McCartney, Richard Rodgers, John Lennon, Jerome Kern, Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin), but 200 almost-great ones, and no great ones writing today. I find his reasoning interesting, and agree with most of it. To get his "great eight" he focuses on quantity as much as quality.
With that reasoning, you can understand why McCartney and Rodgers come out on top. It makes perfect sense and it's tough to disagree with that. But this approach also relegates many worthy songwriters to the almost-great 200 list. For example, he looks at Jimmy Webb's output, finds only a half-dozen great songs, and says that's that. Now, I'd look at Webb's output and find a dozen great ones, but the quanity qualification still holds; Webb hasn't written near as many memorable tunes as Paul McCartney or George Gershwin or Irving Berlin.
Where Cilliers fails, IMHO, is with Bob Dylan and Burt Bacharach. He looks at Dylan and sees dozens and dozens of great songs. I look at Dylan and, while recognizing his tremendous influence he had on songwriting in the 1960s and beyond, only see a dozen or so truly great songs that have made it into the public consciousness. I have to look at the music as well as the lyrics, and Dylan is more of a lyricist than a composer. Also, even though the poster might like a large number of Dylan tunes, not that many (again, probably about a dozen) have made it into the lexicon and are well known to the general public.
Bacharach, on the other hand, truly is a great composer. (Not a lyricist, of course.) His melodies are legendary, he writes songs you can hum and remembers days and years later. And I can name several dozen Bacharach tunes that everybody and their brother knows, many more than I can name from Bob Dylan. Based on this combination of quantity and quality, that would put him in the great eight for me -- bumping Dylan, unfortunately.
But these are quibbles. I find this an interesting way to evaluate the songwriters of the 20th century, and admire the poster for comparing both pre- and post-rock songwriters, which is seldom done. You really can't argue much with his choices.
Anyone care to chime in?
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