I thought that with the release of a recent report by International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry that now would be a good time to bring back the Rantitorial column, which was shelved last September. This actually started off as a news item and mutated into a rant, funny how that happens.  Ok enough about that, read on for the rant - aG 

Music Industry Suffers Record Decline in Sales. 

International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry recently released some figures that validates what major record companies have been saying for some time, music sales are down!  The figures announced by the IFPI state that the recorded music industry worldwide posted a 5 percent drop in value and a 6.5 percent decline in units sold last year. This is the first time sales of CD’s have declined since they were first introduced on a major scale as a replacement for phonograph records in 1983. 

Looking further into the numbers, it does appear that the industry is still a lucrative business with last years profits totaling $33.7 billion with sales of 3.2 billion CD’s. 

IFPI survey results tend to blame the decline on mass copying and illegal downloading of music on the internet, which they said is directly responsible for the CD sales slump. But I tend to think that the record companies have at least brought some of this upon themselves. 

The last time the record industry suffered such a major drop in sales was in the late 70’s, when the industry wholeheartedly embraced the punk and disco genres and were sent into a state of shock when the disco fad died and punk never caught on to a mass commercial audience as expected. Record stores were returning unsold albums to the record companies by the truckload. They took a gamble on these two genres of music, saw their initial popularity, or buzz, and flooded the market but when things turned sour, they were left holding the bag. 

This is pure speculation on my part, but perhaps part of the decline we are seeing now is a direct result of the narrow nature of music offerings from the major record labels. While the popstar and boyband fads proved lucrative over the past few years, it does appear these fads are on the decline and the record industry seems to still be stuck in the same mindset with new album releases, which don’t vary from the narrow genre and sales demographic of the past few years. Very few major record company releases these days seem to come from new and exciting, possible trend setting artists, instead the industry seems content to stick with the follow the leader mentality, rehashing what is already saturated the market and then blaming the public’s lost interest on illegal MP3’s.  Sure MP3’s may have helped the decline, but most people who download MP3’s and do not purchase CD’s, most likely wouldn’t have purchased the CD’s to begin with. The real problem, in my opinion, appears to be the record industries reluctance to try anything new which includes their lukewarm response to the promise of the internet. 

First let’s look at the internet question: 

Back in 1980, a new marketing venue called MTV was launched, and the video music channel helped pull the industry out of its recession at that time. If the record companies would make a more concerted effect to utilize the Net to expose their artist, in addition to looking for more artists that are trendsetters not trend-followers, they could very well see a boom in sales.  As far as embracing the internet, all the major record companies have to do is look to the upstart independent label “Wind-Up Records” for an example of a company that has wholeheartedly utilized the internet to expose their artists and has seen great returns with several multi-platinum releases from bands like Creed and Drowning Pool. It is relatively unheard of in the music industry for an indie label to come out of nowhere and have a 4 million selling CD right out of the gate like Wind-Up experienced with Creed’s debut, but the label bucked the odds again with the release of two more multi-million selling CD releases from Creed and the platinum release from Drowning Pool. One key component to Wind-Up’s success is an aggressive Internet strategy which includes various online promotions, free downloads and working closely with internet music magazine publishers to guarantee exposure for their artists. 

On the other side of the coin, let’s look at another indie label that showed a lot of promise when it launched a few years ago but has more or less dropped the ball when it comes to promotion in general and their online promotion efforts are minimal at best. What company am I talking about? Spitfire Records, a label that over the past couple of years has had a number of quality album releases that had a lot of potential but the company’s lack of promotion squandered those opportunities at success and music fans as well as the bands have been short changed by this. They started out by outsourcing promotions on a few of their releases to an experienced PR firm, who did get coverage for the artists they worked with, but Spitfire stopped using that company about a year and a half ago and many of the journalists who had covered Spitfire artists through this PR firm, never heard from the label again.  Granted most of their roster is made up of former major label artists who are past their prime, nevertheless, some of the CD’s released by these artists were worthy of attention, which they never got. I have seen this lack of promotion first hand, in the past I’ve tried to contact Spitfire a couple of times in an attempt to set up some coverage for their artists and each time I hit a brick wall, they never responded to my request and I had to go directly to the bands so that we could feature some coverage on them. Having spoken with a number of bands on that label, my experience was the norm, they had heard from other music journalist that had the same problem with Spitfire. 

Spitfire’s marketing strategy seems to be to send out a very limited number of review copies of CD’s and buy an advertisement in a magazine like Metal Edge, that’s it! With few exceptions you will not find many interviews with artists on their roster or special coverage that wasn’t set up by the bands or their management directly. It’s sad really because the people behind the label do seem to really believe in the music but at the same time seem unwilling to go that extra mile to promote it. 

The other side of the coin, lack of musical vision:

The other major problem seems to be a repeat of the mentality that caused the previous crash of the music industry in the late 70’s, lack of vision. The record companies tendencies to latch onto fads and flood the market with copycats or stale releases along a very limited musical scope is an invitation to failure. All fad’s die, even Backstreet Boy  AJ McLean admits it, “Rock 'n' roll has been around for ages, it will never die. Pop just kind of comes and goes.” Despite what AJ said, you wouldn’t know it from listening to popular radio or looking at most major record label rosters. This current cycle of “pop” seems to be winding down but there is very little in the wings to take its place.  It is true that most CD’s lose money for the record labels; the number often quoted is 9 out of 10 new releases do not generate a profit. With that in mind, does it make sense to further the problem by continuing to flood the market place with a style of music that appears to be a little long in the tooth to the music buying public? 

Another problem seems to be shortsightedness on breaking new artists. The mentality seems to be: sign a new band, release the CD, after six weeks if it doesn’t hit move on to the next artist. Gone are the days when a maverick like David Geffen would spot and sign bands outside the mainstream and stick to his guns until they hit. Many don’t realize that Guns N’ Roses debut album, “Appetite for Destruction” was out almost a year before the first single “Welcome to the Jungle” caught on and made the band an international sensation. With any other label, the band would have been dropped long before they had a chance to succeed. But Geffen stuck to his guns and after almost a year with limited airplay and less than impressive sales, he finally convinced MTV to air the “Welcome to the Jungle” video late one night, which resulted in a flood of requests for the video and the rest is history. I don’t need to point out Geffen’s later success with breaking a virtually unknown Seattle band named Nirvana, who previously had only a moderate selling indie album release, before Geffen took them under his wing and made them superstars and changed the face of popular music for half a decade. 

This isn’t to say that all the new signings to major labels fall neatly into the current popular musical trends. A few majors still do seek out and release music from innovative artists; a perfect example is Ike Reilly whose major label debut was released late last year from Universal Records. Here is a guy’s who music is a breath of fresh air when set against the current music scene. The problem is that hardly anybody has heard Ike Reilly because the album got minimal promotion.  The major labels would be smart to take a couple of new and innovative artists and then really stand behind them and give them a major push, instead of focusing all of their promotional energy behind mediocre artists that really seem interchangeable with other popular artists of the past and present. That would result in changing the music scene, if just one of those artists hit, it would help invigorate a popular music industry that seems bogged down in repetition. Of course they would have to keep doing this, because once one artist hits it big, the major label rosters begin filling up with other bands that have a similar sound. 

 
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