Flushed with success:
The record biz is making big money- so why is the music so poor?
by David Serchuk -Boulder Weekly 3/18/99
Many musicians get into the music business and expect to be broke.
There are reasons for this: touring is expensive, there is intense
competition, and it's expensive to make albums. The difference these days
is that when it comes to being broke these m usicians are not alone. They
have company: record industry executives. This is perhaps best signified
by January's mega-deal in which the Seagrams Company bought PolyGram and
merged it with their own record company subsidiary, Universal. The new
supercomp any, dubbed the Universal Music Group, now controls 23 percent
of global record sales, by their own estimates. Such celebrated labels as
Geffen and AM were later acquired by UMG in the deal, and AM was
summarily shut down. Universal now also controls Is land Records as well
as Mercury Records. Up to 3,000 employees of those companies are expected
to be laid off while hundreds of bands will be cut, according to UMG.
These unprecedented acquisitions and firings are signs of deep-seated
trouble in an industry that has steadily undermined itself with
short-sighted marketing strategies. Instead of investing in recording
artists for the long haul, nervous, out-of-touch labels gamble on one-hit
wonders like a dogtrack sucker who thinks the only way to riches is
playing 99-to-1 longshots. And the real victims of the industry's
go-for-broke approach, ultimately, are the record-buying public, who are
forced to choose from o verplayed hits and weak, unpolished work from
bands that have been pushed on the air before they're ready.
A Titantic year
Last year was a rebound year for the industry in terms of raw sales.
However, while the Recording Industry Association of America's assertion
that 1998 saw "very healthy growth," with sales of $13.7 billion, up 15.1
percent in dollar value from 1997, RIA A figures also show a dollar value
decrease of 2.4 percent in 1997 from 1996. Seen against the backdrop of a
largely stagnant market, sales growth in '98 was modest.
"There was an enormous boom in the '90s in record sales, and that really
hasn't sustained itself," says recording engineer Steve Albini, a
respected champion of the independent record movement as an artist and
engineer (Big Black, Shellac) even as he wor ks the other side of the
fence as an engineer for such major label bands as Page and Plant, and
Bush. He believes the reason for the less-than-overwhelming growth is
simple: bad music. "People within the industry are always looking for
reasons other than the dreadful music. They're saying, 'Oh, people are
using the Internet, people are becoming more shut in, more and more people
are invalid ...' They're always trying to find some reason why people are
not buying records other than the fact that the record s are awful."
The industry has remained afloat because of a few hugely popular songs,
some insiders say. "I keep being reminded by the trade publications that
it's a good year 'cause sales have increased," says Warner Brothers'
director of publicity Rick Gershon. "Bu t essentially I think sales have
increased for a very few artists. The field has narrowed."
"It's getting back to the blockbuster mentality where you make all your
money on the record that sells three million copies," says Geoffrey Weiss,
vice president of AR for Warner Brothers. "Many of the articles I read
say if you back the Titanic numbers
out of the record sales last year that business was actually down." (Sales of the
Titanic soundtrack and Celine Dion's album Let's Talk About Love, with the hit song
from the film, "My Heart Will Go On," totaled over 16 million. Those two albums alone
in
creased album sales 4 percent over 1997.)
Driven by hits, the market has experienced healthy growth in CD singles.
In fact, CD singles in 1997 were up 54 percent over 1996. All told, CD
singles sales rose 200 percent from 1995 to '97, the RIAA reported. And
while sales dropped 16.1 percent in 19 98 from 1997 the RIAA reports "the
market was actually stable for singles-it was the previous year that was
an anomaly because of the impact of the Princess Diana tribute." The
single in question is Elton John's "Candle In The Wind 1997" which was the
wor ld's all-time biggest selling single, says the RIAA.
That singles are carrying the industry isn't necessarily good for music
buyers or musicians. With the business leaning so heavily on blockbuster
hits, acts are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce
records glossy enough for radio, sa ys Weiss. Then these acts are
discarded if they fail to immediately climb the charts.
You never give me your money
The financial losers of the above equation are the musicians. Most bands
on major labels almost never get paid any significant wages unless they
have a major hit. Why? Because bands usually have to pay back their labels
the vast sums of
