I’m going to essentially share my opinions on a recent article I wrote about the current state of affairs of the music industry. I’ll first give you the Readers Digest version of what’s going on and then I’ll toss in my two cents for whatever they’re worth. I trust, if nothing else, that this information will give you some food for thought in regard to your own music. This shift can be applied to royalty free music as well, even though the article just discusses the commercial music industry.
Back in the stone ages, before the Internet, if you wanted to have a hit record you needed to hook up with a major label, or at least a solid underground label. And back then, record sales were big. Albums sold in the millions.
Well, the world has changed a lot since then. With the advent of the Internet and the ease of creating professional quality music in your home, thanks to digital audio workstations, you can have a hit song created right in your living room.
But the biggest shift has been in the way the music is being distributed. Record sales are at an all time low in this industry. Music today is downloaded from places like iTunes or directly distributed from artist to consumer. YouTube is huge as far as getting new music to the masses. In short, the game has changed drastically.
While music is now easier to create than ever, there is also more real competition than ever. Kids who, back in the 60s and 70s, could only dream about creating music good enough to sell are now doing so with regularity and ease. The old saying about anybody and their grandmother wanting to be a pop star is now actually true. We are seeing success stories we probably wouldn’t have seen years ago.
So you have to ask yourself. Is this good or bad? Well, it depends on who you talk to.
Certainly from the perspective of the big record labels it’s not good. They aren’t making anywhere near the kind of money they made years ago, which is why they have to look into other avenues for income generation. They’re now investing in things that they would have never touched at one time.
From the perspective of the artists themselves, it would appear on the surface that this is a good thing. And for the most part, it is. No more hoping that some major label will sign you. With the increase of performing talent out there, there is also an increase in the demand for talented writers. So songwriters who, at one time, had to wait for a publisher to offer them a song contract, now can find talent on the Internet to record their songs.
But all is not roses. With the ease of entry there is also the ease of theft, piracy and every other form of illegal activity that you can think of. If you decide to go out on your own in this business without having to rely on publishers and record labels then you also can’t lean on them for protection and support. It’s harder to steal a CD than it is to illegally download an MP3. There is an old saying. Be careful what you wish for.
So essentially what we have is the wild west and so far, nobody has really figured out how to keep it in check. The word copyright almost has no meaning anymore. The mentality of the majority is that if it’s on the Internet, it’s not really a thing and thus anybody can have it. I mean after all, you can’t hold an MP3 in your hand.
Thus, we have a trade off. Yes, you can break into the business easier than ever before, and your income opportunities are probably greater than ever before but at the same time you are going up against more competition than ever before and the piece of the pie that you can realistically get is probably smaller than had you landed that record contract 40 years ago.
Great, so how do I feel about all this? I’m torn. I love that I can turn on my computer in the morning, load my DAW and start making music…the kind of music that I could only dream of making when I was a teenager back in the 70s. When I wrote and recorded my first symphony I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe I actually did this.” But that’s what Finale can do. It was an experience I’ll never forget. So for all that, I’m very grateful.
But then there is the other end of it. The amount of talent on the Internet is staggering. I am in awe of some of the stuff I hear on a daily basis. And 99.9% of this stuff will probably never be heard by the masses. The thought of going up against all of that just boggles my mind.
That’s when I have to put things in perspective and what I’m going to try to do for you now if you’re feeling a little discouraged and down about your own music.
As much competition as there is out there, it’s not all in the same niche. I’m not going up against the pop rockers, singers and even other writers of commercial music. I’m going up ONLY against other royalty free writers. And trust me, of all the niches, this one is probably one of the smallest. I mean let’s face it, writing music for people to use in their home made videos is not exactly glamorous. It certainly won’t win you a Grammy.
We don’t live in a utopia. It would be nice if the current way that the music business worked was easy for anybody to break into it and have success without having to worry about their material being stolen or pirated and without having to go up against 100 times more competition than ever before.
But if I had to choose between the way things were in the 60s and 70s and the way things are today, I’ll take today any day of the week.
I mean it’s not like I was winning any Grammy Awards when Paul Simon was writing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim