A Year of Music

I’m a bit intemperate when it comes to the music business, but that’s only because I’m by nature fairly pessimistic when it comes to capitalism and market-based economics, and (probably excessively) jaundiced about the possibility that the intersection of capital and culture will produce anything worth caring about. Which is a highfalutin way of saying that the majors crank out huge piles of crap, I expect them to do so, and I don’t really care because I don’t listen to much major-label music anyway. So it’s nice to come across things like this blown-out rant in the Guardian’s weekend magazine.

A quote, just to give you the flavor of the writing:

Imagine the outcry if people working in a factory were told that the cost of the products they were making would be deducted from their wages, which anyway would only be paid if the company managed to sell the products. Or that they would have to work for the company for a minimum of 10 years and, at the company’s discretion, could be transferred to any other company at any time.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal investigated the industry and concluded that ‘for all the 21st-century glitz that surrounds it, the popular music business is distinctly medieval in character: the last form of indentured servitude.’

I don’t actually agree with the hyperbolic rhetoric on display here, as entertaining and schadenfreude-y as it is to read. For one thing, the analogy cited above is far from accurate, inasmuch as you’d have to take into account the factory-workers getting a huge chunk of cash dumped on them up-front. Advances are the best and the worst thing about major-label contracts; if you’re savvy and know what you’re getting yourself into, it’s possible to use that to your advantage. Whether any band smart enough to have that savvy would benefit from a major-label deal – especially today – is another matter.