No Such Thing As A Free Lunch In The Music Industry

The Financial Times ^ | Wednesday October 13 2004 | Michael Skapinker

[t_skoz]

I had to type this from hand, so please excuse any spelling, punctuation, etc. I proofed it, but... cut me some slack if there's errors! Thanks.

In July, I had the pleasure of interviewing my rock & roll hero, Scott Morgan. He's been in the music industry since 1964. One of the questions I was sure to ask him was about the internet, mp3's, and file sharing. That segment of the interview is below in my comment.

[t_skoz]

INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT MORGAN

FRIDAY JULY 9TH - ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

FOR AMERICAN RUSE RECORDS

ARR-
At this stage of your career… you said you’ve been doing this since… 1961 you started playing guitar… What do you think about the music business? I mean, “the state of rock & roll”, or whatever you want to call it… A little sad right now I’d say. What are your thoughts?

SM-
I keep hearing the quotes about record sales being down $20 billion a year or something ridiculous… For it to be down $20 billion a year, means that it had to be up really high, like $60 billion, or I don’t know what it was, but... they’re selling a lot of records. They’re making a lot of money. But, I think the problem is, they’re not really trying to make good records, they’re trying to make records that’ll sell. I think that’s the whole problem.

ARR-
Have you got the solution? Where’s the magic bullet?

SM-
After a while, I think people are just going to get tired of paying money for crap. They’re going to want, come on you know! Don’t just give me some cooked up in the studio, expensive, crappy can of Campbell’s soup or something! Come up with something new, something good. Something with some imagination, something with some soul, some heart in it, something you believe in. Whatever.

ARR-
When do you think this whole trend…

SM-
It’s not just the record labels, it’s the whole thing. It’s the radio, and MTV, and corporate media, and corporate agencies. It’s just a big mafia of music business.

ARR-
I don’t understand, I guess, why things are the way they are.

SM-
Well, because for one thing, the people that run the business aren’t necessarily the people that love the music. At all levels. Let’s say you’re a journalist. You might not be able to make money as a journalist writing about what you like, you might have to write about whatever they tell you to write about. If you’re a DJ, you’re not picking those records, you’re not playing the records that you play in your car, or at home, you’re playing what you’re told to play. And I guess if you’re in A&R at a record label, you’re putting out the records that the suits approve of. So the people that really love the music aren’t making the decisions, and that’s a bad development in the music business.

ARR-
That leads me to another question… what do you think about the internet, and I guess not necessarily specifically MP3’s but the ability for any band anywhere to start advertising their music and getting exposure. What do you think about that?

SM-
It’s great.

ARR-
Do you have any problems with file sharing, of MP3’s?

SM-
No.

ARR-
You don’t have a problem when you go to Napster and look up your songs?

SM-
No. As a matter of fact we put our stuff on Napster.

ARR-
I’m the kind of guy that when I buy a record, I want the whole package.

SM-
Exactly. This is the Alanis Morissette theory. And it all holds up, and everybody knows it’s true in the music business, that she makes a record for her corporate record label, she’s going to get a get a dollar for every copy. OK? Fine, that’s all fine, that’s cool. But if she does a concert somewhere, she’s going to make a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sell maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars of her merch. And it’s all her money. So, to her, and I think the Grateful Dead will look at it the same way, and a lot of other bands, it’s really to their advantage to have people know their music, even if they get it for free, because they’re going to come see the band, they’re going to be fans.

ARR-
What do you think of people taping shows?

SM-
Fine, I just want a tape.

ARR-
Obviously not for resale.

SM-
No, no. We’re talking about sharing, file swapping, that sort of thing. It’s just like if you made me a cassette, what’s illegal about that? If you made a cassette of your favorite music, or I did the same for you, I don’t get it… why should that be illegal? It’s just stupid. It doesn’t make any sense!

------------------

The complete interview can be found here, and if you want to download an MP3 file of the interview (hahahah!!!) you can click here to download it.

thanks!

[t_skoz]

EXTREME ROCK & ROLL AND MUSIC INDUSTRY PING!!!!

Rock and Roll PING! email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)

[t_skoz]

I collect records, I have over 1,000 vinyl albums. FRmail me if you ever want to sell them.

Glad you liked the article. It took me a while to transcribe it! LOL!

[MoJo2001]

Awww..fret not!!

FReepmail me! Hehe!

[BigSkyFreeper]

Good interview, and it's humbling to know someone who's actually in the music industry itself agrees with the way I see the music industry as a whole, albeit from an outsider's point of view, but I've been keenly aware of the changes and manifestations within the industry from a disc jockey point of view as well as a music producer point of view.

[t_skoz]

Scott Morgan is a badass. Check out his website, Scott Morgan Music - online HQ

[t_skoz]

get a bigger house and a new girlfriend!!!

hurry, man!

:-)

[t_skoz]

:-D

well you take what you can get... hehhehehe

[proxy_user]

Many of these artists are currently available on vinyl LPs. Sales are quite good, even at $20-30 a pop.

[Iowa_Clone]

I'm sure this is what you've been looking and longing for for your sound system! Make any cd (or mp3) sound like it's on a scratched or warped or dusty vinyl record!

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/

[weegee]

In the days when music was recorded on vinyl, cassette tape or compact disc, the record companies performed an indispensable service: manufacturing products and distributing them.

Now that consumers could get perfect copies of recordings over the internet, artists could reach their public directly. There was no need for an intermediary. If the music companies did not exist, would anyone think of inventing them?

Ah but this business model assumes that there is no monopoly from Big Media controlling just which bands and performers are seen on tv, heard in movies and radio, and given "listening booth" display in stores. There is still a lot of money being paid to expose these bands.

Payola on radio has been illegal in America since the 1960s (although it stretches back to the earliest days of radio and existed in other areas of the music industry before that, including the sheet music trade and songs sung from the stage in vaudeville). Paying for better placement in a store is NOT a crime (just look at Coke and Pepsi's deal with grocery stores). Even the placement of songs in tv shows and ads were exempted from the payola scandals.

Add to this Clear Channel's monopoly over the civic venues in most major cities and "the beast" will get a cut of your advertising, ticket sales, concession sales, etc.

I don't mean to single out Clear Channel (I know that they have a ticket franchise); Viacom owns MTV and the second largest share of radio stations (Infinity Broadcasting).

Warner Brothers' record division recently splintered off from the rest of the company (in the 1990s they swallowed up a piece of many of the "indie" labels out there).

An established artist who will no longer get radio airplay for his new material (like Prince or the Rolling Stones) does not need to be on a major label. They have the touring infrastructure, fan base, etc. to continue under their own momentum.

I don't know that another Iron Maiden could come into existence through constant touring and no radio airplay. The band lists on tours are too controlled by industry types. I hear that the 2 bands that toured with the Sex Pistols in 1997 had to pay the band several thousand for every show they played; since WB was behind at least one of the acts, they might have felt the money was well justified. Certainly the bands (Gravity Kills and some other crap pseudo industrial pop band) were not there because of talent or fan familiarity with their music.

[weegee]

The industry blocked themselves into a corner by permitting customers to "take home the show" whether it be in the form of records, CDs, videotapes, or DVDs.

When you can preserve the entertainment you really enjoy, you don't have to keep going out night after night to see a live performance (play, concert, vaudeville) or even a movie at the cinema. Also older performance that outshine the new era can live on (which makes it tougher to find an audience base).

Then again, today's entertainers make far more money for far less continued effort than a century ago.

[weegee]

Someone still had to discover and market stars. It had proved hard for novice performers to build careers on the internet without the aid of record companies. Mr. Kennedy said he had feared more artists would attempt to make their names over the web. "But careers are still made in the physical market place. The idea that we would have no role at all hasn't happened."

There are plenty of "stars" who have been overlooked in this industry for a decade or two. Bands that have and continue to influence other bands. "Grunge" was the last movement to see rock artists bubble up from clubs and small labels to national prominence (although the door was quickly closed on genuine acts making it into label rosters).

The Beatles would be rejected by today's labels. Heck, they were rejected by labels numerous times in their early days. Today, they would be rejected BECAUSE they had material out under several labels. The labels want COMPLETE ownership of an artist's back catalog and the only way that happens is if the band has NO backcatalog (or in the case of the White Stripes no binding contract with the label that formerly released them).

We are still in the era of Monkees-like marketing where the audience will be introduced to a new (possibly fabricated) band rather than exposed to a band with a growing fan base.

[weegee]

If entertainers still sought to make their money from live-in-the-flesh performances/appearances, there would be no controversey over downloads (did anyone complain that their act was being played TOO MUCH on the radio?).

Can't take home the live show (at best you can take home a pale reduction of the audio or video of the live show).

[t_skoz]

The Hellacopters are the perfect example of a band that has material released for almost every label in the rock n roll world. They have made names for the smallest labels out there!

They've done Psychout Records, White Jazz Records, Freak Scene, Planet of Noise, Toy's Factory, Man's Ruin, Bad Afro, Estrus, Sub Pop, Safety Pin, Munster Recordings, Flapping Jet, Au-Go-Go, Bang! Records, Fandango, 007 Records, Polar, Universal, Led Recordings, Sweet Nothing Records, Gearhead Records, Liquor & Poker, Frank Records, Rocketdog Records, Anyway Records, Buthcer's Hook, Nomad Records, Wild Kingdom, People Like You Records, Razzia Records, and Birdnest Records.

They have over 50 releases on these labels!!!