Commoditization of music and musicians

[pogo97]

I don't think there any dispute that music has become a commodity in modern culture. It's a product, we're professionals (a bit of a stretch, maybe), in an industry. "Amateur," as in someone who performs for the love of it is an insult and "pro" is praise.

 

So that's a done deal.

 

But "Commoditization" is something different. That's when a "good," which has individual qualities that make it unique gets lumped, by the consumer, into one category and seen as a single commodity. Like "Live Bues Every Saturday" rather than "Wally Woodchuck this Saturday" on the sign. And in a market that sees all "blues bands" as equivalent, that market will become largely price-driven and we know what happens next.

 

Can we escape from the commoditizationary vortex? Is resistance futile?

[Notes_Norton]

Resistance is indeed futile.

 

When you get a big name you also become a commodity. Think of all the Tribute bands and artists.

 

People classify things. It's what we do.

 

If you hired a band from Jamaica called "Steel Pulse" that nobody ever heard of locally and said "Steel Pulse" appearing Sunday. Most people would ignore it, and a few would investigate.

 

If you said "Live Reggae Sunday" you would get the attention of a lot of people who enjoy Reggae music.

 

Back in the days of Record or CD stores, I'd go in and look for certain genres of music before browsing. If I was in a Jazz mood, I'd go straight to Jazz. Same for Classical, Rock, Blues or whatever.

 

Ditto for radio stations.

 

When we were 'on the road' we played rock clubs mostly in college towns. They didn't have to say "Live Rock" because the locals knew that there would be a new rock band there every couple of weeks or every month. So they would put our name on the sign. People didn't know us, but they knew we'd be a rock band playing covers of the hits.

 

When I go on vacation, and I check the directory for Classical or Jazz venues. If the music is different from home, I try to hit local music scenes. Example: When we were on the Cruise Ship, so many people went to the Disco in our long Puerto Rico port. I looked for Salsa. Why hear US music when I could hear what the Latin American musicians are famous for? I didn't know the names, but I learned about them and eventually bought some Gilberto Santa Rosa, La Selecta and other recordings from specific artists. The Salsa commodity morphed into recognition of specific Salsa artists that I like a lot.

 

We have been in the area long enough so if they advertise The Sophisticats, many people know what to expect. But at first, that wasn't the case at all, so it was "Dance Music" or something like that.

 

We've just been hired for a second every week weekday gig, but a club owner who never heard us, but has heard about us. So I guess we've become a local commodity. I'm not complaining, two steady week day gigs, leaving the more in-demand weekend dates open (at least the ones not booked already). How lucky can a band get?

 

I think of myself in many different ways. I consider myself an artist, an entertainer, a businessman (not very good at that one), liquor salesman, at times sonic wallpaper and a few others. I have no problem with that. As long as the people come and interact with us in a positive way, enjoy the music, and enjoy me enjoying playing the music, I'm happy.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[daddymack]

Even beyond classifying, people label things [i know, seems like the same thing, but slightly different]. Labels make things easy...because in a word or two they convey a thought process, although typically faulty by its very nature of brevity. Yes I play in a blues band, but we are not your 'run of the mill blues band' by nature of material selection and 'bench depth'. I bristle at being lumped in with the many downright mediocre blues bands in the area [although, I do 'side' for several, if the $ is good ].

As to music being commoditized, well, that has a lot to do with how the world has become more about $ and less about <3, symbolically. Musicians will always be around, but I fear the days of the lower tier professionals eke-ing out a living playing old folks homes, private parties, coffee houses, wineries, etc. are going to be gone soon, replaced by pre-recorded music...particularly as ASCAP, et al., raise their rates to venues that were already marginal.

 

If you look at it from the 'business' view, we lived through a period of total anarchy in the music industry. From the classical/baroque era up until the post WWII boom, music was tightly controlled, and within that system of control, there were gig opportunities at several levels, but there were 'limits', and unwritten 'rules' about who could play what, where, with whom, when, etc..

 

A number of things happened to change that; some technological, some social, some economic. Then came rock and roll and the folk movement, which, at first, to the labels way of thinking, were incompatible lines, but then...not. R&B became 'soul' music, TV had kids dancing to what a decade earlier was 'race' music...and rock bands comprised of youngsters with loud guitars and long hair dominated the $ side of the industry. Where a Sinatra album could expect sales of 500k and be considered a major success, suddenly the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Dylan, Simon and Garfunkle, etc. were selling MILLIONS of albums, and aside from their label affiliations, they were not part of the old guard system like the Brill Building /Tin Pan Alley songwriters who wrote pop pap* for the labels to feed to teenagers. What had been business as usual was upended by technology, an economic boom, social pressures, the space age, fear of being vaporized in an instant, etc. And the Music Industry, in its own inimitable way, embraced it because, obviously, there was $ all over the place...ridiculous amounts of money the like of which they had never seen before. This has carried over to the Rap/HipHop scene, where 'overnight sensations' are the rule, not the exception.

 

But now, that same combination of technology/social changes/economic changes has swung in a new direction, away from the 'wild west show' of the past fifty years, to a process that even the labels are struggling with: Monetizing something that anyone with an internet connection can get for free, on demand.

 

Musicians are partially to blame, as some of the earliest adopters of web-based distribution methods. We started giving it away for FREE!!! DOH! So if we didn't value it [which was not the actual point, but was the overall perception], why would anyone else...hey, it is FREE!!! This led to there being a lot more mediocre material available, which just made it harder to break through to the gems, and the gradual decline in good new music began. Along with this, the sheer volume of available music made labeling genres a necessary evil.

And so the worm turns again...

 

 

*not that there weren't some great tunes, but labels looked on the pop music market as a profitable red-headed stepchild, where the Sinatras, Martins, Comos, were their mainstays. Can you say 'Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini'?

[Pat'sStrat]

Good points made. labels can maker things easier, but harder, too. I wonder how many people who have assigned labels to their own product in an effort to make themselves stand out have actually lessened their potential audience? If, for instance, a band labeling itself "post-prog indie mathcore" or "Viking funeral metal" would have more people checking them out if they just called themselves "modern rock" or "hard rock." The genres of music that have been created may sound like 'hey, we're different!" to the artist but may totally alienate listeners and make them pass it by. That's why I just call what my band does "blues" and let the blues fans sort it out. Which seems to work, as I have had some people call us "jump blues" while others call us "Chicago blues" and others still "blues rock." They can call us "Phil Mamoufwiffarts" for all I care as long as they click on it and then decide to buy it. :-D

[Shaster]

I believe commoditization is a thing of the present - resistance could well be futile. I think people's attention spans are so short they need short bursts of info, and will gravitate towards the shortest packet they can find. For example, I have noticed news reports having less and less space in between sentences. So a report about a barn fire and then a report about a yacht race will sound like "There was a barn fire today at Fred's farm that was quickly extinguished at 4 pm the crazy hat yacht race began". The announcer won't even pause, or signify a period, between "extinguished" and "at" - thus mixing and muddling two stories together.

 

We seem to be well on our way to our apparent goal of having zero attention spans. I'll fight that as long as I can, but wait.... what was I saying?

[daddymack]

Eventually the village will all be idiots, and the intelligent man will be the outcast.

Ever watched Idiocracy? Not a great film, but the premise is exactly what we could be leading up to.

[pogo97]

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Joan D. Vinge