To bring up something Jade said a bit earlier in the thread (i.e. on page 1):
All I'm saying is that act pops such as the ones mentioned in this thread are meant to be ephemeral from their inception...I'm saying that, because of this fact, they can be interesting to me in a sociological approach, if I get interested in investigating the mechanisms involved in the process of marketing a certain style/young sex-icon to a broad audience...The marketing people, the designers, the PR people involved in the process of marketing these popstars see them more as products than artistic acts (to do otherwise would minimize their profit margin).
This is not true, or at least not always true, and I say this as someone who works in the record industry. Let's take the two major claims one-by-one.
1) Pop acts are designed to be ephemeral.
Now, why the hell would you do that? Does that make any sense, from a commercial standpoint? There are certainly groups assumed to be ephemeral, but these are usually either novelty acts or one-off collaborations. (And even these sometimes take off!) So yes, Fast Food Rockers, We Are The World, and Best of Both Worlds were all designed (probably) to be short-lived projects.
But these are the exceptions, not the rules. If acts were supposed to be ephermal, why would record labels invest, often heavily, in the solo careers of members of successful groups, when that hardly seems to be aiming for something short-lived? Why would most new acts get seven-record deals, which is the industry standard, when they'd never need more than one or two? Yes, most pop acts do have short careers, but that's hardly by design. Having a long career is a really hard trick in music, in pop or otherwise. If artists knew they were supposed to be ephemeral, why would they continue to make those solo records?
So aside from being untrue in practice, this doesn't make any sense in theory, either, to the degree that I don't really know where to start in terms of disproving it. Deep breath. OK, first thing, and trust me on this one, it costs way too much money for a label to have an act with a successful hit debut and then either reject the second album or make it a dud for this to really be a standard business practice. (Brief explanation: usually, if an artist sells over X number of records, the label is contractually required to pick up the option for the second album, and then has a guaranteed recording budget they have to lay out based on those sales, and if the first album's a hit, the option's going to get picked up AND the maximum recording budget will get paid, so that's a good $300,000-$1,000,000 USD soaking, depending on the deal.)
But besides this, why the hell would a label not want their artist to make more albums and sell more records? It doesn't make much sense. This also gives way too much credit to record execs' abilities to spot and exploit fads, trends, etc. Trust me on this one: they don't. If they could, the industry would run a lot more smoothly, as you could have your lines of quickly-rotating disposable product, all destined to succeed, and then your lines of long-term catalog investments. But the fact is, you almost never have a guaranteed hit, and you never ever ever have a guaranteed hit with a first-time artist. And so they throw a lot of bands at the wall and see what sticks. Now, you can certainly make the criticism that this practice involves a lot of acts getting dropped very quickly if they don't have immediate success, but at this point in my experience I tend to say that acts this happens to are either a) fucking morons, as they should know at this point to build up their following with a few indie releases before jumping to a major, or b) just not cut out for the level of exposure that particular label can give them, and better off somewhere else. You could also make the criticism that labels then don't devote as much resources as they should to promoting acts that could be successful with more of a push, but that "we could have broken if just..." argument is pretty hard to prove anyway.
2) People in the music industry see music as more a product than an art.
Well, yes and no. I guess I would say the music industry people see music as product like teachers see students as clients: some do, and some don't, but way more don't than do. The whole industry relies on that belief, and it would be run much, much differently if we really did see it as a product instead of an art. Of course, at heart, it is a product from this point of view, and you'll neither keep your job nor succeed at making the music you're promoting well-known if you don't see it as product, to a certain degree. (This being especially true when you're promoting music you don't really like--sure, you don't like it, but presumably some people do, and it would be unfair to them and the artists if you spiked it just because you're not a big fan of, say, jambands from New Jersey doing mostly cover songs.)
But look, despite any stories you've heard, 99% of music industry jobs are badly-paying and extremely unstable. Sure, if you hit big, particularly as an A&R guy, manager, or lawyer, you'll be rolling in it, but most people aren't in these positions and have only dim hopes of someday getting 2 points on a diamond release. And so mostly, you stay in it for five or ten or forty years not waiting to cash in, but because you sincerely love music. This is certainly the case with most of the people I've come in contact with, somewhat to my surprise. Hell, even the finance folks have a stronger-than-average love of toonage. It might not necessarily be the kind of music you love--there are a seemingly inordinate number of ex- or current metalheads in my circles--but they do really love music. Plus, at all but the highest and lowest levels, you have a personal relationship in one way or the other with the people you're promoting, and the music biz is built on personal relationships. Seeing an artist's CD in stores or on the charts or on MTV that you've worked on gives you a real sense of craftsman's pride. It's definitely not product then.
So in sum: despite the incredibly inaccurate metaphor used to describe pop music--"manufactured"--it is made by real musicians using real instruments and promoted by real people who really love music, and who want it to do well because they like it. |
