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Software serves record co stasis quo

Who is taking over whom? And who cares?

By David James

“The global music industry has never been in such flux.” So trumpeted the Financial Times when it was announced that the merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 was annulled by the European Court of First Instance because, it was claimed, it was anti-competitive. The European Commission, which allowed the merger, was criticised for making assertions that were “imprecise, unsupported and indeed contradicted by other observations in the decision.” Sounds like they spent far too much time with music executives.
The decision comes at the same time that two other major record companies, Warner Music and EMI have been circling each other like a pair of ageing, toothless sharks. EMI made an initial offer for Warner of $US28 a share, later raised to $US31. Warner countered with its own bid, but, in the wake of the European Court’s decision, neither company seems entirely convinced that winning is desirable, or that there will even be a contest.
What does it mean to impose competition strictures on an industry suffering the death of a thousand downloads? The industry’s revenues from physical music have been declining for the last five years, and to date this has not been offset by sales of digital music, which are marginal. The only bright spot is mobile music, which may eventually halt the industry’s decline.
The global music industry is becoming a Jurassic Park, populated by copulating dinosaurs. Warner has 11.3% of the industry, EMI 13.4%, Sony-BMG 21.5%, Universal 25.5% and independents 28.3%. These are huge market shares, yet they are, apparently, unviable. The only firm not actively to seek a way of rationalising costs is Universal, and that may simply be due to inertia.
Real businesses – a description that does not necessarily apply to record companies -- are finding that, in the global economy only a small number of companies are tending to acquire dominant market shares, yet they are still struggling to achieve adequate returns. Even the once mighty General Motors is now thinking about a merger with Renault and Nissan. In many “old” industry sectors, the dinosaurs are finding the foliage distinctly thin.
What are the options available for the music majors? One is simultaneously to become big and hollow out by outsourcing many functions and developing what management authors C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy call a “new competitive space”. These spaces are made up of supply chains, with product innovation at the centre. In the extended enterprise, there are networks or customers and stakeholders. And in the outer layers there is a broader community of “experience”.
This ought to be a viable approach for record companies, which are selling a type of experience. CD sales may be ailing, but recorded music is still penetrating people’s lives at an intense rate. It should be possible to take the brands of record companies and increase the scope of the businesses beyond just CD products. Trouble is, the record company’s decades-old habit of mercilessly exploiting almost all the product innovators -- the musicians and artists – leaves them poorly place for this kind of business innovation.
Another approach is to pare back costs, which is what the mergers are primarily intended to achieve. This can be effective, but only in the short term. Cost containment cannot work unless new forms of revenue are found. Cutting costs is not a strategy, it is an exigency.
The more disturbing reality – for the record majors, not musicians – is the fact that in most industries, the dominant companies of one era fade away in the succeeding era. That is the situation facing record companies, which are struggling to deal with the transition from the analogue to the digital periods.
It should have been comparatively easy to make the shift. Brands, intangible assets and creativity are supposed to be what most matters in the digital age. But record companies have tended to outsource many of the creative functions that really matter (while underpaying for them, or not paying at all), thriving instead on their control of production and distribution. As production became less capital intensive because of massive changes in recoding technology, record companies concentrated on dominating distribution to maintain their hegemony. But that advantage, too, was lost with the advent of the Internet. The emphasis then shifted to marketing, with consequent high product turnover and short periods for investment returns. The result? Products that are almost indistinguishable from each other, a production line of near-identical performers who are as ephemeral as the financial returns.
Meanwhile, computer programmers are making advances in “music intelligence”: software designed to predict, with surprising accuracy, which songs will become hits. It analyses “spectral deconvolution” which is defined by 30 parameters that define a piece of music, including such things, according to The Economist, as “sonic brilliance, octave, cadence, frequency range, fullness of sound, chord progression, timbre and “bend” (variations in pitch at the beginning and end of the same note).” In the era of sameness, the copier is king.
Record companies, radio stations and even lawyers are reportedly interested in the new computer technologies. Even more uniformity seems to be in the offing, although The Economist bravely claims that the reverse will be the case, that risk averse record executives will be more likely to be persuaded by more adventurous musical initiatives if the software indicates it is likely to appeal.
Sounds nice, but given the history of lack of accountability in the creative departments of record companies, and the dominance of the marketing departments, a resurgence of creativity is not the kind of prospect worth betting the house on. The far greater problem facing the industry is the music company’s lack of a sustainable business model as they lose control of their hegemony over production and distribution. The other inexorable business challenge is superfluity. Old songs do not die, they just move to new digital platforms for resale. This crowds out new entrants.
Some creativity, especially of the business kind, is required, and, oddly in a creative industry such as the music business, that is one thing that is not in plentiful supply.

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Slim to sloth

The Typical Career of
The Whinging Musician

Musicians, artists, poets – all really quite a miserable bunch of sods, hmm? Especially musicians these days; constantly whinging, moping, yelling, screaming, squealing, drinking, binging, stumbling, getting into strife, blahblablawaahhhh! Oh, the tortured artist! Oh, the troubled soul of the rock ’n’ roll star! Oh, the defeating frustration of seeking the mystical muse! Oh, the tragic waste of the doomed hedonist with their guitar and notebook, scribbling away in smoky bars whilst twirling their pencil thin moustache and tugging at their fashionably grubby locks of hair. Looking all thoughtful and aloof.

before...

Do you have any real cause for complaint, miserable poseur? Aren’t you really just wallowing in it, sad fashionista? You bemoan the fact that no-one pays you for your art, you grumble about being so poor you can’t afford to eat or live, but spend what little you do have on drugs, tobacco and cocktails. And fuckin’ hairdressers.
But I’m on to you! I know that you secretly know it’s the only way that you could ever maintain your skeletal figure and gaunt look. And ill-fitting, worn-out clothes are a style unto themselves these days – all thanks to you skinny bastards!
If you could ever actually afford to eat and live, your propensity for over indulgence would mean that you’d go completely over-the-top. You’d aggressively scoff mountains of lavish gourmet delights, wash it down with top-shelf liquor and fine wine, and kick back afterwards in a stupefied addle of narcotics. A few weeks of this and you’d become a terribly fat sloth.
Expanding waistline? New wardrobe! Off you’d go and buy disgustingly expensive clothes that look absolutely ridiculous and absolutely ridiculous clothes that look disgusting. I can just see a multi-coloured silk sheet with frilly edges draping over a bulbous torso masquerading as a smocky frock. Uggh. It’s really just a throw rug to cover the mess. There are so many cases in point in rock and roll halls of fame (shame) I ain’t even gonna bother providing examples.

...and after.

Don’t worry about the sex. You don’t need to be all tortured, skinny and handsome anymore to get laid. You’ll be able to dress up like a Halloween-pumpkin-drag-queen, and look like a spotty, beached walrus, but still get poon-tang. Just wave your money around and host roller-skate spa-parties.
I guess what it’s about is treading that fine line between maintaining enough of a degree of “artistic poverty” so as to remain as skinny and unkempt as possible right up until the point of breaking into the big-time (as a result of coming up with so many great songs about being so skinny and hard-done-by on the way to the top). The resulting large pay-offs will finance your madly extravagant splurges out shopping where you’re buying all the ingredients for getting all fat and dressed up.
By the time that sort of fame and money comes in it’s probable that you’ll be too old to enjoy all the perks of fame and money for very long so it’ll probably be quite enjoyable just getting fat and dressed up and loofa’ed by several mistresses.
But is it possible that maybe you do have something to whinge about? If being a musician was more of a profession in the classic sense (i.e. getting paid for it, better working conditions, more respect – and back stage oral don’t count as respect or better working conditions), then maybe there’d be less to whinge about…
…which in turn would mean there’d be less to write about! So stop whinging. Who the fuck really wants to listen to a dude singing about doing what they want and getting paid and how great their working conditions are? Quite the paradox…“I got so much money, and I give thanks for my job, I got a great superannuation plan, no banks will I ever need to rob.” It’s laughable. “I ain’t got no money, and I spit on my job, I ain’t got no future, ya shit-head snob”. It’s rockin!
So please. Next time you see a skinny person looking all thoughtful and aloof, render them dead. I suggest throwing their hair products, pointy-toed boots and badges onto a busy highway. They’ll follow, and it won’t take long from there… Alternatively, tangle their extremely long scarf around the banister of a flight of stairs and push ‘em down it. Their flimsy necks won’t stand a chance! Erk! Snap!
Go on. It’ll save everyone hassle, and infinitely boost their posthumous career, which is their other secret dream anyway.

Note: every time I refer to “you”, as though I’m addressing one of these skinny artistically impoverished punks on their way to artistic obesity, you can probably substitute it with an “I”, and read it as a first-person narrative from the author’s perspective. I confess. It’s about me. I’m on me way, baby.

Don't forget the Clinkerfields competition - reasonable prizes to be won!!

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