Larry “Liontamer” Oji
Assistant Soundtrack Director, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Head Submissions Evaluator, OverClocked ReMix
Creator, VG Frequency
Staff, VGMdb
http://www.ocremix.org
http://www.vgfrequency.com
http://www.vgmdb.net

Then came radio, and everyone could hear music played by “professional” musicians. Apart from the big-name bandleaders and featured singers/soloists, of course, they barely got by.

Along with the growth of radio came the distribution of records, but it didn’t really take off until the 33 1/3 RPM long-playing record let them put 20+ minutes on a side of a disc.

You had, as others have observed, niche and non-mainstream players who suddenly bloomed into public consciousness, but barriers to entry were always very high.

The technical demands of the vinyl LP were frustrating. You lost a lot at both ends of the audio spectrum. Mastering engineers would roll off your bass and the filters would assassinate your upper harmonics… and the first time you heard the record, vice the master tapes through studio monitors, it sounded so flat and lifeless and dull.

I am old enough to remember agonizing over what running order to put your cuts in, to make radio stations listen beyond the first cut and then to leave both side one and side two with a positive impression of your act. I’m also old enough to regret the absence of a 1′ square of record jacket for self-expression.

I believe that the enforced discipline of those limitations made for more interesting music. The radio wouldn’t play your cut if it was too long, so you had to get in, grab their attention, say your piece and get out in three minutes. Most artists today take longer to communicate less — they’re very self-indulgent by our (dated) standards.

The CD created new technical possibilities, and new limitations, which the industry was very slow to come to terms with, let alone exploit. Digital downloading has only increased that dichotomy between technical promise and industrial inertia. The larger something is, the more resistant it is to changing direction… the major-label cartel is so consolidated now that will probably need really swingeing losses to wake up.

I’m at the other extreme end of the market. The over 35 year and an old long term collector. For people like me, CD’s still offer by far the cheapest, quickest, and most satisfying way of buying music. I agree that MP3 sales will take over much of first run music sales. There will always be a sizable second market that entails something a little more permanent than MP3 format. Sure, I use electronic formats for playlists but there still is no substitute for archival copies. I don’t poo on everything new but 85 percent of what I listen to is from before 1983. Much of the more recent stuff is either Jazz or Classical.

The popular music industry isn’t killing itself. It had already done that decades ago and lives on in a much diminished state, jazz declined a little earlier, classical a little later and more gradually. The rapid decline happened back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. You won’t see that in album sales though until you look at the stupendous number of great musical artists that existed between WWII and 1983.

From what I have seen the music industry pre 70’s was quite a bit different than it’s modern form. The people in the industry at the time grew up with the record industry before it was big money. They were enthusiasts as much as businessmen. You had to be sharp to turn a consistent profit. Even the big record companies only made a profit off of only part of their product. The rest of the artists would fill out a catalog and in time could pay for themselves in rereleases. Production also became much more expensive in the late 70’s and 80’s too. After the Beatles high production values became paramount. Musicians constructed rather than played music, and purchasing expensive new equipment every few years for minimal technical improvements became the norm.

Now the industry has turned on its head. You can make decent recordings with fairly inexpensive equipment and distribute it very cheaply. The problem now is not as many musicians have the chops. Too many of the people using the cheaper production equipment are very limited amateurs and the bean counters in the companies are still strictly bean counters.

Don’t get me wrong. Good music will always be a big deal. Many of us are old enough to lament the passing of a cultural golden age though. What you are talking about is a rather remarkable change in marketing distribution, and format of the end product. It is fascinating but I’m not sure how much it changes the creative process.

Bozoer (God how I envy you that cognomen), the thing is that I don’t think the Sam Phillips’s and George Martins are going to be lost to this; if anything, I suspect they’ll have greater power than they did. George Martin, Alan Parsons, and others, I suspect, will turn out to be the impresarios who will turn musicians into recortdings that get played.

Let me recommend Jeff Price’s article today in the HuffPo.

Unfortunately, the huge commercial success of downloaded mp3s has stalled need for lossless compression schemes. There is the FLAC method, but that only reduces the size of the wav files by about 25%. Perhaps as the cost of bandwidth and storage comes down compression won’t be needed.

As far as the future of the music industry is concerned, one problem with cutting out the middlemen is that some of those middlemen, like Sam Phillips, Leonard & Phil Chess, and George Martin, brought their own considerable talents to the music. As bad as the record biz has been, it has, after all, produced some great, great music. Artists can be self indulgent and a thoughtful producer can push them to be creative. Likewise, artists can be clueless about marketing, promotion, order fulfillment, merchandising, etc. and it’s nice to have people with those skills involved in the process.

Way back when, and the system had its flaws for sure, there was something called an A&R man. Artists & repertoire. They developed young artists, figured out which demos would work well with them, and tried to cultivate a marketable product. Sometimes the system worked and sometimes it didn’t. The successes are our musical heritage.

Aretha Franklin is a towering artist and her talent was known when she was a young girl singing in her father’s church. Columbia tried to make her into a lounge singer and that failed. It took the vision of Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler to “put her back in church”. Wexler set her down at a piano, had her run through the song and then he built the arrangements around those basic takes. Without Wexler’s sensitivity and taste, would Aretha have turned out the same? Ironic considering the title, but one of her signature songs, You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman, was written by Carol King specifically for Aretha at Wexler’s request. It was Wexler who came up with the title lyric. King was still working in the Brill Building at that time, if I’m not mistaken.

Sure, the internet allows you to have a mom & pop store on the busiest intersection in the world, but in addition to talent it helps to have creative and hard working folks in your corner.