K-Turn: Short Sighted Stuffed Shirts
Let’s take a detour this morning to one of LK’s societally certified areas of expertise that has not yet been focused on: the Music Biz.
Today’s record companies are run either by private equity poobahs whose idea of talent is the rating they give the girls at the Gentlemen’s Club, or by well paid slaves of publicly traded companies. In the latter case, now that this part of the art world needs to report quarterly results, there is no chance for the type of artist development that would lead to both lengthy, productive careersand artists that generate billions of dollars in revenue. The same holds true for the companies under the control of private equity, with the drive for numbers no less intense but a lot more hush-hush.
Case in point: The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Beginning in 1984, the band released 3 albums that made no money for their record company. Their fourth album scratched its way onto the Billboard Top 200, and their fifth album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, released 7, count ‘em 7 years after their first public exposure broke the band wide open. My educated guess is that they’ve done at least a half a billion dollars worth of business including record sales, concert grosses, and merchandising.
In today’s environment they would have been dropped (the equivalent of fired) by their record company after album #2 at the latest, and whoever green-lighted that second album would have been sent packing as well. Today’s myopic morons in their corner offices can learn something from professional sports GM’s who bring talent along at a pace that just might bear some fruit. The Joba rules come to mind (google the phrase if you’re unfamiliar with the context).
One thing shared by both the music and sports biz is that both tolerate and even indulge talented types with drug problems, making them major enablers. Although the drugs of choice are as different as, oh, say, steroids and heroin, dope is dope.
And dope brings us conveniently back to the folks running the major label record companies.
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The record companies are simply following all the other major corporations in their slide to oblivion, LK. The monster companies decided to ignore the impact of internet downloading. The Falcon can only call to mind one major act – Metallica – who actually attempted to challenge downloads. Time passed. Record moguls looked at the books and went nuts. “Where all da money at?” they screamed from some glass encased office overlooking the world. Further, they failed to take into account that if a kid could download his/her song of choice, that kid would not bother with an entire lp made up of throw-away material. And so, here we are. Music is basically terrible stuff that all sounds the same, or terrible rap stuff that – uh, all sounds the same. Meanwhile, the rest of the sane world is focusing on education. “Oh Oh,” cries The Falcon, “Could we be in trouble?”
It’s worse than that LK. Even the bands that do find early success then have unrealistic expectations thrust upon them that they will continue to deliver “product” which will bring financial success. When EMI was public you’d constantly see reports of how their quarterly numbers would be suffering because Coldplay pushed back their album street date.
The overall concept of record company consolidation and maximizing the value of large, diverse catalogs was a solid one. But to strike the Faustian bargain to reach that outcome the record companies then needed to focus on the short-term thinking favored by the financial markets. The consolidation concept only has worth over time if the labels can develop and nurture new talent which has as much cultural/economic value as the legendary catalogs of the past: Motown, Verve, Blue Note, Atlantic, etc… We know now catering to Wall Street had serious ramifications on the industry’s creative decision-making processes. Add to that the simultaneous consolidation of terrestrial radio and the cutback in music videos on Viacom’s music channels (plus the rise of the Internet) and you have a perfect storm where artist development goes to pot.