With the news that Toyota is launching a record label, I guess we can officially say that the music industry has gone completely random.
Though most people want to attribute it to Wal-Mart's dominance of the distribution of physical recordings (as well as most other consumer goods), the reality is that non-digital sales of music have also gone crazy in the past year. Two of the most remarkable musical comebacks of 2004, Prince's resurgence and the long-overdue mainstream re-recognition of Ray Charles, happened not just because they're geniuses who've been too long overlooked, but because they used non-traditional venues.
Though iTunes gets all the attention for its phenomenal growth, the fastest growing retailers of physical CDs in the United States last year were Starbucks and Prince concerts. If you watched the Grammies this year, you saw Ray's record producer actually thank Starbucks for their support during his acceptance speech, and Billboard and Soundscan were actually forced to change the way they account for record sales so that nobody else could hack the Top 10 charts the way Prince did.
Now, the randomization of recording retailing is moving up the chain, from distribution to A&R to the labels themselves. I guess we'll end up in a world where General Motors will be competing with Def Jam.
And it couldn't have happened to a nicer industry.
Ahh, as foretold by the GZA, we are truly living in the era where our A&R is a mountain climber who plays the electric guitar.
What is music? Billboard Magazine publishes a weekly Top Ten Ringtones chart.
I think it's sad (but not surprising) to see so many large companies wanting to make a profit off of the music industry. There is music everywhere, but the music itself is terrible. Every other company is pushing Ashlee Simpson or Gwen Stefani. It's quite disturbing to see such an excess of promotion for such terrible artists. Although I'm happy to see the new mp3 cell-phones, I'm unhappy to see how companies are marketing the new technology - Ludacris and The Game are yelling into their cell phones back and forth as if they were recording a song. I guess all in all it's to be expected. The worst music is the most popular amidst the masses. I'm interested to see what type of artists Toyota will sign, probably more Ryan Cabrera's or Simple Plan's.
Yeah, it's going to be good for the Ray Charleses of the world to have these corporate side channels.
And there's a certain class of midlist artist that will get signed to promote brands like Volkswagen and Mitsubishi, which have a history of associating their car advertising with slightly edgy fare. Hell, Nick Drake owes his resurgent career to that Cabriolet ad. Now, if he'd only tour, he could keep the bubble going ....
This is good because it's an ugly, ugly oligopoly that's run things lo this last half-century. Any competition is good in that light. But they'll probably find a way to co-opt whatever it is that these vanity labels are doing "right" (Toyota will probably find some excuse to outsource the damned thing to Sony before three years are up, mark my words -- core business and all). There's probably going to be labels started by the majors just to capture this market, really.
We're still waiting for the music industry to get hit by the Cluetrain, in other words.
Ooh! Ooh! I finally remembered the other example that fits here: Such Great Heights: Postal Service Band CD Single, which is the result of settling the trademark dispute between the Postal Service and ... the Postal Service.
I love the way they call it "Postal Service Band", as if a bunch of letter carriers get together and oompah in uniform.
I wonder how many they sell.