The death of rock music.
If you have been watching the music industry lately, you probably understand that rock music sales are collapsing. A rock album is becoming increasingly difficult to sell to an audience that just leans to illegal downloading. Not to mention, the rock scene is just over saturated and hard to see through. Though I believe that there are other ways to find funding through modern rock music (i.e. product and event sponsorships, live concerts and branded merchandise), the top record labels are struggling to follow the “old school” formula. In turn, it is becoming rare for these record labels to even sign them.
The glamour of rock music is practically dead (in my eyes, at least – you can argue) because absolutely everything has to be sold and released to recoup the funding that is spent. The mystery is given a monetary value (behind the scenes videos, b-sides, etc.) and released as a product and the magic is lost.
Because of this, rap and pop (usually overly produced) is more prevalent on television and in magazines, simply because money is still made on a single to single basis. Rihanna is known for releasing hits and not particularly hit albums. Every now and then, we see a band that hits it “big” (i.e. OneRepublic), but it is not nearly as common as the past.
I’ve been following the downfall for a couple of years now and created a documentary titled “Independent” which featured two bands, Barcelona and Melee. Barcelona acted as the unsigned, independent band and Melee was the major label act. Recently, Barcelona signed to Universal Motown Records to use their major label resources.
About a year and a half ago, I had a meeting with a video commissioner at Sony BMG. I was referred to her by one of my previous vice presidents at Warner. After she made a few rude comments about my age (after walking into her office, she said, “are you fourteen? because you sure look it…”) she told me that she was in need of the next “OK GO” video. If you are unfamiliar with OK GO, I’ll explain briefly. OK GO was put on the back-burner by their label and decided to go ahead and record their own brilliantly choreographed video with no budget. The video went viral and then the label started paying attention to them. Yes, their video is an extremely creative visual representation of their music, but I can’t pull viral videos out of nowhere. She continued to explain that she needs videos produced for budgets less than I was making in a single day of work.
With this situation, I have come to the realization that the years of “epic” music videos are over. My interest, particularly in visual media, follows not only music videos, but also live videos, documentaries, and short films. Have we seen the death of the “gigantic” rock band with the epic videos? If yes, I am all for developing creative video content for the internet. The new industry plan is to produce more content for less money per project. Quantity over quality, if you will. In accepting that my future depends on quantity over quality, lets look an epic video (epic meaning big budget, light shows, stellar performance, etc.) from one of the last huge bands, Coldplay.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBEYyHGbwto&hl=en&fs=1]
As always, I would love to hear what you think. So feel free to comment!
January 26, 2009