A few days ago Evelyn came to my desk holding a three-quarter inch video cassette. “Look at this!” she said, as if she’d discovered an arrowhead in Union Square Park.
The cassette contained archival footage of something—whatever it was—we’d done music for some time in the previous millennium.
I patiently explained that these cumbersome objects were once ubiquitous in our business. Rough cuts were sent to us on three-quarter inch. We sent our reels out on three-quarter inch. Agency production departments had library and storage rooms lined with three-quarter inch reels from every production company, director, composer…
If anyone would like a three-quarter inch Sony deck, please contact me and I will give you one, along with $20 cab fare.
The soundtrack for today’s Earwitness column is Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4iX5D9Z64. It should be playing—over and over again—in your head as you read. Sorry—don’t be pissed!
“I used to think that we were forever ever
And I used to say, ‘Never say never…
So he calls me up and he’s like, “I still love you,”
And I’m like… ‘I just… I mean this is exhausting, you know, like,
We are never getting back together. Like, ever’…”
Fantastic and terrible! Thank you, Taylor. There will be no more three-quarter inch tapes. Ever. No more audio cassettes, like, ever. CD’s? My Ford Fiesta has a CD player! I used to say they were forever. Now they’re just somebody that I used to know (oops, wrong song).
For the past 5 minutes—I mean 5 years—iTunes has been this country’s largest vendor of music. And we thought, Wow, that’s the future…paid music downloads! But now, online sales are declining for, like, the first time. Ever.
So what’s happening? Are people listening to music less? Never! Apple just bought Beats Electronics, the company founded by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, for about $3 billion. Was that because Apple wanted to own a super cool headphone brand? Never. It’s because Apple realized that streaming music—ala Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Xbox Music—is the real future of music consumption. $3 billion. So nice for you, Jimmy, Dre and big stakeholder, Universal Music Group. Do you imagine that any of this purchase price will find its way into the pockets of the artists whose works constitute the essential makeup of this enormous cloud formation? Never. Like, ever.
There are over 800 million iTunes users in the world. And now they will have Beats Music at their fingertips. According to the May 28 story in The New York Times “Apple and Beats executives said the companies would work together to give consumers around the world more options to listen to music.” So thoughtful.
We’ve heard the complaints from artists: no matter what the streaming giants say about the democracy of royalty distributions, mere fractions of pennies are paid to the music creators. They’re supposed to suck it up and be grateful for the “exposure”…which will lead to new legions of fans, who will want to own their music. Hear that streaming song, jump right over to iTunes and buy it!
Hardly, like, ever. People are becoming increasingly happy to not own music anymore—when they can listen to it for free. Or commercial-free for a few dollars a month.
Which brings me, circuitously, to the title of this column: ‘Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies’ (Grow Up To Be Cowboys…’, written by Ed and Patsy Bruce, made famous by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson). I say, Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be rock stars. ‘Cause if they don’t make it to the top—where concert, merch and licensing revenues can get you a car and some groupies—they’ll have their heads in the clouds. And no pennies from heaven. Like, ever.
Now, if the boys from Beats really wanted to revolutionize the music business, they should design an algorithm that assigns, proportionately, a significant percentage of the gross revenue, whether subscription-based or advertising-derived, to the “artist” (collectively, the performer, composer and publisher). That would be a game-changer, driven not by the next music delivery system advance, but by the battle-earned right to royalties for use of copyrighted content. Is that gonna happen, like, ever? Ha! Mammas don’t let your babies…
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Lyle Greenfield is the founder of Bang Music and past president of the Association of Music Producers (AMP)
Read the debut Earwitness column here. 2nd installment is below in Related Posts.
