Inside the Music Industry

[smoothmoniker]

So, inspired by Lumberjim's tell-all expose of the car buying world’s seedy underbelly, I thought I might try something similar.

I work in the music industry. In the actually trenches fo the industry: touring as keyboardist for headlining artists, programming and producing records, writing songs, and doing studio sessions. I’m not the guy you see on MTV (at least not in the videos – a few live concert clips), but I’m the guy who worked for 9 months to get that guy’s record done. The music industry seems to be one of those things surrounded by factoids but about which little is actually known. Like how much it actually costs to record an album. Or why it takes so long for the artist to recoup their advance and start making money. Or what “triple-scale” means, and how many guys really are.

So hit me. Ask away. I’ll answer as candidly as I can. Or don’t ask, and I’ll slink quietly into the background. This scotch is tasty and typing takes time away from sipping.

-sm

[Torrere]

By your observations, who is most responsible for an album's success?

[OnyxCougar]

Name names! I'd love to know who you've worked with, and if you have any interesting stories to tell.

[Beestie]

I have a question.

Where has the variety gone? Seems like I can count the sub genres of each music style (pop, rock, hip hop, etc.) on one hand.

Seems that music reaching mass markets is getting more and more generic and vanilla. I sense a stifling influence on (or a pigeon-holing of) artistic creativity and wonder what's causing it (or it I'm mistaken).

Take the top 20 artists now, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, etc. and compare the variety, the level of talent, creativity and innovation - seems to me to be at an all-time low. I asserted in another thread, for example, the death of the lead guitar. That is but one example. Within rock, it seems, the vocals, the rythms all sound the same. Compare that with the explosion of creativity in the early 80s or mid 70s.

If you are in the industry, it might not be obvious to you since you are exposed to so much more than the average consumer but to me, who only listens to FM radio and to MTV on occasion, this is what I see. I used to get a lot of enjoyment from discovering new artists but now, when I want to discover something new I don't survey the landscape, I look backwards to find something I missed.

If I had to guess, I wonder if the record companies, through extensive marketing studies, start with a defined end product and work backwards to find artists to play it. Reverse-engineered music if you will. Anyway, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Better still, if you could point me to where all the new/cool/interesting stuff is hiding out these days. If it weren't for the Ministry of Sound , I'd be going nuts.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by Torrere
By your observations, who is most responsible for an album's success?

I don't think I can narrow it down to one person. It takes a perfect storm. Most albums lose a fistful of money – good albums, with good songs and a strong artist. For a record to make back the money invested in it takes

1 slamdunk radio song
An artist with a personality interesting enough to work on the promo circuit
An A&R person who has enough clout within his own label to secure a marketing budget
A radio promoter who’s timing is perfect (#1 song the week before the album hits the store is the goal)
A video that’s got enough eye-candy to play on MTV every 40 minutes
A video promoter with enough push to get it on MTV's very, very short playlist

And all of that is just to get enough records sold to cover the initial cost of the album. You have to do it all over again with a second song if you want the thing to be profitable.

Nelly Furtado’s first record for a textbook example of all of this. “Like A Bird” was timed perfectly, sent the album sales to platinum, the second song, “Turn Out The Lights” started putting it in the black.

-sm

[Happy Monkey]

I didn't think that MTV even had music-related programming every 40 minutes, much less videos anymore...

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by OnyxCougar
Name names! I'd love to know who you've worked with, and if you have any interesting stories to tell.

In real life, I hate that question. There's no way to answer it without being a pretentious ass. But, this is the cellar, and ya’ll have already figured out that I am a pretentious ass, so what’s to lose

I worked as a touring keyboardist for several years with a ton of different artists. The highlights include Melissa Etheridge, Meredith Brooks, Jennifer Love Hewitt (the tour lasted all of 2 weeks between her movies), and then some artists that you’ve never heard of, but who are amazing – Kenna, Charlie Mars, Jarvis Church (he produced Nelly Furtado, under the name Track and Field).

I was just leaving the road when Meredith and Jarvis were starting to produce, so I got to work on the records they were making – Hillary Duff, Jennifer Love Hewitt (who can actually sing. And yes, is that hot in real life), and then the Nelly Furtado record. Through Meredith, I met David Jerden, and did programming for the rock records that he was producing at the time.

Them’s the highlights. There are some stories. I’ll drop them in later. Just as a teaser.

-sm

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
I didn't think that MTV even had music-related programming every 40 minutes, much less videos anymore...

they don't, but it's shorthand for MTV2, VH1, CMT, CCMA, all the other vid stations.

-sm

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by Beestie
I have a question.

Where has the variety gone? Seems like I can count the sub genres of each music style (pop, rock, hip hop, etc.) on one hand.

Seems that music reaching mass markets is getting more and more generic and vanilla. I sense a stifling influence on (or a pigeon-holing of) artistic creativity and wonder what's causing it (or it I'm mistaken).

Believe it or not, there are A&R guys are asking the same question! I didn't really get into this thing until the late 90's, so I don't know how it worked before then, but these days, so many artists have read so many books about how to get signed, that they're forcing themselves into prepackaged molds that they think the label wants to see.

When an artist like Creed hits (i know, i know), for the next 6 months the only thing that comes into the A&R guys hands is Nu Metal.

From the label side though, the big picture is this - it's a numbers game. The label only has so much money to spend on making records. Most of the time, they're going to spend it on things that are slam dunks. Think about the car industry. They may have creative design teams that are building amazing prototypes, but they make their bottom line with endless variations on SUV, Minivan, and Sports Car.

There are still artists out there doing creative things. But they aren’t doing them with a 2 million dollar advance, radio promotion, or TV time – its too big a risk. They’re doing it on smaller labels, with smaller budgets, and hit their smaller fan base with amazing music.

I don’t know where to point you for the “secret stash” of good music, but I can point you to some artists you should listen to. Go get Kenna’s “New Sacred Cow” – produced by the Neptunes, it’s a new wave meets james brown thing. Jarvis Church – never released here, but available in Canada. Charlie Mars – I don’t actually know if his record has dropped yet. It’s the record that Coldplay should have made.

[jaguar]

Stop relying on mainstream media to get your music choices. I find artists through word of mouth and recently reccomendations off Soulseek. The web is full of sites dealing with local music scenes, find some that suit your tastes and start looking around.

At the moment my listening list would be something like:

Ani Difranco
PJ Harvey
Fiona Apple
Croque
Hilltop Hoods
Cat Empire
The Shins

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by jaguar
The web is full of sites dealing with local music scenes, find some that suit your tastes and start looking around.

I think this is really overlooked by a lot of people. There ARE new artists, doing new things, sparking new movements in music. They just don’t have the inertia and market potential to land at Sony Music, or the mass appeal to make it to Clear Channel play lists.

You have to work to find them. But all good things are work a little hunting


-sm

[Electrophile]

What does an A&R guy do?

[Griff]

Originally posted by jaguar
Stop relying on mainstream media to get your music choices. I find artists through word of mouth and recently reccomendations off Soulseek. The web is full of sites dealing with local music scenes, find some that suit your tastes and start looking around.

At the moment my listening list would be something like:

Ani Difranco
PJ Harvey
Fiona Apple
Croque
Hilltop Hoods
Cat Empire
The Shins

Did anyone else notice that Jag listens to girl music?

[Undertoad]

I knew I liked that dude.

[jaguar]

Griff: Yea I admit it :P

I came across a list of them on Amazon one time, was a tad distrubed when I realised I had something from every artist.

On the flipside stuff like cat empire evens it out a little

As smoothmoniker says, it just takes a little gunting. Down under there is a govt. funded station called Tripple J (availaible as a webstream as well) which caters to non-mainstream stuff and has incubated hundreds of kickass artists. First radioplay for many groups that go on to become big names down under and an equal number that find their neiche. I've disocvered probably 5 of my top 10 on it.