Dude, Where's My Industry?

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs
How the hell did Clearchannel get to be soooo fukking huge?

CheapChannel is the old Bill Graham Presents.

Every big city in the US had its local baseball and football teams put a gun to their head and demand that the city build them a new stadium or else they'd leave. Many went along with the program only to find themselves losing big bucks on the deal.

In California when proposition 13 hit, the cities became absolutely desperate. Bill Graham made each an offer they couldn't refuse to rent the off-time in their stadium by the year. He wound up having a monopoly over all of the large venues in the state in partnership with each city's government. This allowed him to totally control where most artists could play in the state and ultimately what promoter they could play for.

After he was killed, the company got bought by the biggest promoter in New York who went on to sell the entire operation to Cheap Channel. Now they're running the same scam nationwide. I understand JAM productions in Chicago is almost the only local promoter left in the country.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by jonnyclueless
..Album sales is pretty straight forward, but hot 100 seems to be dictated by who the record companies think is this weeks hot producer. I am sure this could be argued, but it seems like what is being marketed and what people are buying are not completely inline.

Dictated by who RADIO thinks is this weeks hot producer. A VERY important distinction.

[jonnyclueless]

I just assumed the radio station dictated it via which who payed them the most to play it.

I'm kinda torn in situations like now where I have recorded a song thats sitting in the top 5 of the Hot 100. I want it to be sucessful, but I don't feel it deserves to be. The album sales chart doesn't show it as a very successful album, but it's on top of the hot 100. It just doesn't seem right. This ties into the comment about not critisizing the hitmakers. It used to be that the hit makers deterined the hits by writing them, now it's determined by marketing. And while I understand the point of view, I think everyone is entitled to be critical, especially the general public. I also note that ost of the songs that do REALLY well are the ones that break the trends of the monotony machine. I just get excitied hearing a song that isn't a 4 bar loop with some tracks muted as an excuse for arranging. And I used to be the unpicky one who didn't have any problem listening to the radio. In fact until recently I listened almost exclusively to the radio. I love cheesy music as well as artistic music. I just miss music.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by Bob Olhsson
CheapChannel is the old Bill Graham Presents.

Every big city in the US had its local baseball and football teams put a gun to their head and demand that the city build them a new stadium or else they'd leave. Many went along with the program only to find themselves losing big bucks on the deal.

In California when proposition 13 hit, the cities became absolutely desperate. Bill Graham made each an offer they couldn't refuse to rent the off-time in their stadium by the year. He wound up having a monopoly over all of the large venues in the state in partnership with each city's government. This allowed him to totally control where most artists could play in the state and ultimately what promoter they could play for.

After he was killed, the company got bought by the biggest promoter in New York who went on to sell the entire operation to Cheap Channel. Now they're running the same scam nationwide. I understand JAM productions in Chicago is almost the only local promoter left in the country.

Wow.









That just hit...





Wow.





So they like, bought a huge slice of every piece of the industry. Radio, venues, billboards, etc.


Right? Wrong?

[zimv20]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs

So they like, bought a huge slice of every piece of the industry. Radio, venues, billboards, etc.

Right? Wrong?

worse. touring acts must use their venues and booking services, or they won't get the airplay.

competing venues get inspected for code violations from anonymous complaints.

member radio stations are threatened w/ massive fines for profanity and/or deviating from the playlist.

local news reporting is disabled and programmed centrally, sort of the USA Today of radio news.

the owners are big GOP supporters, so when bands like the Dixie Chicks speak out, they stop getting airplay.

and perhaps the biggest of them all -- they admit their mission is to sell advertisement. the music and news is just a means to an end.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by zimv20
worse. touring acts must use their venues and booking services, or they won't get the airplay.

competing venues get inspected for code violations from anonymous complaints.

member radio stations are threatened w/ massive fines for profanity and/or deviating from the playlist.

local news reporting is disabled and programmed centrally, sort of the USA Today of radio news.

the owners are big GOP supporters, so when bands like the Dixie Chicks speak out, they stop getting airplay.

and perhaps the biggest of them all -- they admit their mission is to sell advertisement. the music and news is just a means to an end.

Yeah...no doubt...


So when do they buy out the last three majors and swollow themselves whole?


Lemme guess, the already have their fingers in that.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Jay, there's a Clear Channel expose in the Rolling Stone from this summer with Lindsay Lohan on the cover ("The Hot List"). It's all laid out in black-and-white in that article.

And yes, it's just as bad as zimv says...

And I don't want any "can't believe what you read in Rolling Stone" posts!!! 1) Facts don't lie, and 2) if it's only 80% as bad as the RS report makes it out to be (and I've been following this for at least 5 years independently of RS, anyway!), then it's pretty f%^kin bad.

[grahluk]

As usual Bob O your comments add a lot to the picture.

So Smear Channel has the airwaves and most large to mid sized venues locked up. Looks like they're trying to corner the live CD production market too with them trying to patent the process of making after show CDs. I don't see them getting into the label business though. Why should they? The labels are on their short leash. If they got into the major label biz they would have to bribe themselves for airplay, Uh I mean promotion. I imagine they are smarter than that though. They're already teetering on the antitrust tightrope. We can only hope greed will give them enough rope to hang themselves.

On the side of solutions to the issue what options are there?
For awhile there the dance music industry was pretty healthy. It didn't depend on record sales since most of it was to service DJ's anyway. The labels made money on compilations and branding. People would actually buy merchandise or attend an event on the reputation of the label. Since most of the music was experienced in clubs and the genre got almost no airplay it didn't exist to clear channel or the majors. Star DJ's for a while were raking in money bands could only dream about. In the late 90's they were the real rock stars. While bands slogged from town to town with tons of gear and a payroll these guys would fly into a city with a case of records, work for a couple hours and fly out with several thousand dollars to themselves and maybe a cut for a manager. On occasion some would do a couple gigs in a night. The bigger names would attract the attention of the regular record industry and for a couple years they were signed and promoted conventionally as artists. Lately I hear though the bottom fell out of that industry too. Not for the same reasons though. DJ culture isn't so much the darling next big thing and the bit of backlash against it has left slimmer pickings. It does still exist though to some extent and still is outside the main record industry.
The jam band world is another segment of music that doesn't seem to be dependant on the major label/clear channel axis. There are bands with gigantic national followings that get no airplay and are never on the hot 100. They still can consistently pack shows as large as the latest top of the pops groups. I don't know what channels they go through for concert locations. Maybe they have to plug into the clear channel network for venues but I imagine it's on equal terms. They don't need the raidio or expensive promotion. Their fans come to them literally. Thank the Dead for pioneering that phenomena.

So there's a couple examples of whole worlds of music existing outside the major record labels and clear channel for the most part. How does that relate to other types of music? I don't know. It does show there are people who do enjoy music in thier lives and do so without the hit machine. Technology is already proving that production and distribution can happen outside of the platinum towers. Of course we've been bitten as much by that as the landlords of the music industry. Production may have turned into a cottage industry but producers, engineers, arrangers, songwriters, and musicians still have a function in what's shaking out even if they have to wear more hats and sometimes panhandle for work. I don't know if the same could be said for major labels. They seem to be increasingly in need of justifying their existence. With webcasting and sattelite radio I could see the same thing happening to clear channel although they are fighting dirty to keep the lid on that pandora's box.

As far as local music scenes that foster talent go I'm not terribly worried. I don't go that far back but my formative years were in Seattle in the late 80's early 90's. At that time there wasn't really any "venues" for local groups. There were a couple bars that were the big local shows (Central, Vogue, Squid Row) and the all ages shows were at VFW halls, skating rinks, commercial garages, defunct movie theaters, or anywhere there was a big room and power to plug in. Bands put out records on small labels without major distribution and did tours in the states and abroad. Nobody was rich or could hardly imagine large scale success but the local scene was still quite healthy. Enough so that the "real" music industry eventually came sniffing around. The rest is history. This wasn't even unique to Seattle. Many cities fostered similar scenes and it truly was a nationwide "alternative" how the big boys did it. The big boys eventually co-opted and branded it and Seattle became the poster child for a trend that was originally nothing more than folks doing things themselves.

[Jay Kahrs]

Ok, but how many of those jam bands can make a living from it? Some of the bigger but not huge acts can but most of the ones at the bottom all have regular day gigs when they're not on the road.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Division of labor is a key component of civilization.

For the last seven years, I've been able to make a living making music (except for a two month "day job"). I am IMMESURABLY better due to this experience.

In Dave Pensado's postings, he refers to OJT -- "on the job training" -- as his greatest growth experience for engineering.

If there is no job, where's the training? Especially for artists?!?

Look at The Band -- as Bob Dylan's backup band, do you think these guys were capable of rocking the house (no folkie jokes, please). What about Motley Crue -- they packed out Santa Monica Civic Center by the end of their career as L.A. locals -- do you think they were capable of electrifying and galvanizing an audience? And KRS-One "South Bronx" -- THAT was a MOVEMENT!

Basically, I don't trust part-timers. Many are capable of becoming full-timers, but the sooner they do, the better.