WIRED: The Covid-19 pandemic has shattered the music industry. By taking away live music for what will likely be 18 months or more, Covid has ended the revenue stream that animated an entire music ecosystem. This is particularly true for independent artists with few other means of making a living in today’s industry. Musicians lost two-thirds of their typical income in 2020. Live music revenue fell 85 percent.
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As consumers of big music, this is not really something that we ever think about in general. We listen to the music that we love, and that’s that. I really enjoyed reading this article because it shed light on the ways in which big music is so incredibly toxic. I read about how damaging the whole system is to artists with their managers and their labels literally controlling every aspect of their lives to protect the image of their respective companies. None of them have the artists’ intentions in mind when making these overarching decisions about everything that they do. They simply value what they think will be a “hit” and make every single decision revolve around that. My cousin is a producer of a bunch of independent artists productions in CT. During the pandemic, many local venues shut their doors leaving no venue for any of these small scale artists a place to perform. This furthers the monopolistic nature of the three recording labels because people are consuming ONLY that art. It is super toxic and needs to be broken up.
I have always found it interesting, as well as somewhat infuriating, to learn about the dirty inner workings of major corporations. The music industry is no different. I believe that music is absolutely for everyone, but that it is also important for the artists to receive their fair share of profit. That being said, without signing to a label, it is increasingly difficult, nay, damn near impossible to get exposure and gain notoriety. On the other hand, as mentioned in the article, unless you’re in the top 1% on Spotify, you will get one third of a penny per stream, around $25 a year for many artists. That is not remotely close to a living wage. All of these major labels buying each other and thus increasing each of their individual monopolies, it is becoming harder for artists to be successful, and providing new music for consumers who don’t have easy access to new music and smaller artists. What really irks me the most is that there are laws in place to prevent these exact kinds of mergers that make these huge multinational corporations. For the sake of the fragile music industry, and for the sake of all the small artists who are struggling to make ends meet by pursuing what they love, something must be done. Especially with all the smaller, independents having to shutter themselves due to Covid.
Hearing the phrase Big Music really threw me for a loop. The opening sentence sort of did the same. I am not one hundred percent sure I agree that COVID-19 “shattered” the music industry. Compared to other entertainment industry breakdowns - like theatre, film, etc. - I think music is one of the LEAST affected. Aside from concerts and other live music festivals, the music industry is practically untouched. Songs can still release as they did before, if anything they might even be more popular due to the amount of time people are spending online listening to music increasing. Music videos can also still be done with proper Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. On the flip side though, I do agree that three major record labels producing two thirds of all music consumed in America is actually insane and needs to be broken up into the hands of smaller creatives.
There is so much blatant corruption in the music industry. I had actually recently heard about all of these problems with Spotify on a podcast. I had also heard that it has not added two factor verification, as there is a whole group of people that profit and make Spotify money by hacking accounts or making bot accounts to listen to certain music on repeat, upping their streams enough to make a good amount of money. There is no reason not to have something as simple as two factor verification in 2021, showing that Spotify only plays into and promotes these scams. Ticketmaster is a whole other beast, and I feel like anyone who has ever bought a ticket to a concert can recognize the problems there. However, I still find myself using both of these services, because there are no other alternatives. I hope that this article is correct in its observation that the music industry will change due to the pandemic, but I cannot be too sure as I feel like these monopolies will continue for years to come.
I was intrigued to see a Wired article posted on here, and thought it quite amusing how it is demanding for big music to be broken up, which I don't fully understand the meaning of even after reading the article. It starts off with quite a bold statement, declaring that the pandemic has SHATTERED the music industry. I disagree greatly. I think this has been a great year for music. Due to the quarantine, there have been a surge in music listeners and a surge in new music by many artists. When we are bored, as humans we create and we entertain ourselves. The pandemic only gave us more time to do such. The article complains more about the absence of live music and live performances, and to that I think no shiz! But I that is just something of fact when there is a pandemic, and there is no point complaining about it- it's not going to change until most of the population is fully vaccinated and cases simmer down.
Am I at all surprised by this article? No, not in the least. “Big music” is toxic, with massive corporations trying to make as much money as they can– often to the detriment of artists. How many times have we heard stories of artists being horribly treated and forced into deals? And, I think it hinders smaller artists’ ability to get their music out and known. The corporate and legal talk is not something I am familiar enough with to fully understand what they are talking about, but I do want to know more about it. I think it is interesting to learn about and hopefully we can start to make some major changes to make the music industry better and save those smaller businesses that need (live) music to survive (that is dependent on the pandemic of course). This is a super interesting read, and I look forward to learning more.
I was (and still am) a massive one direction for going on 10 years now. It was very clearly to me how precisely their management, SYCO (Simon Cowell), controlled every aspect of their image. Now that the band is broken up/going on hiatus/what have you, the boys are opening up more about what their experiences really were like for those five years. Just like k-pop stars over the ocean, they were MASSIVELY overworked. Some days, they were allowed 2-3 hours of sleep before having to get back to work. They released an album every year and went on tour every year. They recorded those albums after the shows, recording in their trailers with mattresses pressed to the walls in the very early hours of the morning, with their voices tired from just performing for 4 hours. This was all in the name of making sure they were considered “big music”. It worked. For a while they were considered the biggest band since The Beatles, not that their music rivaled them in any way. The music industry is awful. It’s filled with corruption and even more money-hungry than film and television. It’s remarkable to me that some people make it out alive.
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