This is probably a longer parable than I intend, and it involves Lars Ulrich, Taylor Swift, the future of music and I don’t know other dramatic elements I guess? Anyway, getting to the first part-I recently read an article that discussed a statement from Lars Ulrich early in the 2000s, during the battle with Napster. It was such a prescient comment from Lars, now that I think about it, and I’m paraphrasing here- “individual artists are going to have a hard time in the future, breaking out, considering the fact that when people start cherry picking the songs from their albums (as in the best one or two songs) and their albums, don’t sell as well the labels will begin to pull their support from the artist.”
Now that’s a really interesting paraphrase and an incredibly thoughtful one as well, because right now where we’re at with our instantaneous on-demand technology is kind of the fact that you can cherry pick and choose which songs you like from an artist, and pretty much listen to what you want and move on. There’s another aspect about the pay issue of pennies for the stream, which I might address too. I’m old enough to remember the times where you had to buy a tape and fast forward it, even a CD kind of prepared you for a musical Journey among their songs. Which I do have to admittedly say that I miss because you prep for the songs coming up to the main song you really wanted to listen to, and it gave you a special kind of affinity for those “filler” songs, or made you discover some you had no idea you wanted to listen to. I do remember mixing and burning CDs, which was a way around that, but still even if you did that, you had the full album and kind of listened to the musical journey.
The point of the news article that I’m trying to get at was discussing the rise of the massive stadium tours, and ticket prices that are currently going on. Metallica and Taylor Swift can get away with charging thousands upon thousands of dollars for a tour for tickets due to the fact that they can. They’re the BIGGEST game in town pretty much and so similar to Lar’s comments, you’re having a hard time seeing new artists break in on the same scale that Metallica and Taylor did. Which creates that feedback loop where they continue to get bigger and they can sell more and control more of the market than they ever did. And smaller artists are not getting the same push and play unless it’s a giant launch the studios depend on.
It’s parallel and echoes to the movie industry, in that they’re sticking to the Disney tentpole formula, and indies and small productions dry up for lack of attention, funding and the change that any one might hit a home run at the box office. So you get ton’s of Marvel, and very little original thinking, and incredibly high ticket prices as well. If you get a flash, it instantly becomes a forest fire.
The other side is that we also have a huge proliferation of Youtube and social media starts that are affecting the media and industry now as well. It’s easier than ever to produce something and put it online. You can get near studio quality by yourself in Garage band, and so the control and scale are altering at an alarming rate. You get too much content, free content, and then plenty of overpriced content that is feeling cheaper and older by the minute. Also, I’ve noticed this weird trend of songs being very short-say 1-2 minutes, instead of the crafted 3-4 minute songs that might have been pushed in the past.
Does an artist need to come up with a full album of bangers? I can’t remember an album that I liked every single song off of. I know there are a few out there that are pretty good but typically in the 80s 90s 2000s you had about 3 to 4, maybe 2 to 3, good songs on an album and the rest almost seemed like filler. I think I’m pretty sure they did that on purpose just to make sure that they would get you hooked and you would feel like you got your money’s worth out of that album.
So now we’re back to this where individual artists who are producing songs are not getting the same sort of support that they used to due to this proliferation, the game is changing, and older established products are consuming demand. In other words, capitalism, and Lars is pretty darn smart.
I think that was exactly the point of the article-is that Metallica and Taylor are the giants that are overconsuming everything in their path and able to charge massive fees for ticket sales. I don’t remember concert tickets being out of reach of everyone, or worrying about spending 5k on Taylor tickets-which, frankly is an expense that I’m appalled people are paying. Even adjusted for inflation, the largest artist 20 years ago (Mariah) charged 200 bucks for floor seats, which equates to double now, so say 500 bucks for the top artists good seats. Taylor charges 900 for the cheapest nosebleeds and 3k for the floor tickets. 6 times the value of Mariah. The real question is: was Mariah making a larger cut off of her albums selling than Taylor is? Is there a real justification for Taylor to charge more for live experiences because her albums generate so little? RIAA and Soundscan differ slightly, but one puts Taylor at 34-55 million selling albums in the US, vs Mariah at 55-75 Million units. Depending on the numbers and proper accounting, you could say that Taylor sells as much to half as much as Mariah. And in that case, her tour sales would be proper in accounting for that lack of album sales.
ORRRRR…you could image that typical album sales were 20-40 bucks a unit, and even the fact that she sold half would NOT account for the 10 fold increase in ticket sales ($20/album does not equal $500 ticket sales after adjusted inflation).
So the math doesn’t really compute. And it wouldn’t for Metallica anyway-a group that began and sold during Mariah’s heyday (if it hasn’t ended) and it’s still charging those prices now and forcing people to go to 2 shows to listen to favorite songs.
The end result is again, Capitalism. They charge those astronomical prices because they can, because they can get away with it, because the top command the most attention and respect and therefore money, and because the future’s going to become completely AI generated and cut out most artists anyway. I might rather see Kiss again anyway, it’s their 63rd “Final Tour”.