Killing the Music Industry

  Something's killing the music industry. That's just a fact. How else do we explain the presence of One Direction, Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor at the apex of the UK music charts. In the US, the Billboard 200 is topped by Swift, Nicki Minaj and Ed Sheeran as I write. Someone save us.

  Yes, something's killing it alright. The question is, what? Well, on the 8th of January Korn drummer Ray Luzier became the latest artist to declare the culprit online music piracy. This, in and of itself, has a fine petingdigree, going all the way back to Beethoven. More recently, Metallica have faced down LimeWire and - at the last gig I went to - Skindred singer Benji Webbe accused all the members of the audience who admitted to pirating his music of 'stealing from my fucking children's mouths!!!'. Which, hilarious as it was at the time, slicked in sweat and a dash of spilled blood, is kind of true.

  Declaration of interests: I have, in the past, downloaded music illegally. Shock, horror, all my metal friends leave me. Yeeeaaahhhh... No. All of them have too. So have all of you. Crucially, though, I stopped doing so before the age of 15. Why? Quite simple, really: I had a little bit of disposable income by that point, and wanted to support the artists I like(d). So, now I buy CDs or (if the CD is hard to come by) download albums legally. A reformed man.

  Here's the issue: I don't have THAT much disposable income, even now. So, while I buy as much music as I can afford, that's not too much. So, being a music-loving sort of chap, I use services such as YouTube, Spotify, and even occasionally Last.fm. The thing is, whilst these services are legal, they are't particularly lucrative for the artists either. They only receive an estimated $0.005 per play, which is pretty poor by anyone's standards. Although the disparity between this figure and the revenue from music sales has been subject to debate, everyone agrees the former is a fraction of the latter.

  And therein, dear reader, lies the issue. Illegally downloading music is bad. You shouldn't do it. We know these things. But the thing which will replace piracy will not be increased album sales; it will be increased use of streaming services. This is because the average UK household income is between £44,000 and £51,000 for a two-adult, two-child family. Take the mean of £47,500 - that's just under £12,000 per person. Before tax. And bills. And rent/mortgage. And clothes. And food.

  Are you getting the idea? People don't have the cash on the hip necessary to indulge what for many of us is a deep passion for music. Which means that people will continue to use streaming services, which pay artists a tiny amount of money over often extremely long periods of time. Granted, this is better than nothing, but not by very much. While we're on the subject, even album sales aren't making musicians that much - about 13% of the total album cost for a physical copy, and less for iTunes downloads and their ilk. This has always been the case - and in fact some artists who have been in the business a while, such as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, say things have actually improved quite considerably in recent years. Which is to be welcomed, but 13% still seems pathetically small.

  The thing is, there's always something 'killing' the music industry - recorded music itself was attacked as damaging when it first emerged. Piracy is the current bugbear, and I will admit it's a problem, but the prevalence of streaming services at the expense of album sales is - to my mind - a greater long-term threat. But artists have to adapt. And there is hope for the future in the internet as well as fear, by making it easier for artists to access their audiences without the middleman of a record label taking a hefty cut (about 30%). Independent labels and artists should of course be encouraged, and we should support the musicians whose music we enjoy where we can. But let's not get too het up about the death of the music industry because the charts may be flooded with utter dreck, but in fairness they have been for years, and we will preserve this industry we love best by determining to ourselves that we will never let it die.

Chart Music - How Bad Can It Be?

Pop music in 2014 is frequently slated as generic, bland, meaningless rubbish. Is that fair? Let's find out...

  Those who know me at all will know my musical tastes are not attuned to those of the 21st century zeitgeist. My passion is, and has always been, for what are rapidly becoming niche genres; hard rock, punk rock, heavy metal, grunge - these are the styles of music which I love, but I'm under no illusions - they aren't exactly what's getting played on Radio One. As a rocker, I have entered into more than my fair share of slating modern pop music - this article, for example - but have I been entirely fair? 

  In the interests of science - as well as (hopefully) proving myself right to shun the chart-toppers of today - I have set myself a challenge. Five songs - the top five on the Official Chart Company's most up-to-date list - get one playthrough each. I shall be as objective as possible - i.e. not very. Let us take the plunge...

No. 1: All About That Bass - Meghan Trainor

  First things first: Autotuned to all hell. I know this is pretty standard for modern pop tracks, but it is used far too heavily here. The chorus is catchy, there's no denying that - this is one I have heard before, and it does worm its way inside your head - but more or less meaningless. it does work as a hook, though, and the rest of the lyrics are fairly pointed. 

  The overall message of the song - that people (specifically women) should be less concerned with their weight and physical appearance - is unquestionably a good one (provided they do not become unhealthily overweight, of course), but Trainor does fall into the all-too-common trap of countering the media-fuelled obsession with being thin with an overt sexualisation of women's bodies which, to me, rather misses the point. Surely it should be possible to encourage women to care less about their dress size and attack the misogynistic culture of women as sex objects? Evidently not.

  Still, at least the artist actually had a hand in writing the lyrics, and the instruments were all played by the track's producer and co-writer (Kevin Kadish), making a refreshing change from the usual assembly-line construction of pop tracks. Overall, it could have been a lot worse and I'm glad that the no. 1 spot is filled by something which at least has a message to it.

No. 2: Bang Bang - Jessie J, Ariana Grande & Nicki Minaj

  The video is more or less the polar opposite of Trainor's offering, glorifying the so-called 'beauty' enshrined in being super-thin. It is characteristic of the general dichotomy of the modern world that these two tracks can both be at the top of the charts at once. The hook is undeniably well-crafted to be as catchy as possible, but the lyrics are more or less uninspired - the singers desire to copulate with an unnamed fourth party. There isn't anything more to it than that.

  The track is carried by Jessie J (real name Jessie Cornish)'s voice - it is, I have to admit, strikingly powerful, if ill-used. Grande's, meanwhile, is nothing more than mediocre (even with a generous helping of autotuning) and why Cornish chose to include Nicki Minaj - possibly the worst rapper currently in existence - in this project is beyond me. If the abysmal rap segment were to be removed, the R&B-influenced pop tune which would be left would be passable. As it is, my poor ears urge me never to listen to it again, and I think I shall acquiesce.

No. 3: Shake if Off - Taylor Swift

  Aptly named.

  Yes, the lyrics are repetitive and I think that if I ever here the words 'I shake it off' again I might cry, but the sentiment is at least admirable - sod the bastards, I'll do what I want. A welcome departure from whinging about her ex-boyfriends, it must be said, though the musical style chosen is something of a step in the wrong direction. Swift is an artist for whom I have previously had very little respect, but this latest offering - when boiled down to its key message - is something I can at least relate to. Now, stick some guitars in the background, swap that trombone for a saxophone and ramp up the percussion a few notches and I can feel a bit of a ska-punk classic in the offing. No? Perhaps not. In any case, its a marked improvement on the last one, but my faith in humanity has not yet been completely restored.

No. 4: Changing - Sigma feat. Paloma Faith

  This is more of a Paloma Faith featuring Sigma track, to be honest. It's been a while since I heard a proper drum 'n' bass track - dubstep, house and trap seem more the go-to dance genres these days - and frankly, this isn't it. Faith's vocals are soulful and quite strong, but that's the problem - the actual drum 'n' bass element of the song is completely overwhelmed. This is no Propane Nightmares - but then, Sigma are no Pendulum. Not even close. If you want drum 'n' bass, give In Silico a listen. If it's dance music in general, The Prodigy exist for heaven's sake! 

  Take this as a Paloma Faith soul ballad, and it's just a fairly mediocre song by a slightly-above-average singer, devoid of much meaning or lyrical depth. Take it as a drum 'n' bass record, and it's not even worth your time.

No. 5: Blame - Calvin Harris feat. John Newman

  Pretty standard electronic dance fare. You could certainly dance to it, and if that's all we're looking for in what is admittedly a dance track, we can leave it there. However, I like a little more in a song - I've moshed to Cry For the Indians, but that also has a powerful message of its own, so why can't I dance to a track which has one? Blame certainly doesn't - while Newman's vocals are passable, the lyrics are dull and repetitive, and don't really gel with the upbeat tempo of the music. 

  

  There we go, all done! That was a long five songs, but an interesting experience. From this little experiment, I think we can gather three things: One, that pop music can have a message, but that it all too frequently doesn't; Two, that overall the charts aren't entirely devoid of musical talent - just mostly; and Three, that now Queen have come on Spotify and I feel much, much better.

It's All About the Money

  A few days ago, Avril Lavigne - pop-rock superstar extraordinaire - held a meet-and-greet event at the end of a concert in Sao Paulo. Photos were taken, in which Lavigne apparently refused to physically touch any of her fans. The results were rather awkward, as can be seen here on the right, and produced a huge outpouring of scorn.

  Now, it has since been pointed out that Lavigne's decision not to enter into physical contact with her fans was likely a result of an incident which took place the last time she was in Brazil, when a fan assaulted her, and was probably a security decision rather than a personal preference. This, taken alongside the fact that some photos do actually show her in much closer proximity to her adoring fans, means that the entire affair is pretty much a non-issue. 

  Besides, it's her body - she can do what she damn well likes with it! Would YOU want to hug a bunch of random strangers after they've been dancing sweatily in a packed concert hall for hours? I thought not.

  No, Lavigne's critics are focusing on entirely the wrong thing. Rather than fussing over her apparent reticence in the hugging department, they should be targeting by far the more nefarious element to this little bit of sensationalism - namely, the price tag. Heh. Price tag. D'you see what I did there? Y'know, the title...

  I disgust myself. The point is, this little photo opportunity cost the fans in question 800 Reals apiece - that's about $360, or £212. This is a staggeringly huge amount of money for what is essentially a snap of an already filthy-rich pop star with a photo of yourself superimposed on top. You can do this kind of thing on Photoshop in ten minutes, for goodness' sake. It is an exorbitant cost - daylight robbery, in a country where the GDP per capita is about £7,400. 

  People are clearly willing to pay big money for the chance to be seen with their idols, and that is a fact exploited by the music industry for huge profits. I'm not necessarily making a judgment on Lavigne herself - for all I know, it's a record company thing and she's just as disgusted by it as I am - but this particular event serves as a topical case study in a far greater problem; a symptom of a wider disease within the industry. Sadly,  in the twenty-first century making music really does seem to be all about the money.

  This is by no means a new phenomenon - since the late nineteenth century and the development of recorded music, the industry has been out to earn cash. And that's fine, up to a point - artists and record producers have to live, and the minuscule slice of overall takings from the fruits of their labours which the average recording artist takes home means that CD prices and the like have to be high. I accept that. No problem. Fine.

  I'll even swallow the mass merchandising campaigns which seem to accompany every new album launch, tour or festival appearance these days. I'm as much of a fan of a band T-shirt as the next evolved ape, and - let's be honest - there is something about a Green Day foam finger which speaks to the best of us. These things are useful, generally quite well-made and the added price which is a result of their branding is a price worth paying to not have to live life as a walking advert for Topshop, Superdry, Primark or some other dreary corporate machine which is your only real alternative. 

  But is is the extension of this same corporate machine into the realms of simply meeting a singer where I must draw the line. The idea that you can pay money for the privilege of talking to a person for a few minutes, or for grabbing a quick photograph, is just madness. Artists are just people - why do we cough up huge quantities of cash just to have a chat? It's not just the talentless, capitalist shells also known as pop singers which have fallen into this darkness either - I went to a Bullet for my Valentine concert last December in which you could pay to meet the band. You expect it from the likes of Jessie J, Rihanna, or even Avril Lavigne for that matter - but Bullet for my Valentine? How the mighty have fallen. It'll be Black Flag and Rise Against next. Mind you, when Johnny Rotten's advertised Country Life and Iggy Pop's done car insurance, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised...

  It's sad, really, in every sense of the word. I have no objection to artists making money from their work, even decent money, but when a record company turns a musician or band into just another corporate money-generating machine, it really does make me wonder what happened to the notion of artistic integrity. I hope all of you have the moral - or, at the very least, financial - sense not to waste your hard-earned cash on this kind of nonsense.

  I'm off to listen to some Anti-Flag to make myself feel better. 

Crazy Diamonds

  Three days ago, the internet exploded with testimonials and tributes to the late, great paragon of rock music virtue - which, of course, means vice by anyone else's standards - that was Kurt Cobain. 

  This man, who took his own life at the age of just twenty-seven, was an inspiration to many of contemporary rock's greatest stars. Bands of the size and stature of Muse, Blink-182, Nickelback (come on guys, their early stuff was post-grunge, don't be like that) and, of course, the Foo Fighters draw huge inspiration from the Aberdeen-born singer-songwriter. The King of Grunge will be remembered forever as a legend of the rock world, and rightly so.

  As I write this, I am listening to the album Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Whilst this record didn't claim the sales figures of Dark Side of the Moon or spawn a feature film like The Wall, I personally think it represents the pinnacle of the band's musical achievement - and so do Richard Wright and David Gilmour, so that's all right. 

  The reason I mention this is because this album draws heavily on the theme of loss, specifically the loss of the band's original lead singer Syd Barrett whose drug addictions had accelerated a mental decline which left him unable to make the music which had driven him so much in his early years. Barrett died in 2006, aged 60, 38 years after leaving the band. Death, when it came, was probably more of a release than anything else.

  Two stars of rock music, born twenty years apart, who lead such similar lives in their early years, but whose fates were so ultimately different. To use Cobain's own words, one burned out, the other faded away.

  The loss of both men was tragic, but in a different way. The brief, fiery career of Kurt Cobain was cut short untimely by his struggles with depression and heroin addiction, depriving the world of surely many more outpourings of musical genius to come. Barrett, meanwhile, destroyed his own, already unstable mind so completely with LSD and a lethal cocktail of other drugs that his career simply melted away - the masterwork of the Floyd's early material giving way to weak efforts to replicate his early success, and then to nothing as he locked himself away from the world. 

  Which is a better way to go? I can't help but feel Cobain's exit was by far the better. The spectre of a fate like Barrett's ahead of him - failure, decline, seclusion and ultimately a withering away - it is not hard to see how the grunge pioneer reached the conclusion he did. And, perhaps as a direct result, Cobain's name lives on, world-famous, while Barrett's - sadly - remains known only to a decreasing few.

  I'm not entirely certain whether this post has a point. I'm not convinced it really needs to. But if there is a moral to the story, as it were, then it's this: we should remember Cobain and Barrett equally, as men whose lives were taken from them before their time, and whose careers as exceptional musicians were curtailed long before they could fulfill their potential. Remember both their names - for they were two of the best of us. And they both deserve it.

  But most of all, remember this: Shine on, all you crazy diamonds. 

Where Have All the Rockers Gone?

  Check the BBC's official charts. Go on. I dare you.

  Depressing, isn't it? When the most rock 'n' roll track in the Top 40 is by Imagine Dragons, of all people, you know something is deeply, deeply wrong. Radio stations consistently ignore rock music in favour of the latest teenage pop ballads, hip-hop of a standard that would make MCA turn in his grave and that most terrible of all noises - I won't call  it music - DUBSTEP.......

  Oh dear....

  That being the case, your average listener could be forgiven for thinking that rock 'n' roll was, indeed, dead - or at the very least, on its way out. Nothing, though, could be further from the truth. One only has to look at the Top 40 albums chart to see that the odd rock band is still managing serious commercial success. British pop punks You Me At Six have claimed the top spot with their latest offering, Cavalier Youth, and other rock artists are scattered down the length of the list. This is all well and good - but where's the airplay? Non-existent, for the most part - unless, like me, you only listen to Planet Rock and the occasional lapse into Absolute Radio for those areas where digital cannot be had. We need more of this already-popular rock 'n' roll on the radio - if only to counterbalance the mindless warbling of Taylor Swift and her army of clones.

  And another thing: Where's all the metal gone? Encouraging though the presence of You Me At Six and the Killers in the Top 40 Albums chart is, both bands fall decidedly into the poppier end of the rock spectrum. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course - I'm fond of both bands - but this ignores the legions of hard rock and heavy metal bands out there, many struggling to make a name for themselves. I see Of Mice and Men have managed to creep onto the charts, but that's about your lot - and I was never a fan of theirs anyway, if I'm honest. The popular explosion of Heaven's Basement's Filthy Empire this time last year shows there is a demand for the heavier brands of rock music, but - that phenomenon aside - the presence of such hard rockers is next to nothing on any kind of mainstream radio. Not good enough.

  You might say: Who cares? After all, rockers like myself can just listen to specialist radio stations, and let everyone else get by with their own music. To this I say: No! Simply put, rock music is one of the most powerful forms of expression available to people today - particularly the young. Whilst I'm certainly not going to say that the likes of One Direction don't occasionally strike an emotional chord with their fans, the basic reality is that they are corporate shells, propped up by the massed power of the record companies and with limited actual talent. They've done very well for themselves, and good luck to them, but think about it - in thirty years' time, will anyone know their names? Hell, I don't know them now!

  Rock music is an art form quite unlike any other, and whilst I would not like to say that rock is objectively a better genre than any other (okay, that's a lie - I would like to, but I won't, because music is inherently subjective) it cannot be denied that it has artistic merit at least equivalent to anything else on the radio. So, why is it mysteriously absent? Again, it's that damned massed corporate power behind Rihanna, Justin Bieber, the Black Eyed Peas and the like. The big companies push them, because that kind of music is easy to produce, factory-line style, and distribute to the masses in record  numbers (pun intended). I'm not denying that there is some artistic merit in some chart music, some of the time. I just think we deserve better than the same repackaged, plastic singers with their radio-friendly unit shifters, day in, day out. It doesn't necessarily have to be rock 'n' roll, but a little wouldn't hurt, now would it?

  I will not rest until I see toddlers in Slayer T-Shirts and ten-year-old girls buying Metallica represses on vinyl from HMV. Rock 'n roll will never die!