A few weeks ago my husband (who is also my bandmate/business partner) and I spoke to a group of Cabrillo High School students about the realities of being a musician in 2007. The students were members of a club their English Literature teacher helped form called A.M.P. (Amateur Musicians Project). I was not surprised when the teacher told me that what the kids wanted to know was how to get signed and how to market themselves.
These kids had learned well. They personified the music business of today-- marketing first, music second. They understood all too well the importance of being marketable, but seemed to overlook the importance of creating art, the one thing that gives music real value.
Not long ago, while listening to my music attorney go on about the sad state of the music industry and how hard it was to make it, I had to stop him mid-sentence. "You know," I said, "I appreciate your need as an attorney to be skeptical, cynical even, however, as a musician, I can’t afford to think that way or I would never make music again. I would abandon my art and get a degree or something. You know, do something safe."
The music business is so very frustrating today because it avoids risk, danger or anything that is financially unsound. The problem is (and, yes, I realize this is not rocket science) that great music is risky. It is dangerous and, more often than not, it is financially unsound.
I am all too familiar with the conflict between creating art and creating a product. After all, creating music costs money, and most of us are not independently wealthy. We do not have the ability to sustain art free from the need to generate revenue, and so, the conflict between "pure" art and "commercial" art is inevitable. If we are lucky we end up with a hybrid of the two.
As my husband and I sat in this English Literature class, we discussed our experiences of being indie artists, major label artists and, finally, running our own label. I then became aware of how very much I sounded like my jaded music attorney - expounding the endless farce that is the major label industry, the corruption of major market radio, the endless uphill battle of growing and sustaining a fanbase.
Today, the realities of being a musician are daunting. Both indie and major labels with successful bands are having a hard time generating enough revenue to sustain artists, finance records and support touring on ever-shrinking CD sales. It is really difficult to make enough money to support making music.
There are so many things we can blame for the downturn of profitability in our industry. At the core, though, I think it is the dwindling willingness of people to lose money supporting great art. At some point, the music business turned into the music industry and traded greater profitability for higher art. Greed pushed the economic theory "of what the market will bear" and the industry’s artists and products became overpriced with little or no value at all.
Sitting in this high school classroom in West Long Beach, I found myself asking these kids the same questions I ask myself everyday. With all the pitfalls, obstacles, heartbreaks and disappointments that come along with being a musician, why do you want to make music? What do you want to get out of it? Do you make music because you want to be rich and famous, or do you make music because it is your art? Or, is it a little bit of both?
If we all asked ourselves these questions more often, and if we focused a little more on the music and a little less on the business, perhaps our art form could find the respect it once had. Maybe then we could once again be proud to call ourselves musicians, labels, and managers and aspiring musicians of the future would be as interested in how to make great music as they would be in how best to sell themselves.
2007 © Jamie Sims Coakley
Jamie Sims Coakley is the singer of Waxapples and proprietor of Nadine Records.
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. I'm still hoping for a late addition, but i doubt it...
