Why music lost value.

 It seems like we need to know what value things have. Salt had huge value in the middle ages. Today you can buy salt pretty cheap. Things that used to have value might lose it. That is how to look at recordings. Just thirty years ago recording was expensive. You needed quite much financial backup to do a record of a lot of money involved. And then you also thought twice what to record.

Today I could just go down to the local electronic store buy a kind of cheap microphone (or just take the microphone that is built in a laptop) and just record a song. And then just put it on any social media channel in seconds, and even get it out on Spotify in 24 hours.

The problem here is that many think that the value of that recording is the same as the recordings of The Beatles on Abby Road. It’s not. Technology has given us to have better equipment to record then The Beatles had just dreamt about when they recorded on Abby Road. With that came though the price that everyone thinks they can write a song like “Yesterday”.

Since the price is so low to produce things then the value of the product also sinks. But there is a problem with music. The recording is just part of the product. There is a difference in skills to write songs. Skills of writing lyrics. To be honest “Yesterday” is still a great song even if I would mistreat it in a recording with a mic on my laptop. Also, I believe that the Beatles would record the song great through the mic of my laptop.

My recording though doesn’t have much value, only as proof of that, I should not be recording Beatles songs. But the recording of “Yesterday” original is worth millions.

Just because you have created something it’s not worth the money you think it’s worth. The value is decided on how many people that is prepared to pay for it. Today also the time, money, and effort that is put in behind a song are many times a lot less then it was 25 years ago. The whole process has made that music has lost value.

No, it won’t be better if people started to put time and effort into the songs. Today’s climate demand that we should give out music at a fast speed. The artist that tries to do real songs is in jeopardy that they are forgotten between the releases.

Are they? I’m not sure I think it’s time to stop listening to social media. It’s time to invest in songs and taking back the old saying “writing is rewriting”

With good technology, we can do cheaper recordings, but we still have to do the handicraft of a good song. A good song holds off on a bad recording a good song is not holding up on a super good recording. If music wants to get back it’s the value we need to create things that have value.

The production capitalism is destroying the artist!

 We all know that we are consuming too much for the planet we have. A third of all food we produce is thrown away as waste. That is 50 000kg or 110231lb a second thrown away as waste in the world and as Greta Thunberg has pointed out it’s not sustainable.

In an interview not long ago Marcus Ek from Spotify told that artists need to release more content when he the question that Spotify paid out to low to artists.

I just feel that we are doing the same stupid mistake in the music business as we do in the food consumption. The new streaming economy is just one click and then forget. Same as the food we produce a mountain of apples so you can have one. The same here we produce a mountain of songs for you to listen to one. Of course, this will affect the quality. To be able to produce a mountain you start to give fertilizer to the project, and you need everything to grow faster. Yes, you will get a decent product but it is not that perfect product that you had before.

During the pandemic now people suddenly got more time to grow their own things. Even I bought a greenhouse and now the harvest comes. Yes, my slow grown tomatoes, cucumber, and chilies taste much more and better than the ones I buy in the supermarket. Probably also that I put in quite much love into growing these vegetables. I have been out there every day watering and cutting off bad leaves and stuff. The end result is better then if just had grown a thing in less nutrient soil and just gone for fertilizer to grow it fast to just consume it.

It feels as the new space for creating music are more and more going this way. But why is that necessary? Easy the music that you create and produce is driving the systems. You are not an art creator you are a content creator. We if we stopped feeding posts on Facebook and Instagram. Stopped put up videos on Youtube and TikTok and music and pods on Spotify. They won’t exist. They need all people to give them free content.

Also, they are feeding on you in a very strange way. If you have a fan base on these sites. They only let around 10% of these fans see that you have released a new song in the mountain of songs the expect you to produce. If you should reach more you need to pay. Funny thing it’s like the apple producer to grow the apples then after that when they sold 10 apples has to pay extra fees to sell more apples. At the end that just leaves you to produce with less quality or just leave the whole thing since you won’t be proud of what you produce.

Question, do you really need these sites? In a way yes streaming music is around 25% of the economy of the music industry. The live side though has been 50%. We don’t know what happens after the pandemic. But I can easily say that music won’t die and the live scene won’t be replaced by streaming content. We have a great opportunity to build up the new live industry, so it benefits the artist that just release every third year. The ones that want slow quality music should have a chance here to perform quality art. the ones that want to leave the hamster wheel of social media.

We know for sure that even if you have millions of Spotify streams don’t mean that you will draw thousands of people to the concert. Almost the opposite around. We can easily see that the mass consumption of music in just the form of a post on social media is just fun for the audience in a couple of seconds. A concert is something that contains fun for hours. You might meet up with good friends before.  You go out and eat and then go and listen to quality music. That might be a whole evening to sustain your mind. Not just ten seconds click.

I have a good hunch that the stress and mental illness around the music community have two things. One is that we start talking about it. Witch is really great. The other is that stress of making content for a non-stoppable social media. I start though to see artists that more or less leave the race. And I think they are right. I don’t need a post from my favorite artist every day. But I need a function so when you release a song, I would be certain to see that post. Yes, that could be done by social media sites. Or I would love to get the knowledge that you play live close where I am so I can see your performance. We need that kind of system too.

I guess this will never happen. We just have to look at how we restart the live industry and start to build it so the artists can have a chance to write and record quality music and have time to rehearse a great live show. My mind needs more of that quality, the same with this planet. We need more sustainable plans.

The Future

 It’s a very uncertain world we live in right now. On one hand, the music industry feels so far away right now. It’s summer and no shows and more or less no releases. At the same time, the whole machinery is going on under the surface. Negotiations with new clubs, festivals, and other outlets. The difference is that you might now if it will happen the dates you are talking about. It will happen, just witch time?

I guess it is all one's death other one's bread. I just got several jobs during this crisis. Probably because people that didn’t make it want over to another business. I guess this is the time where we see who has to be on the stage as a living and who are just there because they think it’s a fun hobby that they just keep up.

The changes will be quite severe. And in many cases in unfavoured for an established big artist that is not in the top 50. Many that are semi-famous or live out of an old career will find themselves in a totally new world. A world that changes in a much more rapid way then we are used to.

Just a simple thing like the American election can change quite much. If Donald Trump gets re-elected. My guess the country will go deeper in the rabbit hole it’s already in. More debts and now with the crises in full swing and china that are in a position to market shares. What would that have for the music industry? Quite an easy choice USA would be the last market to enter. The restrictions would hold on longer and the crisis will prevail and be quite uninteresting to invest money in a career there. Instead, we would go for more secure territories to start invest in.

But USA has the infrastructure you say? Not even developing areas are more interesting since the whole infrastructure is crashed we all have to start all over again.

What happens if Joe Biden becomes president? Then you have a guy that is forced to clean up the mess the former president made. At the same time probably release quite many rescue packages which will tear on the economy. The result is almost the same. It will be kind of hard to invest in USA on a new artist career.

In Sweden we have a saying that however, you turn you always have your ass in the back. Already now I’m looking at witch new territories that are waking up first and also give the money in a smart way to build up a new infrastructure for the live industry. There is where the money will be. That music dies is not even an option. It just will develop but not in the areas we might be used to. 

Don’t even get me started with UK that just left EU and now has to handle the crisis as just one country.

The only good thing about this is that these changes will open up so many new opportunities. The question are you connected enough to grab these opportunities?

Social media might not be the way for an artist.

I have seen some really smart new things that bigger artists are doing. They just quit the social media frenzy that is going on. I can really see this breaking through in the lifestyle after the pandemic.

As it has been for the past ten years record labels and managers and others have told artists that they should own their fans and a lot of the success has been how many followers you have on different social media accounts. Right now it seems like all the bigger labels have a race to pick up things form TikTok. It has been this way in all parts of the music industry except the live scene.

Why not the live scene. It is here the falseness of social media is shining through. Take an easy example. In the takeout of the Eurovision song contest in Sweden, they started to invite influencers that had music into their social media channels. They hoped that the influencers with their massive accounts could get more viewers to the TV show. Since Eurovision in Sweden has the votes from the audience many artists became nervous to get up against these massive social media account since these people could just send a message and get a lot of people to vote for their song. Over a period of three years, they tried to get these influencers in. None of them even went to the final. Usually beaten by a new artist with no social media followers at all when they entered the stage.

Another thing is also that stars that have a big following also are beaten by a smaller artist with fewer followers. You can fast conclude that the following on social media doesn’t really matter in these cases. It’s still about the performance and the song. People in social media really don't care to vote or do things for artists. They just follow for the posts not for the art they are making.

Same phenomena when a friend of mine signed the third biggest Youtuber in Sweden to his company and started to release music. Yes, the first single became a media frenzy that this Youtube would release music. So many went in and took a listen to it and today it has a bit over five million streams on Spotify. The second single, then people knew that he was releasing music. But with over a million viewers on his channel each mouth my friend calculated that people would still listen. Today that has two million streams. The third single has today just 20 000 streams. My friend, later on, singed more Youtubers but came to the conclusion that the first is always going well, the next will have fifty percent then the first one, then the third will have half of the half. In the end, if they release things they more or less go backward then a normal artist that gains fans on each release.

This was influencers though that did something else and then was given songs. We see the same though on artists that are artists in their channels on the live side. Artists with millions of followers that are praised for their music won’t sell any live tickets. Many of the booking agency went into that trap in the beginning. Now it’s almost like a bad word telling people that they have a good social media account. The only thing the booker looks at is the ticket sales from the last concert in that area. same here people liked the songs in the posts but wouldn't see them live. It's two different media situations.

I get the feeling that influencers are more or fewer artists in their own field. A bit like in the 80:s when either artist would do an acting career that never went off, or the opposite when actors should do an artist career. They were good at their field, stick to it. Same here stick on to what you good at.

Of course you need to use your social media. When you release something it’s a good way to spread the word. The problem is when you start to use the account like the influencers. Suddenly you are more busy making updates then doing music. Your fans will read more about your cat and what you ate for breakfast then what they really came to know about you. My feeling is that also all this posting makes the stress level on the artist really high. In the long run, it prevents the artist's top focus to write a really good song. In the middle of your inspiration ( what happen to me right now) is that your phone makes a beep and you pick it up to see the latest message or point these systems give out. And gone is the inspiration!

My guess right now is that a real artist must make a choice. Are you communicating with music and songs, then social media should not be acted out as a big influencer account! If you are communicating through an account and people like it that way, well you are then an influencer, not an artist. And not just that you find a good producer and songwriter to co-lab with makes you an artist. Don Johnson is still just and acter though he wanted to be a rock star.

The problem in the industry has been that the live side hasn’t had a major changeover in the past 50 years. Now we see the big leap and in that leap, my guess is that your live performance will be more crucial than ever. You will not have time to make corrected posts. Instead, you need to be great at writing songs and perform them in an amazing way for a real live audience. The changes in the live industry will be with new venues, new networks and that will be a career of its own, With or without social media number.

I put a lot of hope on my musician friends

I actually had the time to clean out the old shed that or on our backyard. That is the last thing you really cleanout. I can’t even remember if I have ever cleaned it out since we moved here thirteen years ago.

I also had time to sort out my comic book collection and put the ones with value in plastic sheets. You know when you have time to do things like this you really have too much time on your hands. Lockdown was not fun, but right now my house looks as best as it ever did, I even had time to build my greenhouse.

But now I feel the time really has gone too far. I have my projects rolling, many though standstill because of the holidays. I finally feel kind of bored. I was thinking to myself, why do I feel bored? You have all these small projects that never end, and you are not in stress. First, I could not pinpoint what it was. Then it hit me.

I am not exposed to any new music. With the whole thing of Corona, I have been less and less exposed to new music. No, I don’t sit on any digital channel and flipping through songs just to find something new. It’s too much crap music for doing this. Instead, I have been listing to music that already knows. After been listing to that, I feel tweel I have heard this so I’m fine with it and started to cut down with listening without thinking about it. I just checked for the past week I haven’t listen to music at all. I have done some playlisting on the radio station, but that has just been old hits that I knew from before. So not just that I’m not exposed to new music I’m really not listening to music anyway.

And with the new numbers that come out from different places you can see that I’m not alone on this phenomenon It seems most people are getting off from the music. It’s not that they feel like they can enjoy the silence. My guess is that music is something you on a large scale do together. No party music since you are in lockdown and don’t really have any parties. You don’t put on party music with yourself. Same with concerts and other things the music is where you gather people, not so much alone.

I see many of my friends has turned over to audiobooks. They had a lot of time listening to books they haven’t got time for before. Same here you would never go to a party and listen to an audiobook that is something you do when you are alone.

But now I feel empty. I have done the things that I was behind with. Now I want to get exposed to new music. Sure, there is a lot of showcase festivals that are online. But to tell the truth, see live streaming by myself is not an option to bury this empty feeling. We just must wait until the world is ready again. Then I will meet all my friends and indulge in some new great music. I just hope my musician’s friends have prepared a lot of it during this time. I put a lot of hope to them.

The Tik Tok death

Another clickbait headlines. Yes, I have been experimenting with things like that. But the whole new world that we see after Corona starts to be interesting.

I'm in a secret forum with other people in the music industry and there the chatter right now is much how low Spotify still is in their payment per stream. At the same time, Spotify just launched that you could have one account for two people to the price of one. That will not get more money into Spotify to raise the other. And as many had said the streams are going down during the crisis since people have stopped listening to music to work and from work, since they’re not traveling that much.

The other thing I have seen a lot is how the major companies have embraced Tik Tok all of them have employed you people that are experts on this new app. We can also see that they are cheating for artists on there. Saw moderate Swedish artists that no one knows about and is average a couple of hundred streams on Spotify (with extra help from the recordable wink wink). Suddenly her American label has put in, so she has over 2 million followers on Tik Tok, though she really has done nothing new. 

Another big label builds special camps for their artist to go and learn from Tik Tok stars and of course make collaborations. And yes Doja Cat is one of the stars that come from this new fun app.

It all feels like okey 2020n is here, let's get rid of the old stuff. Facebook is for old people. I mean people. Instagram is for the hipsters taht think they’re cool but now is actually too old. Twitter is just going down and just alive for celebrities. No, the young generation that you can fill some shit music on is Tik Tok. 

Still, will it come back and bit their ass? Just a few days ago India just banned Tik Tok and a couple of other apps. They said they were dangerous. Instead, it's more to get with the incidents in Himalaya where India and China are not that good friends. Suddenly this app becomes politics. Even Trump considers banning Tik Tok a guarantee that he will have two million small kids in front of the white house threatening to kill his whole generation. And what about that he should close twitter just a couple a weeks ago, has he forgot that?

Now to the point. Okay there no proof that Tik Tok is sending data to China. No proof that Spotify does it either. Neither that Zoom does it. I had a meeting with some Chinese record label people and nothing that secret or and political stuff. Mainly a trading thing with festivals. But all of them declined to have the meeting on Zoom. Instead, they use a whole other app. an old one that I have forgotten but still exists. In my third meeting, I had to ask why they did not go for Zoom. The answer was simple if you talk china does not do it in the chine partly own apps. They will get the data.

I guess right now the big labels are in turmoil and just seek out short-lived careers. Who blames them fast money seems to be the thing! But when they invest so hard in this app and then suddenly it gets band or even the Chinese get the info to use against them. Yes, what can they do against an artist that uses the freedom of speech, yes let them sink or disappear on the channel they have their fans? Or they can use blackmail to tell how the company has cheated or prove fake numbers, even if they are not fake numbers.

Yes, the channels have now become political bats, and that environment and artists should be edgy, good luck with that.

Businesses without new knowledge and network will go under

Imagine that you are going on a hike to climb a high mountain like Mont Blanc. You have got in some cool friends and you have a great team that has a good chance to actually reach the top. All people in the team know what to do and how to do it, they are specialists in their own way. 

Then suddenly your old dad calls you up. By mistake, you had posted on Facebook (only old people use Facebook) that you are about to climb this mountain. Of course, old pap really wants to join in on this climb. In the hight of his career, he claimed mountains. Mont Blanc was one of them. But that is back in the days and the routes he took are not available any longer. You are taking a totally different route. The equipment that is used is different. On top of that old dad is walking with a cane and will just start nagging around things he did over thirty years ago.

Now you face a dilemma. Sure, you want to have your father on there, but you also know that he will just be a burden. He can't really supply anything to the team. This mission also must be fast. It's really not a wonderful vacation. It's a mission that you need to get to that point. He walks slow. The info he got is outdated. Still, you feel a bit like in the song "Cats in the cradle", you have grown up to be just like him.

The problem is just how you break the ice. How you move forward. Whatever your decision is, it will be the wrong one in his eyes. 

Of course, this story has nothing to do with age. It has to do with ability. Sure, with age, there is a lot that changes, and some ability is no longer there. I started in the music industry noticeably young. Right now, I'm standing with one foot in the new world. The world that will be totally new after the Covid 19 crisis. One foot in the old world where many of the people that have been my mentors and my friends will see their enterprises and empires just crumble to ashes.

This would have happened anyway. I know that but this crisis will be a catalyst that will propeller things much faster. Things that would take years now will go in one year. In a panic, I get these "dads" calling me up and want to join in on my next event. What they don't understand is that this has been planned in several months, even before the crisis. Also, some of them were invited but uninterested since they were relying on their empire to just keep doing the same. My project was a bit too small for them. Suddenly my project is a great threat to them.

The fact is that I can only carry people that will bring something for the team on this mountain trip. It's about surviving, and the music industry is not like the Green Beret where no one is left behind. The music industry is much more a jungle. it's eating or be eaten. We can't carry any dead weight on this journey.

But knowledge doesn't weigh anything. No, it doesn't. But old wrong knowledge can lead to the wrong path and is a burden. Sorry to say, but the new network of the music industry was started to be planned already two weeks after shutdown. If you didn't get the invitation or where part in the secret zoom meetings. That is a good indicator you are not in the teams that are now starting to climb. Businesses that were already weak will go under. Businesses without new knowledge and network will also go under. I think it's time for you my friend, to stop pretending that you are a movie star like Harpo sang in your golden age.

Lägg till bildtext