The State of the Music Industry

With record sales flogging and viewership down for awards shows like the Grammy's, it leaves one to wonder if they and music charts still relevant.

Once upon a time people bought records, I'm not talking about shiny plastic CDs read by a laser, but rather thick black vinyl that crackled and popped before the needle sunk into the groove and the first riffs began playing your favourite song. And it was your favourite song because it was all they played on the radio. But today the whole world is a juke box.

You hear a song on the radio and boom, seconds later you have a (often illegal) download on your laptop which you immediately transfer to your MP3 player and hit the streets, which are filled with everyone else listening to their MP3 players or iPods or Minidisc players filled with their favourite songs. The whole process takes maybe two minutes. There’s no planning to go to the record shop, there's no lingering for hours talking trash about your buddy's favourite group or shuffling through stacks of records to find that rare treasure or the latest hit single. All the latest hit singles as well as those rare gems are now but a click away.

So with all that simplicity and choice is it any wonder that U2 won record of the year at this year's Grammy's for an album that came out in 2004? That’s two years ago folks. Does that mean that 2005 was a bummer year for music and that as music format technology improves, the music just seems to get worse?

Other than U2, Mariah Carey had a stellar year with her opus "The Emancipation of Mimi' proving there is life after a world class stinker like "Glitter". Since her record came out, hardly a week goes by she isn't up at the top of the heap, often in collaboration with the best artist to emerge this decade, "Featuring". In fact hardly a song is released anymore without Featuring, featuring somewhere in the title.

Kanye West (featuring Jamie Foxx) also stuck gold at the top for many weeks with his unashamedly catchy single (can we still call them singles?). So how come a record such as U2's 'How to dismantle an atomic bomb' despite it apparent brilliance, which produced no chart topping singles, recorded by a group of guys in their forties won record of the year?

Most young people who downloaded U 2's 'Vertigo’ probably don't even realise that this band didn't always do commercials for iPod but in fact were playing music before the invention of the CD, otherwise known as the stone age.

In our fast food world, people want what they want, when they want it. So with all those crappy albums out there is it any wonder people no longer feel inclined to shell out 20 bucks for an album with one good song and 30 minutes of filler?

And if people can click on a button and have instant access to old Temptations songs as well as the latest offering by 50 Cent, how can singles charts remain relevant if the listing does not realistically reflect what people are truly listening to?

In England recently, The Artic Monkeys came out of nowhere to debut on the single's chart at number one with their first two singles, all because of the power of the internet and P2P file sharing. Literally unknown by the industry, their singles floated around the internet for nearly a year. They didn't even have a record deal when 'Bet you look good on the dance floor' tipped the scales at number one.

Recent changes to the Official UK chart have permitted downloads to chart as long as there is a physical product available in stores. Even more modifications this week allow a single to chart based on downloads only for one week before the product is available as a single. But one must remember that the British chart is solely based on sales, not a mixture of sales and airplay as in the US. On top of that, come March a single in the UK will be deleted from the chart once the physical CD single is no longer available, leading one to think this is nothing more than the industry manipulating sales instead of a true ranking of what people are buying and listening to.

Digital downloads are here to stay like it or not. Brand names like iPod have become synonymous with the new expression of freedom. Mixed tapes used to be the optimal way to articulate you musical tastes, now thanks to the internet and all it has to offer, the whole world is a mixed tape. People don't want to be told what to listen to anymore. So with all this music so easily available, how can the CD format survive?

On the rare occasion that I buy a CD these days I barely have it out of the plastic wrap before it is inserted into my hard drive then transferred to my minidisc player where I can shuffle it with the hundreds of other songs I enjoy, leaving the bulky plastic disk to gather dust on my shelf. And judging by the amount of white headphones I see strolling around the streets I'm not the only one to do the same. The CD, like vinyl before it is a product of limitations in a world without limits. Today we can store hours and hours of music on an object the size of a deck of cards and play it in any conceivable order.

Therefore is a Grammy category like ‘Album of the year” on the brink of extinction along with the CD? Organisers of this year's Grammy's show seemed to understand this new musical “mixed tape” trend much more than in the past, by nearly bypassing all the award presentations completely and focusing on what people really want; music and musical variety. Performances were varied and included great mash ups between Madonna and Gorillaz as well as U2 and Mary J. Blige and a stellar all star tribute to Sly and the Family Stone. If there hadn't been the odd commercial and award presentation, the whole show would have come off as a live "playlist".

But change is not always easy. Back in the 1980’s when vinyl records were being phased out in favour of the CD, much hoopla was made that CDs couldn't produce the same kind of cover art their 33rpm cousins could. Now it seems liner notes and cover art or even full length albums aren’t even that important anymore.

At the 2003 American Music Awards, a huge fuss was made over the Britney/Madonna kiss, but does anyone remember which song won top honours? The point being with music, especially pop music being as throwaway as it is today, MP3’s and their Sony and Apple equivalents are the perfect format. In one click a song can be deleted from your playlist and you don't have stacks of plastic collecting dust in the corner of your bedroom.

The music industry must clue into this if it is to survive. Most music fans these days don't loiter for hours in the record shop searching for music but they will spend hours getting tunes off the net. Record companies and music distribution sites must now learn to work together to harmonise this new reality, come up with a universal format (as they did with 33rpms, cassette tapes and CDs) instead of all this confusion over ACC, MP3 and ATRAC, develop emerging artists through this new medium and let consumers decide, just like in the golden days when one could walk into a record shop and check out the Top 40 in 45s.

As for the charts, until they evolve into what they used to be, a reflection of the choices people are making and the music they are listening to, they are completely irrelevant and until record companies think outside their 'jewel box', the whole industry is in peril. Suing a few fans for a couple of illegal downloads is not a solution to anyone's problems.