I ran across this quote the other day.
“We live in an age of music for people who don’t like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren’t that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music’s annoying, or at the very least they don’t need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.”
T Bone Burnett
If you don’t know who T Bone Burnett is, you have heard his work, most notably the soundtrack for “Oh, Brother Where Art Though”, which he produced.
The quote seems a little far-fetched but, is it? After all, there are people listening to IPods everywhere; don’t they like music? Music is used to sell every product know to man. Music is used to conjure every emotion in movies. Surely, music is a powerful force, right?
People say that hearing a certain song can take them back in time, help them to re-live a specific occurrence. Does that mean they like that music or, that moment in time when, coincidentally, that music was playing?
Think about this; how many records would Elvis have sold if nobody ever saw what he looked like. Sam Phillips used to say, “If I could find a white man that sounded like a black man I’d make a million dollars”. I think those records Evis did at Sun were great and I think that people would have bought them even if they never saw him on T.V. I also think that he sold way more because people got to see him.
The term “parlor music” comes from when family and friends gathered to play music. That was the entertainment. It was interactive. It had to be something really special to just sit around and listen to; something to, maybe, aspire to.
Now that we have so many options, we want our entertainment to hit us on many levels. While flipping through your 200 channels, how many would stop and listen if you saw one guy playing a cello?
What T Bone is really talking about is the marketing of music. The traditional way is to add something to the music like, a look, make it more of a package. That doesn’t always mean a negative. T Bone stumbled onto a winner himself. “Oh Brother”, sold seven million copies. It’s a great record but who would have even heard it if it wasn’t attached to a great movie.
Musicians are usually poor at self promotion because they naturally tend to concentrate on the music, rather than the add ons that sell it. The music business is falling apart so, more musicians than ever are put in the business of self-promotion.
The good news is there is more great music out there, than people realize. If you are truly a music lover you need to seek out this stuff and support these artists. Don’t wait for someone to sell it to you.
Jayne d'Arcy wrote,
I love “O Brother” and it was probably a year after I came across the song on MTV that I realized there was even a movie attached to it. I’ve forgotten most of the movie, but the song is there in my memories.
Link | March 5th, 2007 at 2:17 am
Stephanie Vann wrote,
I’m inclined to agree with you. A lot of ‘pop’ music in particular is about packaging. Just think of whoever the latest boy or girl band happens to be. Yes, they may be adequate singers, but odds are the group members were all put together by someone in a record company who thought they were photogenic first and foremost. There’s no history between the band members, they haven’t evolved together, and as a result the groups seem to fall apart after a very short space of time. They’re not normally hugely memorable either. It’s kind of bubblegum music. Possibly nice, but short-lived.
Link | March 5th, 2007 at 8:55 am