Product (Part 2)

Jonny Brick continues his exploration into how far music consumption has changed since the 1950s

With the advent of cheap recording facilities, the last twenty years have certainly democratised the process of making and then distributing your music. Recordable CDs, larger home processing units, the MySpace mp3 era and, latterly, the click-to-buy legitimised downloading of services like iTunes have led many to call today the Golden Age for music consumption. Hence the desire, stated in the first part of this piece, for individual acts to strive for innovation not only in the music itself but the point-to-point delivery methods. It is no longer a case of ‘getting it on the radio’ or ‘putting it into stores’. With unlimited storage and listening space, savvier methods should be adopted.

Many Nostalgia Music users will be avid consumers of music of every genre, mavens who flutter from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello to Elvis Ain’t Dead by Scouting for Girls, a popular current British band who have had their addictive songs played on commercial and state-run radio stations. Around the world, radio stations have to compete with the Internet by offering exclusive prizes including meet-and-greets with artists whose songs are staples of their playlist, and by making the music that comes between the adverts that fund the station very much of one genre so as not to scare off the ‘target listener’.

Streaming and subscription services such as Last.fm, Pandora and Spotify give a music fan inordinate choice. Where once there were listening booths in record stores (many of which are now out of business or struggling with rent prices and stock overspill), there are now free previews of albums from big acts who make their money through merchandise sales and global tours, as well as reissues of their back catalogues, an increasingly common practice. Though acts such as The Police did make a name for themselves with long tours and gripping live shows, performers and composers of music made their way before the rock era by going out there and putting on a show for a demanding public. There was simply no other choice.

Despite the internet culture offering their music for free all the time, acts in the Digital Era launch perfumes, clothing ranges and charitable foundations to maximise the public awareness of the brand and make a return on the record company’s investment into what ought to be their primary product. Rihanna becomes equivalent to The New York Yankees, Adele to Adidas, as the product which is offered is less about the sound and more about the look and the lifestyle choice attached to it. Idols emerge, who are strong in adversity, in motherhood or in their advancing old age, and they develop a career arc whose lives are reflected in the songs they sing. They are recording artists, after all, and art is often reflective of life in a way relatable to the listener. Perhaps the confessional songwriting styles of the Recording Era has helped keep that way of writing in some contemporary, mostly female, Digital Era acts.

Throughout all the sociology and marketing studies that hardly existed before The Beatles stood on a stage in 1963 to wow a waiting world, the universal blankets of fun and a shared good time remain. People share music today through online links and playlists of music already available in a cloud; in past years there were mixtapes cut with care. School playgrounds and public green spaces still hum and thrum to pop music, but they now blare from mobile phones as well as mass singalongs, docking speakers of mp3 players and laptops as well as chants that Gary Glitter first chanted.

Older music fans increasingly want to share that enjoyment of flippant curios, the conjoined ‘aww’ similar to the one induced at an And, Finally news piece, and renew their childhood enthusiasm for pop music and culture. In a modern environment where to miss something is to miss out on conversational currency, it pays to be In The Know about the latest films and TV shows, the football results and the mindless reality shows. Funnily, music has infiltrated all of these to act as a soundtrack, and the practice of ‘syncing’ music and image is both lucrative and essential, be it for goals highlights, to emphasise a character’s mind state and mood, or to give pathos or portent to a set piece in a new thriller.

 

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