I’m not really a “pop music” kind of guy. I’ve never listened to the radio regularly. I stopped watching MTV when I was sixteen. So I’m not quite the key market of the music industry.
But it dawned on me at a wedding I attended this weekend that they’re failing in an important respect: namely, to properly market and differentiate their products. It is “popular” music after all. The entire idea is that everybody owns this stuff and knows what it is, that it’s completely inescapable.
Yet this wedding was filled almost entirely with recent pop music and I realized that in a lot of cases, these are songs I’d heard about, and heard in a sonic wallpaper kind of way at the drugstore or in elevators, but I’d never actually heard as “this is this performer and this is their song.”
Part of that is, I learned, the sheer breakdown of the music industry’s marketing apparatus. Music videos are now expensive attempts at viral videos. Radio is falling apart like a rotting corpse — in major markets, it’s so bad that oldies stations can’t even stay on the air.
And apparently there is literally nothing to replace this as I learned the next day. I was going to go online, find all this music in one place, spend the forty bucks, and finally get at least somewhat up to speed with modern pop culture, dammit!
Except the music industry essentially makes this impossible by failing at basic marketing. I knew it was bad — I cover this industry screwing up all the time — but the depth of how broken their marketing apparatus is is frankly kind of shocking.
Here’s an example: go to Vevo, the music industry’s accepted YouTube channel, and you will find precisely zero videos from the current Top 40 on the front page. Really?! An intern can run a YouTube Top 40 playlist. Instead it’s a tangled mess of genre pages and “recommendations”.
Amazon had the same problem. Granted the site is built around user recommendations and pushing what sells the most, but that’s driven by prices more than popularity. If you’re wondering why Adele keeps hitting number one, check the price of her album at Amazon.
iTunes at least has a Top 40 section but it’s not exactly prominent in the store and it doesn’t seem to be updated in real time, which you’d think would be a stipulation by record labels. It was there that I finally found a “buy-all” option…buried behind about three pages worth of clicking.
In other words, I asked the music industry for the most basic demand in the world: give me your most popular products to buy in a convenient way at a fair price — and they failed. They not only failed, they failed miserably.
It makes me wonder: how many people are just like me? And how much money does the music industry lose by failing to put its most popular songs forward on the internet?
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I’m in the same boat as you. I have XM radio in my car, but find myself listening to the stand up comedy station the most BY FAR, followed by the alternative station in a distant second. I buy new music occasionally but it’s mostly singles from a random snap shot of bands. I realized about two years ago that I don’t even have new favorite band… I don’t buy and listen to whole albums anymore (except Adele… but that was a rarity). My husband works in an office and is forced to listen to “pop” all day. He’s heard of songs and bands that are ‘popular’ that I’ve never even heard the chorus to before. I’m glad to see someone else is in the same kind of music no-mans-land as I am. And in undergrad I couldn’t go an hour without it… now it’s just… stranger.
You’re over 25 aren’t you?
That’s the cut off for giving a crap (ie: purchasing) music.
/ducks.
I’m exactly 25 hahaha. My music obsession slowed down significantly when my college shut down the free file ‘sharer” DC++ and allowed some kids to get sued up the butt… I just don’t have the energy to listen through the crap or surf iTunes for songs I MAY like…
Hey, Daisuke, that’s completely unfair. And I don’t say that because I’m 30. I say that because if anything I’m more hip now than I was at 25.
Note that this is not really saying much.
The industry is terrible at actually integrating with the customers, and it sure doesn’t help that there is a pretty rapid influx of “indie” music making it big right now. For example, four of the artists on the Top 40 came to fame by making their own music and putting it on YouTube (Bieber, Jepsen, Owl City, Karmin). Others had been playing in other areas and stations for a while, and just got a big hit that propels them to the charts and therefore more influence in pop music (Neon Trees, Fun., Elle Goulding) without the likelihood that they have a creepy, mustachioed industry handler hanging out over their shoulder.
The music industry has to deal with the fact they’re basically in an inversion of the current movie mainstream – they have less and less “tentpoles” that they can throw money at, and the indie acts are more and more likely to circumvent their aging system to do it on their own, and leave the industry a step behind in the process.
Basically, they can’t control their own court. If someone like David Guetta or Flo Rida got the “do it our way or you’ll never play in this town again!” ultimatum, they’d shrug it off, continue to pump out club hits, and watch the labels come crawling back in 6 months.
The end result is that the industry is so far behind the times in terms of web integration that it’s an actual deterrent to the people who could help them catch up. What incentive is there to help an entity that wants to suppress the internet which you are “good at”?
Whoa. Great reply.
Seconded, and some excellent points there.
I can do okay when I’m not making terrible jokes in the Filmdrunk comments, it’s true.
Two thoughts:
1) This is why I miss Casey Kasem’s countdown. Are there or have there ever been other radio programs like it? I miss having that friendly “guide” to explain who the artists are and why I should care about them. Give me a syndicated radio program like that updated for today’s media with a free online streaming version.
2) Get Spotify. It will change your (music-consuming) life. I pay $10/month for the premium version which includes the mobile app. It’s a Netflix-like experience for music that lets you listen to (almost) anything/everything you want, including brand new stuff. The free add-on apps are also amazing, like TuneWiki (turns Spotify into Karaoke!), Mood Agent, We Are Hunted, Last.FM scrobbling & many more. Granted, Spotify isn’t perfect and it’s not the end-all-be-all of music services, especially if you are into a lot of obscure music, but it IS worth the premium price if you just want to listen to whatever you want without having to commit to an album purchase and want to be in the know about the latest, hottest music. I can easily spend hours just skipping around from artist to artist, streaming songs from their discography and making playlists as I go, discovering new stuff I like.
Sorry, I’ll stop evangelizing now!
I refuse to use Spotify on the grounds that it’s integrated with Facebook. I will not pay Spotify ten bucks a month for the privilege of having Facebook’s ad munchkins browse my music history and put up more terribly mistargeted ads for me to ignore.
@Dan – It’s only integrated with Facebook if you opt to connect it to your Facebook account. You’re not forced to do that.
I agree with shezcrafti re: Casey Kasem…if my “meat friends” (opposite of FB friends) recommend something I will check it out BUT I love hearing a smart radio DJ that talks to me about the song, singer and context for a couple of seconds before playing next song. All service require me to read background…Hey, I’m working or driving I can’t read…Boy I miss quality (non-shock jock) DJ’s.
What little radio I listen to nowadays is NPR. “Pop” radio is a wasteland of auto-tuned garbage that all sounds the same, and dont even get me started on the loudness wars. It also tickles me that both of those assertions are now backed up by science:[www.independent.co.uk]
When I lived in San Diego they had the best indie radio station ever (94.9). Otherwise Pandora does it for me and I happily pay the 30 bucks a year to a) support them as a business and b) no ads for 30 bucks a year? Cool beans. And as always, the oatmeal delivers:[theoatmeal.com]