The Ever Narrowing Music Business and It's Effects

The fragmentation of the music business has affected so many areas beyond the major labels, which I don’t think a lot of people realize. There was a posting in Celebrity Access today about the uber-concerts/music festivals. Australian promoters such as Andrew McManus have had to renegotiate deals with agents and managers, McManus for the 54 shows he was to promote. The shrinking markets and sinking Australian dollar account for some of it. "The demise of the dollar has given me basically two hours' sleep for 10 days, working round the clock, dealing with umpteen managers, umpteen number of agents, to try to restructure the whole landscape of each deal to the point where I have actually sacked a number of deals," McManus told the Brisbane Times.
"Either the acts have taken a reduction or I've got rid of them … That's how bleak the whole ****ing thing's been."

For the most part, the record companies were doing us a great favor by narrowing the market. They limited the amount of musical offering each month. With new technology and options like CD Baby and TuneCore, anyone can record music on their laptop and have it up for sale/distribution within days. This completely dilutes the market. With so many choices how do you know what’s good, what you like, etc? There are sites like Sonic Boomers that suggest music they think boomers would like and they do a good job of it. For the most part, you could spend all day trying to keep up with every new act that comes out.

The inexhaustible number of musicians out there, which I think is a major reason for the declining interest in festival shows, really hit me when I looked at the list of bands playing CMJ. Here are the names of the acts I recognized for today’s schedule out of approximately 272 listed:

• Charlie Louvin is 81 years old and he is possibly the Grandfather of alt country
• George Clinton, know as the godfather of funk
• Sam Champion I know them because they are named after the once local and now national weatherman
• It’s Not You It’s Me Took note of their name a few weeks back, have no idea what they sound like
• The Dears Canadian band that has been around for a few years
• Juliana Hatfield Started in the Blake Babies
• Ari Gold I don’t really know this artist, I just know the name as the agent on Entourage.
• Matt Keating was managed by a friend
• KaiserCartel is managed by a friend, but my husband saw their show a few years back and liked them and bought their CD
• Dave Doobinin was on the bill a few times with All Night Chemists
• Coheed & Cambria on Columbia Records. Richard on the Howard Stern show once wet his pants during one of their shows, as he couldn’t tear himself away from the performance to use the bathroom.

Technically I’ve only heard the music of 8 of 272 of them. Not sure if this means I am out of touch or the market is so saturated that it’s impossible to know. It's also quite a statement that 272 bands will be playing in NY tonight and most of it occurs below 14th St and it does not include all the day parties and performances that are not offical. I realize that my expertise is in adult alternative, but that genre has become pretty broad. A musician I know said that CMJ seems like a bunch of MySpace friends coming to NY to play. I don't know that you can fill a stadium or book a festival around a bunch of MySpace friends.