"Tin-eared, graph-paper brained accountants, instead of music fans, call all the shots at giant record companies now. The lowest common denominator rules. Forget honesty. Forget creativity. The dumbest buy the mostest, that's the name of the game!"
"Without marketing plans, the greatest music in the whole world don't mean shit."
— Christopher Knab, Four Front Media and Marketing
"You've gotta be business savvy really, or else you get the piss taken out of you."
— Melanie B, Spice Girls
"That's not easy to find in a corporate world, somebody who cares about music."
— Michael Penn, musician
"People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it."
"Humor is everything. Everything. Usually the negatives turned out to be the most positive for me. In the music industry, any other artist would have looked at the situation I was in and thought, 'Oh man, this is not for me.' I looked at it more like Darwin exploring the Galápagos Islands. You know - survival of the fittest."
— Pitbull
"Industry Rule #4080: Record company people are shady."
— A Tribe Called Quest, "Check The Rime" from The Low End Theory.
"Today, rock n' roll is about getting a contract with a major company, and pretty much doing what the company tells you to do. The company promotes the image of rock n' roll as being wild and fun when in fact it's just a dismal business."
"...you would need to be a glorious-voiced, independently wealthy, sexy, politically motivated, backstabbing bitch."
— Anna Russell, on how to succeed in opera
It’s worth telling the story of singer K to understand how market pressures may not be always conducive to creating a decent pop album. Singer K was a newly debuted female singer who had a massive, MASSIVE hit about two decades ago with a hugely iconic first single that was everywhere, and I mean everywhere, globally, a #1 hit in several countries, if you’re between the age of 25 and 55 and have listened to radio at least once in your life I guarantee you that you’ve heard of this song even if you don’t remember who sung it. We’ll call this iconic global pop hit song “Smoking Cock“. Once “Smoking Cock” was released, the singer and her mastermind producer J got a big pat on the back by the record label execs who said “rightio, good job team, now get to work on making an album that is just as good”, so for the next few months singer K and her shit-hot producer J who co-wrote “Smoking Cock” with her slaved away making a fantastic album. The result was great – each track was a little bit different. Nothing sounded quite like “Smoking Cock” (which while a good song was certainly very one-dimensional), instead each track on the album fit together nicely as a whole and showcased a different unique side of singer K, essentially setting her up for a fate as a critical darling with a long-term career (think Tori Amos, Bjork, etc). Producer J was immensely proud of what he had achieved with singer K and presented the final product to the label:
Label: “Nope, I’m sorry, we don’t want it.”
J: “What?”
Label: “There’s no Smoking Cock part 2 here. What are we going to release as a follow-up single? It’s too intellectual and fancy, please start again and give us some hits.”
J: “But we put our heart and soul into this and it’s great! This album will set her up for the long term!”
Label: “We need another Smoking Cock. This album doesn’t have it, don’t waste our time and money. We gave you clear instructions! This is a business!”
J: “Nope, I’m not doing it.”
Label: “Then we’ll hire someone else if you don’t want to do what you’re told.”
J: “Fine, fine… I’ll get you your fucking hit…”
Producer J reluctantly scraps the album and starts again from scratch at the insistence of the label, this time working with the clear instruction “we need another Smoking Cock or GTFO”. Singer K is also unhappy as she also loved the initial album, but she cooperates in the hope that it will all work out in the end and maybe if she maintains her high profile they’ll get the leverage to do what they want at some point down the track. With both the singer and producer having lost their creative focus, the resulting album is a weak patchy mess, a collection of songs that all sound more or less the same, similar but slightly inferior versions of “Smoking Cock”. The album is released and does poorly critically, landing singer K with an undeserved reputation as a One-Hit Wonder who got lucky with “Smoking Cock” and doesn’t know how to do anything else, which of course only pours salt on singer K’s and producer J’s wounds as they know this isn’t true in reality. The album does well commercially, but disappoints the music-buying public who were getting a little worn out from overexposure to “Smoking Cock” and was hoping for something a little different from her album. As quickly as her success came, the public stopped listening.
Producer J goes back to the label and says “I told you so!” The label says “okay, well the first album was a hit so for the second album you can do what you want”… but by this time it was too late. K and J are now given free reign, and the second album was the departure that they always wanted to make, but by this time singer K had gone dead in the marketplace, nobody was listening and the album completely flopped. The label then cut their losses and removed singer K from the roster. The label simply had no thought about grooming singer K as a long-term artist in the first place, they just got addicted to those quick “Smoking Cock” bucks.
Label: “Nope, I’m sorry, we don’t want it.”
J: “What?”
Label: “There’s no Smoking Cock part 2 here. What are we going to release as a follow-up single? It’s too intellectual and fancy, please start again and give us some hits.”
J: “But we put our heart and soul into this and it’s great! This album will set her up for the long term!”
Label: “We need another Smoking Cock. This album doesn’t have it, don’t waste our time and money. We gave you clear instructions! This is a business!”
J: “Nope, I’m not doing it.”
Label: “Then we’ll hire someone else if you don’t want to do what you’re told.”
J: “Fine, fine… I’ll get you your fucking hit…”
Producer J reluctantly scraps the album and starts again from scratch at the insistence of the label, this time working with the clear instruction “we need another Smoking Cock or GTFO”. Singer K is also unhappy as she also loved the initial album, but she cooperates in the hope that it will all work out in the end and maybe if she maintains her high profile they’ll get the leverage to do what they want at some point down the track. With both the singer and producer having lost their creative focus, the resulting album is a weak patchy mess, a collection of songs that all sound more or less the same, similar but slightly inferior versions of “Smoking Cock”. The album is released and does poorly critically, landing singer K with an undeserved reputation as a One-Hit Wonder who got lucky with “Smoking Cock” and doesn’t know how to do anything else, which of course only pours salt on singer K’s and producer J’s wounds as they know this isn’t true in reality. The album does well commercially, but disappoints the music-buying public who were getting a little worn out from overexposure to “Smoking Cock” and was hoping for something a little different from her album. As quickly as her success came, the public stopped listening.
Producer J goes back to the label and says “I told you so!” The label says “okay, well the first album was a hit so for the second album you can do what you want”… but by this time it was too late. K and J are now given free reign, and the second album was the departure that they always wanted to make, but by this time singer K had gone dead in the marketplace, nobody was listening and the album completely flopped. The label then cut their losses and removed singer K from the roster. The label simply had no thought about grooming singer K as a long-term artist in the first place, they just got addicted to those quick “Smoking Cock” bucks.
