Death to the Major.

January 24, 2008

Remember when people used this stuff ^^^^to make albums with?  Me either. 

Good article on the impending passing of the major label record industry.

Much has been made of this for a good while now.  In actuality, I really hope this is going to have a nice effect on what people CHOOSE to listen to.  A lot of the time, labels spent billions to convince you that Mariah Carey, Nickelback, and Nelly were the best things poppin’.  It was built solely on hit records. 

While this trend will probably not change in a sense, we might now have a growing audience of listeners that aren’t trained and tuned for the radio ready hits of what will soon be yesteryear for the likes of Universal or Warner Bros.  This would be just on the strength that these labels won’t have the marketing dollars to steer you in their direction every time you look for new music. 

The interesting thing is that, just like the rest of America, it’s the record industry’s “middle management” that is really feeling the heat – getting let go by the dozens.

I think one sign that things are changing, from a musical perspective – Arcade Fire.  The lead singer Win Butler made it onto the cover of a national publication (Spin, I believe) alongside The Bruce Springsteen.  Nationwide, the band is garnering mainstream appeal.  It may not seem to be a big deal……but if you remember when the Strokes or the Arctic Monkeys dropped their debuts, to MUCH (or too much depending on who you talk to) critical fanfare, there was a cover here or there…..but the widespread acclaim wasn’t present.  Now, I talk to lame-ass herbs I work with here, or at the record store, and they casually name drop Arcade Fire like they knew of the band the entire time.

But really it’s cool – why? – because they now know really good music is out there lurking in places they didn’t know existed in their sheep minds……… and they are realizing that they no longer need to accept God(smack) into their lives.