Thoughts on the music industry and state funding of arts programs

After an odd encounter I had recently that involved meeting two members of a band (Which I wont be naming) who are signed to a major label and have toured in Japan, Europe and America, working in a shitty nightclub in the Cambridge town center, I began thinking about the state of the music industry and how it is slowly but surely killing itself off.

Since the widespread use of MP3s and file sharing sites, selling records is no longer a generally viable way to make a living as a musician using a standard royalty based record contract for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, a greater problem than people sharing MP3s etc is how the profits of a release are divided between the artist and the record company. Generally speaking an artist will take about 11% of the profits from his recording, the rest going to the record company, manufacturing and distribution (Although these are not so relevant now that MP3 is the most used music format.) Now when you consider that most albums will not sell more than, say, 10,000 copies in their first few months this doesn't actually come out as a lot of money for the artist, especially when you take into account the fact that they will often have to repay their advance to the label.

This lack of income from record sales and the need to pay the advance back will result in the artist hurrying to make more music, which I believe is one of the reasons that most pop music today sounds stagnant and mediocre.

Another factor is this is the pressure put on artists by major labels to produce a commercial sound, however I reckon that if major labels started signing say, rock or metal bands and pushed them onto the market in the same way pop artists are at the moment, people would listen to it and accept it as the norm.

The combination of these two things: The financial relationship between the label and artist, and the short term focus in the music industry are killing off potential new artists and damaging local scenes. (Cambridge where I live has lost two live music venues in the last two or three years)

This leads on to another issue, which is the idea of state funded arts programs, and music venues etc. America in particular has fallen victim to vicious budget cuts in recent years, that have lead to many schools abandoning creative subjects such as music meaning that only students who can afford private tuition can get music lessons. There is data to show that music programs have led to a decrease in gang violence in various parts of the world, and I personally believe that music is one of the keys to education and resolving problems, and is essential to human life.


All of this taken into account, it appears as if we are driving ourselves to a sort of 'musical suicide'. Record executives and those who control the funding for public arts programs (including venues and museums) must think very carefully in the future about the best direction to take the music industry in a rapidly technologically changing world, a more versatile model is needed that embraces new technology, rather than clinging to defunct old models that are no longer relevant.