Why did I buy music?
The lost magical experience of buying music & its ramifications on future generations
Being a musician during this particular period of time can be quite depressing for those people with aspirations and dreams of greatness. You can take Gene Simmon’s (KISS) perspective that rock is dead or the opposite one with David Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters). Over the last decade the lines from the movie “Almost Famous” often come to my mind when I think about the music industry or talk about it with my peers. In the beginning Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character (Lester Bangs) says to Patrick Fugit’s character (William Miller) talking about rock n’ roll. “It's over. You got here just in time for the death rattle. Last gasp. Last grope.” To which he replies, “at least I'm here for that.” That sums up my feelings about it all “at least I am here for that.” Nonetheless we all agree that the music industry is hurting.
If you have a spoon full of discernment about what’s happening in the music industry, you realize that there is no money for labels to invest in to emerging artists or new talent. Labels are forced to invest in established artists and keep feeding their cash cow, diva artists to keep them in the lifestyles they are now so accustomed. There is a thriving D.I.Y. society emerging but there seems to be little hope that you will find the next Alice Cooper, Lynrd Skynrd or Metallica without major distribution opportunities.
You can blame the internet, file sharing, streaming or whatever you want but after some recent events I have come to the realization the true issue with the industry: buying music isn’t fun anymore. I came to this epiphany the other day in my local used book and music store. After a jaded walk through the store, I browsed through a random bargain bin. I found two albums that I didn’t have. I was completely giddy. The next time I went back and looked through the bargain section again, but that time to no avail. In those moments, it was fun again.
This is going to date me personally but I do vaguely remember going to buy vinyl records as a pre-teen with my older brother at the “record store”. Northgate Mall in Chattanooga back in the 80s had a dingy hole-in-the-wall music store called the “Record Bar”. As a pre-teen we loved to go there and look through all the vinyl records and several of which I still have. But even still, as the Compact Disc began to take over the scene it was still fun to go sift through all the bins trying to find your favorite band or rare compilation album. Being that we were in the South, it was hard to find many of our favorite metal bands’ albums on the shelf (being that it was a new, emerging genre). Buying music was fun and sometimes an adventure depending on where you had to go to find what you were looking for at times.
In an age of (almost) instant gratification, having everything at your finger tips via the internet can leave you hollow. Even though downloading a song off iTunes is convenient, it still isn’t the same as going to your local music store and finding a rare jewel in a pile of mediocre stones. It gives me a little hope with vinyl records making a comeback. Nothing left more of an impression on my mind as a child than a vinyl record cover. We were blessed with having some great ones. KISS has several worthy mentions but my favorite as a child was Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere in Time” album cover. I can stare at the fine artwork for hours. You can’t have that experience on a digital download or digital streaming.
The other aspect to buying music was reading the liner notes and the lyrics. You could find out about some really cool bands just reading the liner notes about who your favorite band toured with the previous year. I remember reading about Mercyful Fate, Venom and Motorhead in the liner notes to Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning.” Numerous times I went searching for these bands in my local music store that were unknown to me. When I couldn’t find them locally, I looked in magazines like Hit Parader, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer or whatever I could find to order them. I was on a quest to find new music, to buy new music and it was fun.
As a musician from reading the liner notes you learned about what guitars, strings, effects and amplifiers that they played on the album which compelled you many time to go buy that gear so you could sound like your favorite musician and/or band. It was a beautiful and vicious cycle of consumerism which I still personally enjoy today. When I do buy a CD these days, I still read the booklet inside if the label went through the effort of printing one for the album.
Perhaps the resurgence of vinyl records will spark all this nostalgia of buying music again. I have missed it dearly. Buying music used to be part of my weekly routine. Maybe it will be again if the music industry can make buying music fun again. As a consumer I enjoyed buying music for all the aforementioned reasons. You may have noticed I haven’t even mentioned the music itself yet.
Getting to sample every track on the album before you buy is .. robbing yourself of the entire musical experience. An album is more than its single but a cohesive collection of musical experiences. If the artist has done their job well and paid attention the order of the songs and the flow of tempo on the record, the entire experience can be inspiring. We’ve cheapened the value of music by allowing sampling as you go. In college I worked for a fast food burger chain (no endorsements here). They taught me as a cook that the order in which I put the ingredients affects the taste of the burger. If you vary the order of ingredients, the burger won’t have the same flavor even though it’s all the same product. I believe the same applies in music. E.g. Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” album, you may not appreciate “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” as a stand alone track but after hearing “The Thing That Should Not Be” before it, that song may taste different on your musical pallet. Value in this context is a two way street for the artist and the consumer.
People argue that they just benefit from buying the songs they like. I counter that with a slightly different argument. If you want your favorite artist to make songs that you like, you need to buy all the songs so he or she can continue to make songs that you do like. I make this argument especially when it comes to movie franchises. If you like the “Predator” franchise, you need to go to the theatre every time they release a new movie. Yes, DVD sales are more of a factor these days but if more people supported their favorite franchises at the theatre they wouldn’t have to wait five to ten years for the next one. The same principle applies to music on multiple levels; albums sales, ticket sales and merchandise sales. Musicians have to pay back the money the labels invest in them to be able to record albums, to make music videos and to tour. If you don’t buy the music, go to their concerts and the merchandise, there will be no more artists to write the songs you love so much. To my point, this is where the industry needs to make it fun again to buy music so we can get back to that fun and vicious cycle of consumerism that makes this great capitalist society go round and round.
I think about all these things on the eve of launching my next musical project. How will we make “buying our music” fun for our fans and our potential fans? Will we bend to the convenience of the digital age? Will iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart Radio, and music blogs dictate who we are as musicians and how we present our music? Are we willing to sit in obscurity until chance or divine intervention occurs to project us from silence to sound? You hear industry people talk about that we are on the edge of a new emerging musical paradigm. What that is has yet to be revealed but I just keep thinking about those lines from the movie. At least I am here for that. Of course, I could be wrong. This is just my opinion from the bottom end.