R.I.P. Teenage Kicks
So, in my day job I’m a technology journalist. The job leads you interesting places, and this evening I found myself having a discussion with Feargal Sharkey from The Undertones while having a fag outside some awards ceremony (I once had a conversation with Chuck D too, but that’s another story). He was there in his capacity as head of British Music Rights, kind of like the British equivalent of RIAA but without the explicit eat-your-children sentiment.
I say discussion, I really mean disagreement. I’m very familiar with BMR - who represent everyone from the artist to the record company behemoth: guess who has their ear - and their standpoint, and Feargal was definitely on-message. I asked him, on- or off-record, whether he didn’t perhaps think the record industry was, well, screwed. He did not. Vehemently. But he said on-the-record, so I pulled out my notepad for a while and jotted down his thoughts, which closely aligned with press releases I’ve already seen about how 80 percent of UK musicians earn less than £10k a year (something with which the record industry setup has nothing to do, clearly) and other stats.
Then I put away my notepad and chatted with him as a musician who strongly believes that the current setup is screwed, and that the only real currency a new musician these days has is goodwill. Suffice it to say, at the end of the discussion he wished me luck, but he was very much along the lines of (semi-quote here - I had had a few): “But why deny musicians who want to spend £300k recording an album?” To which I obviously said, “Well I manage to record at home on my laptop just fine for very little investment - these days is it really necessary to spend £300k recording an album?” “But who would deny a musician that right?” was the nub of the gist of his reply.
(And yes, I do know that my recordings aren’t studio-quality, but that just needs a bit more kit and a decent engineer and producer, not £300k.)
Well, Feargal Sharkey has his perspective and interests, and I have mine. You can’t fight against free. To reference a very different musician: although he has the previous marketing and established fanbase to back him up, Trent Reznor is on the right track with what he says. I really believe that the system is changing - it’s no longer about this half-a-century idea we’ve had about recorded music being the be-all and end-all. It was the cash cow, but that’s gone now. I recently sold a bunch of CDs to record shops, and the bottom’s fallen out of that market.
Recorded music is becoming the means to the end, not the end in itself. You wanna be a superstar musician earning trillions? Good luck, but that’s not about the art. Music’s work, like anything else, and recorded music is - in my humble opinion - becoming the way to get people to your concerts, or buy your merchandise. That’s where the money is. Not U2-style money, but enough to be comfortable and do what it is you set out to do - speak to people through music. I know not every musician will achieve even this level, but those 80-percent-under-£10k-pa stats from Feargal and BMR show us clearly that something’s already wrong, and I can’t believe that would be worse under the new system.
I did ask him whether he thought “illegal” sharing of music was the reason for so many musicians earning so little. He said it was a significant factor. Not good enough. Thanks for wishing me luck, but I suspect you need more.
