Does Anyone Pay Their Dues Anymore
Does Anyone Pay Their Dues Anymore
Let me open with a disclosure. This is not an old man yelling at the clouds thing. I listen to my music on records and CDs. I also have Spotify and Tidal accounts. I am admittedly old school. I am not saying that today's music is bad. It is different. Technology has made music different and music has had to adapt to technology. The structure of how we receive our music is pretty straight forward. It can be paired down to a triangle. Denna Weinstien outlined the three points in her excellent book Rock n’ America: A Social and Cultural History as such: artists, mediators, and the audience. The artists and the audience have remained consistent, however the medium has changed drastically. And it has to do with the evolution of technology.
When talking about mediators in music, there is the human factor, such as the radio DJ, or the booking agent, or the manager or the producer. Each person, in their own way, has an impact on how we as an audience receive music. However, since this show is about music and technology, today we are going to focus on the non-human aspect of the mediator, the technology.
When rock and roll first hit the scene in 1955, there was very little in the way of technology available to artists to get their music to their fans. However, what was available was powerful enough if worked in the correct way. The first technology was actually a combination of three pieces of technology combined to create a perfect storm for the artist and their fans: the radio, the record player, and the jukebox. And each one had another bit of technology that gave them a true connection to the audience: the record.
As rock and roll became more popular, radio stations began to play more and more of it. Radio stations would play a record and that record would be heard on radios in cars or the small portable version, the transistor radio. Teenagers would hear their new favourite artist on the radio and then go out and buy the music they just heard. Which would then prompt the radio stations to play more of the same type of music. Now this is nothing new, however, prior to the Second World War, radio stations had live musicians playing on the radio. This was the first time radio stations and their audience shared the same technology. It was one of the first examples of a true musical relationship.
When the record player was introduced for the homes in the mid 1950s, the audience now was able to be their own DJ. The innovation of the smaller 45 rpm record, with each side holding one song was perfect for teenagers. Early rock and roll used the single as its dominant delivery vehicle. The record player also allowed teenagers to bring their music into their bedrooms, making the all important separation between their parents and more importantly their parent’s music.
The social construct of a teenager meant there was more time for leisure activities, The local malt shop was a great place to hang out. As these establishments became more popular, the demand for music within them became more frequent. The jukebox was the perfect technology for the 7 inch record. For a small amount of change, someone could select a popular song at random, again becoming their own DJ. This freedom was essential for the growth of music. There were no longer any constraints in what was being played as long as the record was in the jukebox. The jukebox and the freedom to play whatever they wanted brought in more teenagers to these places of business, establishing the teenager as an unlikely but profitable consumer for the first time ever.
In 1950, only 9 percent of Americans owned a television. However, when Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, an estimated 60 million people watched. Television had become a tour de force for artist mediation. The main difference between radio and television was now fans could see their favourite artists, even if it was on a tiny black and white screen.
Beginning in the mid 1950s and continuing on for the next 30 years, television would be the driving force when it came to the delivery of music to the masses. Ed Sullivan was one of the forerunners but soon other shows began to appear that would showcase new and rising talent. American Bandstand was arguably one of the most popular shows. Broadcasting nationally by 1957, the concept of the show was simple: get a bunch of teenagers in the studio, play current hit records as they danced, and have a few musical guests “performing” their most recent hits. The show was an example of music entertainment being transposed from one medium, radio, to another, television. The show was also instrumental in breaking down racial barriers in music. Although the host, Dick Clark, and the majority of dancers on the show, were white and clean cut, there were a number of black artists who would begin their careers on the show such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Aretha Franklin.
By the 1970s rock music was replacing many of the teeny bop music acts and television responded with rock oriented shows like In Concert and Midnight Special. R&B finally found a home with Soul Train and ran from 1971 to 2006. From its debut in the late 1970s, late night audiences would be entertained with many artists finding new audiences on Saturday Night Live, a tradition that continues to this day.
Television reached its peak as a music mediator in the 1980s with the debut of MTV in the United States and later MuchMusic in Canada. MTV broke new ground. Unlike previous shows that featured music acts performing, This was an interesting period for music mediation and technology. It used an old technology, television, as a vehicle for a new technology, the music video. Now there was a visual aspect to music. Bands not only had to play the part , they also had to look the part. MTV launched huge careers such as Madonna, Duran Duran, George Michael, Prince and MIchael Jackson.
Besides music TV, music fans would be introduced to another form of technology that would not only revolutionize how we listened to music, but would indirectly pave the way in how we digest music today. In 1982, Sony introduced the Compact Disc or CD. This digital format would soon take over the world, quickly surpassing the LP as the main source of music playback. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, aside from a few die hard audiophiles, the CD was the most popular way to hear music. However, as technology is ever evolving, so is the way we get our music. And the CD, or more accurately, the demise of the CD single would bring us to where we are today.
As the 1980s came to a close, bands were quickly adapting to digital. It was cleaner, easier to edit and there was so much more that could be done with it and at a much lower cost. CDs followed the same formula. Because it was digital, copies of albums could be made with less degradation. It was also cheaper to make while the profits doubled.
Like the 7 inch single before, the CD single quickly became the popular format of choice. While a full album CD could cost upwards of 30.00, the CD single was a fraction of the cost. Artists could also experiment a lot more. Because it was digital, more songs could be added. There were CD single releases that had upwards of four songs on it, making it a goldmine for people who wanted to hear their favourite band`s new material without spending a small fortune on the full album.
Like anything else, good things come to an end. Record labels decided to discontinue the CD single by the mid 1990s. Now if you wanted to listen to an artist's new single, you had to buy the whole album. Needless to say, people were not happy. CDs were expensive and not everyone had that much disposable income. However, also by the early to mid 1990s, another non-musical technology was becoming more prevalent in homes, the home computer.
The home computer had become more affordable and along with the rapid advances of computer technology, the Internet was also rising in popularity. With CDs, computers, and the Internet, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to put these things together. Enter Shawn Fanning, Sean Fanning and Napster. They used computer technology, the compact disc drive in the computer, copied CDs to the computer, converted the file to an MP3 to make it small and shared the file for free over the Internet. Over the next couple of years, file sharing became so popular that labels lobbied and eventually had lawmakers declared illegal. They claimed it was taking money away from the artists, but in reality they were watching their own profit margins.
It is important to remember what home computer technology was like in the mid-to-late 1990s. The internet was new, internet speed was, at best, in the low double digits, and everyone going on line had to endure dial up speed with that ubiquitous dial up noise. Couple this with music files that were notoriously buggy and took forever to download. It was exactly perfect but it was free. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel in the shape of an apple.
While people endure slow and unreliable download speeds, Apple Computers were quietly working in the background to expand their fledgling empire into music. In 2001, Apple introduced iTunes, a service that, if you owned an Apple computer, allowed the user to legally download and own a digital copy of a song or album. Downloading a song cost the user a mere 0.99 and the entire album set the user back 9.99. Considerably cheaper than a CD. More importantly, if someone wanted only a song or two from the album, they could just buy what song they wanted for 0.99 and ignore the rest of the album. This was the first sign that CDs were becoming old technology. When Apple brought out the iPod that same year, so people could now listen to their iTunes downloads anywhere, the digital age was born.
Streaming music is older than you think. In the early 1920s, George Owen Squier was issued a patent for a transmission and distribution of signals over electrical wires which became the basis for Muzak, the music you would hear in elevators and malls. One of the earliest programmable music systems was The Telephone Music Service. Developed in 1929, the service allowed restaurant patrons to put money into a jukebox and using a telephone on the jukebox, make a request for a song through an operator. The operator would then search for the song through a library of more than 100,000 records and then play it on a turntable. The music would be piped over telephone wires and into the tavern. The service continued until 1997, when it was deemed too expensive due to permits and the cost of setting up telephone wires.
The first streaming services as we know them now began with MySpace and YouTube. Founded in 2003 and 2005 respectively, these services began more of a video service than audio, but they allowed artists to share their music publicly without the overhead costs and a record deal. Artists that got their start on YouTube include Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, and Justin Beiber.
In 2008, the music mediator moved into its current state with the launch of Spotify. Apple music followed suit in 2015. This is where consumers moved away from owning and downloading music to an access based platform that allowed music fans to access a library of millions of songs and download them on demand. Artists began using this platform to upload new material, again reaching millions of potential fans instead of the traditional physical releases that were only accessible through retail stores.
So how does this new technology affect an artist's rise to fame? Before the Internet, the rise was a slow burn effect. They paid their dues working small clubs and word of mouth was the only way an artist would become popular. Only if a producer or an A&R person from a record company happened to hear about the artist and liked what they heard, then they would be signed to a record deal and then get promoted. This process, if it happened at all, would take years. An artist that was an overnight success usually had hundreds of small shows under their belt.
The Internet changed all of that. With platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, emerging artists now had access to millions of potential fans, something that would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. The technology allowed for a rapid success method that would bring fame to an artist if it became viral. Artists who had this luck, and it is luck, are Doja Cat, Lil NasX, and Olivia Rodrigo. This is how it happens now. The artist puts up a short video, it goes viral, and they get signed to a record deal.
The problem with this formula is that most of the time the artist has not had any time to put in their dues. They get signed to a label and now they are pressured to get the next hit song out within a very short period of time. There has even been pressure from labels to withhold any promotion until the artist releases a song that has to go viral. Now this is not much different than it was traditionally done. Labels would pressure an artist to release a radio friendly hit in a respectable amount of time within signing. However, this amount of time could be anywhere within a few months to a year. Now the pressure is much greater because of the short attention span of the Internet. In order to remain relevant, the artist now has to put out material within a few months or risk being forgotten. The artists are still paying their dues, but now it is after they have signed and the pressure is ever present. This is not really fair to the artist because, instead of working their way into the music business slowly and learning along the way, they are thrown into the deep end without a life jacket. They sink or swim. And the labels do not care because there is always someone there to replace them.
When talking about mediators in music, there is the human factor, such as the radio DJ, or the booking agent, or the manager or the producer. Each person, in their own way, has an impact on how we as an audience receive music. However, since this show is about music and technology, today we are going to focus on the non-human aspect of the mediator, the technology.
When rock and roll first hit the scene in 1955, there was very little in the way of technology available to artists to get their music to their fans. However, what was available was powerful enough if worked in the correct way. The first technology was actually a combination of three pieces of technology combined to create a perfect storm for the artist and their fans: the radio, the record player, and the jukebox. And each one had another bit of technology that gave them a true connection to the audience: the record.
As rock and roll became more popular, radio stations began to play more and more of it. Radio stations would play a record and that record would be heard on radios in cars or the small portable version, the transistor radio. Teenagers would hear their new favourite artist on the radio and then go out and buy the music they just heard. Which would then prompt the radio stations to play more of the same type of music. Now this is nothing new, however, prior to the Second World War, radio stations had live musicians playing on the radio. This was the first time radio stations and their audience shared the same technology. It was one of the first examples of a true musical relationship.
When the record player was introduced for the homes in the mid 1950s, the audience now was able to be their own DJ. The innovation of the smaller 45 rpm record, with each side holding one song was perfect for teenagers. Early rock and roll used the single as its dominant delivery vehicle. The record player also allowed teenagers to bring their music into their bedrooms, making the all important separation between their parents and more importantly their parent’s music.
The social construct of a teenager meant there was more time for leisure activities, The local malt shop was a great place to hang out. As these establishments became more popular, the demand for music within them became more frequent. The jukebox was the perfect technology for the 7 inch record. For a small amount of change, someone could select a popular song at random, again becoming their own DJ. This freedom was essential for the growth of music. There were no longer any constraints in what was being played as long as the record was in the jukebox. The jukebox and the freedom to play whatever they wanted brought in more teenagers to these places of business, establishing the teenager as an unlikely but profitable consumer for the first time ever.
In 1950, only 9 percent of Americans owned a television. However, when Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, an estimated 60 million people watched. Television had become a tour de force for artist mediation. The main difference between radio and television was now fans could see their favourite artists, even if it was on a tiny black and white screen.
Beginning in the mid 1950s and continuing on for the next 30 years, television would be the driving force when it came to the delivery of music to the masses. Ed Sullivan was one of the forerunners but soon other shows began to appear that would showcase new and rising talent. American Bandstand was arguably one of the most popular shows. Broadcasting nationally by 1957, the concept of the show was simple: get a bunch of teenagers in the studio, play current hit records as they danced, and have a few musical guests “performing” their most recent hits. The show was an example of music entertainment being transposed from one medium, radio, to another, television. The show was also instrumental in breaking down racial barriers in music. Although the host, Dick Clark, and the majority of dancers on the show, were white and clean cut, there were a number of black artists who would begin their careers on the show such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Aretha Franklin.
By the 1970s rock music was replacing many of the teeny bop music acts and television responded with rock oriented shows like In Concert and Midnight Special. R&B finally found a home with Soul Train and ran from 1971 to 2006. From its debut in the late 1970s, late night audiences would be entertained with many artists finding new audiences on Saturday Night Live, a tradition that continues to this day.
Television reached its peak as a music mediator in the 1980s with the debut of MTV in the United States and later MuchMusic in Canada. MTV broke new ground. Unlike previous shows that featured music acts performing, This was an interesting period for music mediation and technology. It used an old technology, television, as a vehicle for a new technology, the music video. Now there was a visual aspect to music. Bands not only had to play the part , they also had to look the part. MTV launched huge careers such as Madonna, Duran Duran, George Michael, Prince and MIchael Jackson.
Besides music TV, music fans would be introduced to another form of technology that would not only revolutionize how we listened to music, but would indirectly pave the way in how we digest music today. In 1982, Sony introduced the Compact Disc or CD. This digital format would soon take over the world, quickly surpassing the LP as the main source of music playback. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, aside from a few die hard audiophiles, the CD was the most popular way to hear music. However, as technology is ever evolving, so is the way we get our music. And the CD, or more accurately, the demise of the CD single would bring us to where we are today.
As the 1980s came to a close, bands were quickly adapting to digital. It was cleaner, easier to edit and there was so much more that could be done with it and at a much lower cost. CDs followed the same formula. Because it was digital, copies of albums could be made with less degradation. It was also cheaper to make while the profits doubled.
Like the 7 inch single before, the CD single quickly became the popular format of choice. While a full album CD could cost upwards of 30.00, the CD single was a fraction of the cost. Artists could also experiment a lot more. Because it was digital, more songs could be added. There were CD single releases that had upwards of four songs on it, making it a goldmine for people who wanted to hear their favourite band`s new material without spending a small fortune on the full album.
Like anything else, good things come to an end. Record labels decided to discontinue the CD single by the mid 1990s. Now if you wanted to listen to an artist's new single, you had to buy the whole album. Needless to say, people were not happy. CDs were expensive and not everyone had that much disposable income. However, also by the early to mid 1990s, another non-musical technology was becoming more prevalent in homes, the home computer.
The home computer had become more affordable and along with the rapid advances of computer technology, the Internet was also rising in popularity. With CDs, computers, and the Internet, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to put these things together. Enter Shawn Fanning, Sean Fanning and Napster. They used computer technology, the compact disc drive in the computer, copied CDs to the computer, converted the file to an MP3 to make it small and shared the file for free over the Internet. Over the next couple of years, file sharing became so popular that labels lobbied and eventually had lawmakers declared illegal. They claimed it was taking money away from the artists, but in reality they were watching their own profit margins.
It is important to remember what home computer technology was like in the mid-to-late 1990s. The internet was new, internet speed was, at best, in the low double digits, and everyone going on line had to endure dial up speed with that ubiquitous dial up noise. Couple this with music files that were notoriously buggy and took forever to download. It was exactly perfect but it was free. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel in the shape of an apple.
While people endure slow and unreliable download speeds, Apple Computers were quietly working in the background to expand their fledgling empire into music. In 2001, Apple introduced iTunes, a service that, if you owned an Apple computer, allowed the user to legally download and own a digital copy of a song or album. Downloading a song cost the user a mere 0.99 and the entire album set the user back 9.99. Considerably cheaper than a CD. More importantly, if someone wanted only a song or two from the album, they could just buy what song they wanted for 0.99 and ignore the rest of the album. This was the first sign that CDs were becoming old technology. When Apple brought out the iPod that same year, so people could now listen to their iTunes downloads anywhere, the digital age was born.
Streaming music is older than you think. In the early 1920s, George Owen Squier was issued a patent for a transmission and distribution of signals over electrical wires which became the basis for Muzak, the music you would hear in elevators and malls. One of the earliest programmable music systems was The Telephone Music Service. Developed in 1929, the service allowed restaurant patrons to put money into a jukebox and using a telephone on the jukebox, make a request for a song through an operator. The operator would then search for the song through a library of more than 100,000 records and then play it on a turntable. The music would be piped over telephone wires and into the tavern. The service continued until 1997, when it was deemed too expensive due to permits and the cost of setting up telephone wires.
The first streaming services as we know them now began with MySpace and YouTube. Founded in 2003 and 2005 respectively, these services began more of a video service than audio, but they allowed artists to share their music publicly without the overhead costs and a record deal. Artists that got their start on YouTube include Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, and Justin Beiber.
In 2008, the music mediator moved into its current state with the launch of Spotify. Apple music followed suit in 2015. This is where consumers moved away from owning and downloading music to an access based platform that allowed music fans to access a library of millions of songs and download them on demand. Artists began using this platform to upload new material, again reaching millions of potential fans instead of the traditional physical releases that were only accessible through retail stores.
So how does this new technology affect an artist's rise to fame? Before the Internet, the rise was a slow burn effect. They paid their dues working small clubs and word of mouth was the only way an artist would become popular. Only if a producer or an A&R person from a record company happened to hear about the artist and liked what they heard, then they would be signed to a record deal and then get promoted. This process, if it happened at all, would take years. An artist that was an overnight success usually had hundreds of small shows under their belt.
The Internet changed all of that. With platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, emerging artists now had access to millions of potential fans, something that would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. The technology allowed for a rapid success method that would bring fame to an artist if it became viral. Artists who had this luck, and it is luck, are Doja Cat, Lil NasX, and Olivia Rodrigo. This is how it happens now. The artist puts up a short video, it goes viral, and they get signed to a record deal.
The problem with this formula is that most of the time the artist has not had any time to put in their dues. They get signed to a label and now they are pressured to get the next hit song out within a very short period of time. There has even been pressure from labels to withhold any promotion until the artist releases a song that has to go viral. Now this is not much different than it was traditionally done. Labels would pressure an artist to release a radio friendly hit in a respectable amount of time within signing. However, this amount of time could be anywhere within a few months to a year. Now the pressure is much greater because of the short attention span of the Internet. In order to remain relevant, the artist now has to put out material within a few months or risk being forgotten. The artists are still paying their dues, but now it is after they have signed and the pressure is ever present. This is not really fair to the artist because, instead of working their way into the music business slowly and learning along the way, they are thrown into the deep end without a life jacket. They sink or swim. And the labels do not care because there is always someone there to replace them.
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