Tonight was the 2017 NZ Music Awards. It got me thinking about how narrow the music field is in the traditional media outlets, how it is forever shrinking, how vast the online music catalogue is and how this came about.

In 2017 there are just a handful of major labels – 40 years ago there were dozens of major, medium sized and minor labels all feeding artists into a much healthier live and broadcast landscape. Genres were enabled by small labels – bands had opportunities to be something if only small at first, then grow with exposure. Audiences were given a wide range of music that, even if often weird, was focused just enough to make sense & labels were more willing to take risks on emerging sounds & artists. Being ‘signed’ meant something. It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but looking back it worked. Some successful bands might have been rejected by ten labels before signing – then had 3 singles flop before having that breakthrough track. That can’t happen now.

Internet killed the video star

Radio had shows that broke bands late into the night. There were less stations so audiences were bigger. Airplay meant something. John Peel for example gave us the Undertones – a simple act of brilliance. TV had shows that also gave bands a break – The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tube, Max TV. Then nothing.

True, we have more music to listen to in 2017- the internet gives us access to everything imaginable. But there is zero filtering – you can spend days wading through dire shite seeking out something special. Everyone is a rock star now, and everyone has the right to tell the world about themselves. Live venues have closed down en masse – it was not a willful act by owners – the public stopped going out, instead they accessed everything digitally. Sharing an event at a gig gave way to watching video on demand, sharing a live podcast with ‘friends’ on social networks, then eventually to not sharing anything. The ‘public’ sit zombied-out on their mobiles consuming but never giving, taking all that is for free so that now music has no value, its no longer a tangible asset paid for with hard-earned money and carried home from the record store to be pored over and show-off to real breathing friends with real moving faces. Money does not get back to original artists so they give up. The void then gets filled with more rubbish.

Keeping it real

The Awards – they mean nothing. This is an industry just like any corporate junta patting itself on the back – a closed elite of huge players that peddle a narrow roster of artists. They will not take chances on anything that has not run through the risk-analysis team, been checked by the marketing and accounts department and polished until they can see their faces in it. And when they invest they do so to make hard cash, so you will hear about the lucky artist constantly. The labels and their artists are not trend setters – they are pure followers making sure they maximise profits along the way. Part of that marketing hype is getting the press on-board. Newspaper editors need to sell papers so they get journalists to focus on the major label’s artists – its all part of the package (read ‘stitch-up’). It all feeds into a frenzy that is not driven by fans (aka how the Beatles took off) but by marketing & advertising – constant product placement. And so the stitch-up extends into the Awards – the industry is deeply connected.

The Awards themselves are a slick affair – like the final of the X-Factor. This is TV for the masses; for mums and dads and with their approval for their santized teenagers. Family viewing. Corporate sponsorship. Advertiser’s dream. It’s not rock. It’s not rebellion. It’s not the voice of youth. You’ll get no swaggering drunken gob-shites shoving their gongs up their arses here. No, this is the Real Estate Industry Sales Awards on steroids.

A failed revolution

The freedom of the internet was meant to be the fight back against the dominance of the major labels and all this fluff but it back-fired. I was there at the beginning of the internet (ironically working for the major labels as a web-developer!) as they struggled to catch up – at seminars independent musicians stressed how it was possible to make a living with the new technology – it was exciting but that was before it got flooded. 

Now we have extremes – the banality of the mainstream against the endless subcultures generated by millions of blogger’s disperate imaginations. Nothing is remotely cohesive anymore. Blogs talk of a hundred subsets of Metal alone, yet digital categorisation on Soundcloud does not have a listing for ‘Punk’. Nothing means anything – it’s information overload in the cheap seats and mind-numbing tedium in the posh seats. YET in the middle of all this exists brilliance. There are still great emerging & long-standing artists – the ones that would have had a home once on Island or Stiff Records. The type that would have played the venue with the dodgy PA and warm beer that was in town before it got replaced with apartments and coffee shops. You just have to find them, and say hello to them when you do. You need to talk about them like you used down the pub with mates. Share their music like you used to do when you lent a cassette. Just don’t mention Awards to them.