Jeff Stone

This was written in March, 2002.

Jeff Stone

The Day The Indies of the World Formed a Major Label

The artists are the philosophers and the analysts who see society from outside of mainstream society and yet best know it. Artists are the closest we have today to prophets. They see the issues that others are trying to sweep under a carpet. Issues that deal with the minutiae of life, or the big things. Issues that deal with love, or society, or politics. And they know which issues are important, because the experience of witnessing issues is emotional. (Or not at all. In that case, that issue is a non-issue.) Artists express emotions and ideas that cannot be properly and fully discussed in conversation. Expressing the complex through patterns (music, paint) is beyond the reach of language-as-conversation.

In short, artists are the voice of the people (whether the people like it or not; sometimes they don't, because consciously they often just want to ignore the issues).

If artists are really successful at spreading their message, they inspire.

So who are the famous, successful (musical) artists?

Britney Spears? Celine Dion? Are you kidding me?

So that is whom Commerce is rewarding. Some painters are painting pictures that look pretty and say nothing. Or artists are not creating at all, but merely singing someone else's usually insipid musical ideas and words, where all that there is to be said is said in two lines, and the rest is fill.

And so these non-artists masquerading as artists are inspiring society to do what? Explore? Grow?

Nope. Look pretty. Stand out...er...in a bland in kind of way.

Society is in a lot a trouble.

The Deeper Problem

I have been able to talk in general terms about artists up until now. I will, for the time being, discuss musicians. I am one, and so this is what I know. But please, artists who are not musicians, do not leave me. Change the words in your head, if necessary, to be able to read into this text whatever applies to your situation.

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Maybe it will turn out to be societies’ fault if they ever get tested. Maybe after the playing field is leveled, they will still pick n’Sync. But we don’t know that.

The reason why the best artists are usually not heard from is that the distributors and promoters that are part of the music industry machine do not want the real artists to be heard from. Real artists can’t be controlled.

I do not mean that their behaviour can’t be controlled. I mean that the music industry can’t stop the best songwriter on earth from being fat and ugly. Unfortunately for said hypothetical songwriter, if she does not have a business mind (and many artists who are brilliant do not have a business mind because brilliance is very much about focus on one or two subjects), then her music will never see the light of day beyond her friends and family.

Sometimes real and brilliant artists are the big stars. The Beatles are the most obvious example of this. Also, many successful bands and solo artists have been great innovators, and not all of them good looking. It happens. In the early ‘90s, Nirvana came along. They are, unquestionably, real artists, and Kurt Cobain a cutting edge and brilliant songwriter. They were also marketable. And once the big-label DGC gamble paid off and the rest of the music industry found itself with an obsolete roster, the others tried their best to catch-up. So grunge was very popular, and major labels did not mind selling grunge to make money. But they weren’t totally happy.

You see, rebellious music is sometimes great and sometimes stupid, and sometimes somewhere in-between, but regardless, it influences independent thought. Contrast this with kid-pop/easy listening.

In kid-pop/easy listening, the music has a big and steady beat. The vocals are pristine. The melodies are catchy but not particularly innovative or interesting. The chord patterns are formulaic. The lyrics are a very basic expression of love or loss, and nothing is said that would catch one’s attention, besides one hook line in each chorus that allows the song to be memorable.

I want to point out that the song must at some point grab the listener’s attention, or else it will work against human psychology and never sell. But it is a mistake in this day and age for recorded music to hold the listener’s attention all of the time.

Music’s job today is to be ear candy, and to enter into and leave the listener’s attention. Hum along to stay happy, but don’t keep listening. Focus on the job that you are doing. Work to the beat.

Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of pop music and easy listening music is to be office music. Radio stations want pop music to be like this because then the radios will still be turned on in the offices, and the audience levels will remain high during the daytime. This is the main reason, but my next paragraph is true to some degree as well.

If radio stations play raucous music, it will make people uncomfortable in their chairs and a little less likely to concentrate and do their work. If the radio station plays a song by someone without what today is considered a pretty voice, the same thing will happen. Indeed, either of these may make the listener irritated, even angry. Discomfort is produced. With comfort, submission. Without comfort, restlessness. Sometimes, restless people have independent actions. Comfortable people who are willing to put up with an office environment rarely produce an independent action. Business hates independent actions. The secretaries aren’t getting paid to do anything but the job put in front of them. (Secretaries: don’t be offended. We know you wouldn’t be able to do the job you are doing without being smart, and we know that you are under-appreciated. Change the radio station and watch what happens to you.)

So even the office environment is set up to, through its choice of music, work against society’s best thinkers, its artists.

Also, stockholders of record companies own stocks in many other industries. If the masses will eat almost anything that is given to them (once they are told seductively enough that it is “good”), then there is no damage to the bottom line if the music industry, for the sake of its stocks in other industries, promotes feel-good, think-less music over just-as-likely-to-sell feel-restless, think-more music.

Yes, the majors sign indies. Backstreet Boys clones are expensive to develop. Indies are not. But who gets the promotion and distribution focus?

In Summary, So Far

First the real artists take over the art world from Justin Timberlake and the it-might-as-well-have-been-a-photograph wildlife painters. The art world influences in a very significant way, more by tone and mood than by words, large sections of cultural opinion. Cultural opinion heavily influences the media directly and indirectly through cultural observers, essay-writers, intelligentsia, and business owners. This applies to mainstream media and niche media, alike (but the culture changes, depending). The media affects public opinion. Public opinion heavily influences marketing decisions and government policies.

Artists are at the forefront of change, and right now Britney Spears is Queen of that realm.

The Solution

You need promotion. You need distribution. So does someone in Cincinnati who would love your music if she heard it and you hers. Use ICQ, or advertise, and find her. Let her be your Cincinnati distribution and promotion manager. And you her Toronto distribution and promotion manager. And some other musician in Toronto will be your Toronto distribution and promotion manager, so that you don’t have to talk yourself up; he will, and it will be more word-on-the-street credible. And honest because you actually like each other.

You need to align yourself with high school groups and indie fashion designers. You want the indie fashion designers to put your band’s name or your name on jeans and shirts, as well as the designers, and you want the teenage bands to wear those clothes through their high schools while you wear their clothes. Other students will buy the clothes, and your band name will be released into their consciousness. Street-level promotion will be produced. A buzz will follow.

The fashion designer sells her clothes. You sell CDs and so does the teenage band.

You need to form coalitions with other musicians to buy very good equipment and record music. You need to form alliances with painters and photographers who will let you put their paintings and photographs on the front of CDs. Then let them sell some of your CDs, and keep the proceeds. Or maybe the painter or photographer will get a percentage of the disc sales. I believe it is important to involve artists of various media.

Who do you know that is a freelance journalist or owns a small publication? Have them review your and your alliance’s CDs and shows. Allow them to trash you/them. We’re all for independence of thought. But there is only so much room in a journal for so many reviews. This would ensure that space for you, whether positive or negative.

Why on earth would indie publishers want to get involved? Because, through your alliances, they could align themselves with indie journals in other cities. Maybe mergers could happen and eventually, some little read-by-seven-people journal has international distribution. Indie web sites could maybe form into one much more advertisable and viewed site.

Indie stores could get involved. Through your alliances, they could contact and form agreements with indie stores in other cities. Then, through your alliances, they would turn into major chains. Small radio stations could become networks. Clubs could become chains. Then musicians would have a regular place to play, hang pictures, meet, network, and discuss art. But not in some doomed club in one city. In a media-attention-grabbing chain where the artists hang out.

Lodging. Have a place to stay on tour in every city in North America. A musician in Chicago puts you up, you put up a musician from Winnipeg, and so it goes.

Tours just became a lot cheaper.

This Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Nothing does. So, please, get started. Let’s dream big, then think realistically, and then act to change the world. Start forming clubs. Get the word out.

My email, by the way, is jeffstonemusic@yahoo.com .

And Then...

Well, eventually, and I mean many years down the road, corporations will pay artists to be their dreamers. The art community will be able to support itself, and will flourish.

Or not. In that case, this indie arts model fails. But if it succeeds as well as I think it can, then it will have turned out that artists beat big business by simply being smarter and more talented. And then my argument that business should be using artists to map out company visions, campaigns, products, et cetera, holds.

The most likely scenario is that this doesn’t turn into a revolution, but succeeds moderately. I’ll take it. Join in, unless you think that the major labels will be knocking on your door soon because they have just suddenly decided to appreciate and support good music.

Make your own future, because likely no one else will, but remember the old adage that there is “power in numbers”. Network and stay indie.

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