It’s no secret that the music industry has whiplash from the ferocity of the speed in which it has changed in the last two decades alone. Change is not entirely a negative thing, in fact sometimes it can be refreshing and even necessary to ensure survival. However, certain aspects of how record labels operate are ensuring the opposite of survival, if anything, they’re encouraging the death of the artist.
With the introduction of the internet, the music scene was inevitably going to change forever. Before online streaming, musicians could rely on the sale of physical records for a somewhat steady income, especially if they had a hit on their hands. Following the introduction of major streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, smaller artists found themselves faced with a new dilemma; it’s now easier than ever to upload music into the world, but it’s harder than ever to make a profit.
Whilst studying digital marketing under a Sony Music internship, I found myself somewhat perplexed by the way in which the system works with up-and-coming musicians. Quite frankly, I became depressed hearing “we sign artists for one or two singles, depending on the commercial success they can generate.” Understandably, major labels need profit and an income to continue pouring money into studio time, digital promotion and the printing of physical records, but is signing an artist on the basis of releasing just one single ethical? Imagine a world in which Pink Floyd were contracted to release one song, we may never have been blessed with 1973’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’.
Perhaps it isn’t solely the record label that’s to blame, with the mammoth success of social media platforms like Tiktok, almost anyone can create a catchy track and have it streamed millions of times overnight alone. Record labels would likely hemorrhage money if they gave an album deal to every Tiktok star with a popular song, especially with the current social media climate that heavily promotes moving onto the next trend so rapidly. A study in the journal ‘Computers in Human Behaviour’ concluded that using apps like Tiktok for just 20 minutes a day can lead to a “significant decrease” in both memory and attention span. Could it be us, the consumers, that are the problem? Do we not appreciate the magic of a 90 minute record anymore?
It’s relatively easy to blame various parties for their role in the disintegration of true art in the music industry, in general, the ease we have in accessing musicians personal lives through social media has eradicated the mystique and anonymity of ‘the superstar’. Nowadays, it feels as though there’s a select group of artists that never leave the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, having the benefit of financial stability to pay for radio spins and the top priority in Spotify algorithms. It may be time to accept that we live in an age of commercial success triumphing over artistic expression, encouraging labels to invest in only the artists it expects to generate revenue for them.
Another downside to smaller singers signing to major record labels is that the artist often gets crushed financially from any profit they make from their work, if you decide to release a record today for example, you could expect between 50 and 90 percent of your earnings to be taken by your label. Whilst at least 85% of music that is released is owned by major labels, there has been a significant increase in musicians deciding to release music independently (with varying levels of success).
This isn’t the first time in history that the single has dominated the trajectory of an artist’s career, in fact in the 1950s it was very much all about the single. Until the 1980s bringing us the invention of the CD, records had a capacity of about 22 minutes per side, which quite certainly restricted the length of albums for many artists. The issue with this fixation on singles, which are often short in length, is that there’s pressure and suppression of musical creativity and there’s already data to substantiate that the average song length has declined steadily since the 1990s, from four minutes to around three. On the flip side, artists no longer need to worry themselves about having ‘filler tracks’ on their albums, meaning they end up crafting work of a finer quality, which we’re always led to believe takes precedence over quantity anyway.
What does all of this mean in reality? In basic terms, It simply means that the music business is continuing to travel around on the infinite eternal cycle that it’s always been on, in fact, I’d quite confidently place money on a resurgence of longer album duration by the end of the 2020s decade. For years, people scoffed at the possibility of vinyl ever being a profitable form of media again, just for it to slowly become the best selling form of physical music media, surpassing its arch-nemesis, the CD. The music industry is not dissimilar to the fashion world, trends and sounds have a habit of fading into oblivion before making fierce comebacks when people least expect it. The only issue here is that if labels persist in signing artists to single only record deals, the importance of a cohesive body of work could soon be lost and alarmingly, this type of record deal is slowly becoming the new norm, for European artists at least.
It’s imperative to note that social media has played an unintentional role in eroding the bubble of anonymity that musicians once utilised for success. For example, Michael Jackson is an example of someone who possessed the most fame an artist could acquire, he had the type of star power that felt untouchable to the average human being. Maybe for the better, this type of celebrity no longer exists in such an extreme capacity and with newer artists often only ever having the opportunity to create commercial Tiktok-friendly singles, it isn’t likely to exist again. The age of stardom diminishing can be seen as positive or negative depending on your perception, however it’s already apparent that single only record deals are generating an influx of ‘one-hit wonders’, which will likely devastate the artists who dream of longevity in their respective careers. Conforming to a label’s formula of attracting commercial success also means musicians run the risk of releasing music that will begin to sound just like everybody else’s; a quality like individuality is integral to attracting listeners, but the fear of failure will undoubtedly persuade music bosses to take less risks and restrict creative freedom even further. (And Freddie Mercury thought he had a hard time in ’75 when trying to release the seven-minute single ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, good luck trying that today!)
Finally, while record labels are indirectly ensuring the death of lengthy album duration, they may unintentionally be causing the rebirth of the artist; when musicians are pushed into a box or asked to conform, there will always be a small percentage of people that rebel… and rebellion quite often leads to revolution.
