Big business, we don’t need you!
And without the income generated by big name acts, how will record labels support and promote lesser-known artists? “If we keep moving down this particular route, companies will only release records that are sure home runs,” says Martin Talbot, editor of industry paper Music Week. “That means either stuff by established artists or unknown artists doing cover versions. There is the danger that it will no longer be worth it for companies to invest in new, up-and-coming artists. And if record companies don’t invest in them, who will?” From this article.
This quote comes from another article on Prince’s recent marketing tactic. What’s the fallacy? It doesn’t matter whether record companies are going to support and promote lesser-known acts! Hell, it’s better for those bands if they don’t. We live in an age where artists can do it on their own, even on a shoestring budget. Nobody needs the third party taking the lion’s share of the profits.
Talbot is clinging to the old assumption that a band needs a big record deal in order to do anything worth doing.
Of course, the music industry is reacting out of fear to this great success, as per its usual patterns:
“The Artist formerly known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores,” said Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, referring to a period in the 1990s when the singer famously stopped using his name to protest a binding record deal.
From this article.
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