New Recording Artist
by Brian Beshore
Published on this site: August 30th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
The big recording label's woes over the digital revolution
are only going to get worse. For a decade or longer, the major
recording companies have grown rigidly opposed to anything
or any idea that is truly new.
Whatever innovations they have belatedly begun, they have
been pushed into for the protection of their own greedy interests.
Without the internet and the digital revolution, all the major
players would still be plugging along with business as usual.
Let us examine this sordid case.
Record companies have gone from using the same tired old
formulas that worked Yesterday, to actually believing that
they could engineer a group and, through pure hype, cause
the general public to believe it's good. This attitude is
evidenced with the recent legal troubles of Sony, over bribing
and paying DJs to give their artists air-play.
This sort of thing is bound to happen when a general consensus
of history only reaches back to about last week. People think
they know history, but history is distorted by the media.
Here's a story to demonstrate what I mean. Johann Strauss
Jr. was known as the "Waltz King." He wrote the
Blue Danube Waltz. How square can you get, right? Well, he
was a very popular guy. When he came to America, he was idolized
by the ladies. They all flocked backstage to get a lock of
his hair. This became such a problem that Johann resorted
to clipping locks of hair from his dog for fear of going bald.
Now, doesn't this smack of Beatlemania? Strauss never even
paid young girls to scream at his concert or had his agent
call in to local radio stations to request his music be played!
My main point of all this is, that if you really look back
in history, the real big successes were the ones who took
risks and did something new and different, and is this likely
to happen with our current star system? We all know the answer
to that. What we get is only new in name.
The really galling thing is the way the middleman mentality
strives to re-assert itself on the internet by holding up
the argument that the "artist" deserves to get their
royalties. I couldn't agree more! The only hole in this argument
is that any new recording artist who signs on with a major
record label is already getting ripped off!
Brian Beshore is the former lead singer for the Jabberwocky.
He attended the Peaobody Music School in Baltimore. He now
runs a website devoted exclusively to new artists; http://www.dizzyobrian.com
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