This is an intelligent essay on the state of the "music industry." With all the digital rights management (DRM) {stuff} being foisted upon us be record companies these days and the demise of good radio stations, it's useful to remember that the money is made by the record companies, not the artists and writers. Most of us probably like lots of music you can't find on commercial radio any more. Anyway, enjoy:
Perhaps thereâo[dot accent]s a more obvious reason country music sales are down: They cut off the long tail.  BusinessWeek[base ']s Jon Fine explores reasons why country music sales are down this year. In it, he includes this humorous quip:
[base "]One music executive who is based south of the Mason-Dixon line couldn[base ']t resist pulling the leg of a Yankee reporter asking questions about the country biz from his desk in Manhattan. This gent[base ']s deadpan explanation for country[base ']s staying power: [base "]The South is still suffering the effects of a Civil War that destroyed its infrastructure and left it economically 100 years behind the industrialized North. Therefore, fewer people living in Tennessee can afford computers and iPods.[per thou]
Fortunately, Jon didn[base ']t bite on that one.
Those who have read this blog for a long time know that, while I[base ']m a fan of some wonderful music that is created in Nashville (and Austin, Tex. and all along the eastern seaboard), it[base ']s rarely the music one hears on commercial country radio stations. If, as the commercial country music cartel* has, one creates a situation where a narrow playlist of music on owner-concentrated commercial radio stations is combined with a distribution channel that is being slowly constricted into one retail channel, Wal-Mart, you[base ']ve created an industry that guarantees the light at the end of a tunnel is an approaching train.
Here[base ']s another interesting tidbit from Fine[base ']s report:
[base "]A study conducted by Edison Media Research and Arbitron (ARB ) in January found that respondents who cite country as their favorite radio format are significantly less likely than the average consumer to listen to online radio. This is reflected in digital album sales for the first half of [OE]07. Country sold under 5% of its albums that way. Rock-related genres sold nearly twice that percentage; even iPod-unfriendly classical did better with downloads.
If someone has read Chris Anderson[base ']s writings on long tail economics, the factors reflected in Fine[base ']s article yell out: the country music industry is cutting off its long tail. By focusing its playlist and distribution strategy on that music that requires real shelf space and real trucks and real warehouses to distribute, the country music industry is perpetuating an anachronistic business model that is so dependent on [base "]the blockbuster,[per thou] that the entire industry[base ']s sales trends swing wildly based solely on the sales of a few blockbusters from a half-dozen mega-stars.
Or do they?
Perhaps there[base ']s another way to view the country music industry, one that actually does account for a long tail. I[base ']m guessing [~] and this is merely a guess [~] that the syndicated research reflected in Jon Fine[base ']s trend story is focused entirely on the core-commercial country music numbers. If you extend the demand curve of country music so the line includes the long tail of bluegrass, Americana [a term that includes a broad range of [base "]roots[per thou] music, including traditional country, the blues, etc.], folk, independent [base "]alternative country,[per thou] gospel-country, old-time fiddle, etc., I wonder what the sales numbers will reveal?
However, [base "]country music powers-that-be[per thou] seem hellbent on controlling what music should appear along the [base "]country music demand curve.[per thou] Fine, through the quote of an analyst, displays how the [base "]country-music community[per thou] (translation: cartel) tries to pretend the long tail doesn[base ']t exist [~] at least, not in their world:
[base "][OE]The country-music community has always been determined not to fragment,[base '] says Sean Ross, a vice-president at Edison Media Research. Commercially, this has exasperated less traditional performers, as Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt would attest. (If Van Zandt were still alive, that is.) But it also has ensured that the schism that struck rock radio in the early 1990s[base ']Äîwhen stations were faced with the binary choice of not playing the likes of Nirvana and alienating younger listeners or playing Nirvana and losing their traditional constituency[base ']Äîhasn[base ']t hit the country mainstream yet.[per thou]
They may NOT have wanted to fragment, but consider that, in addition to a trade association called [base "]The Country Music Association,[per thou] in Nashville you[base ']ll also find trade associations called, The Americana Music Association and the International Bluegrass Music Association and dozens of other associations of [base "]fragmented[per thou] country music niches.
In other words, the commercial country-music cartel defines country music in terms of a narrow demand curve, while, in reality, there[base ']s probably a very large country music market if one is not blinded by how the [base "]country-music community[per thou] defines it.
*It appears to me that in the [base "]official[per thou] country music industry, a cartel exists that includes big-labels, big-radio, big-publishers, big-booking agencies, big-retailers, big-artists, big performance rights agencies and some others I[base ']m no doubt leaving out. It does not include independent labels or artists, small live venues, or, for that matter, most anything [base "]not Nashville.[per thou]
Technorati Tags: long tail, music, nashville, country music
[rexblog.com: Rex Hammock's weblog]
7:36:45 PM 
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