“My, my Miss American Pie” I think that we are fast approaching “the day the music died”.
In 1971 Don Mclean released the critically acclaimed ‘American Pie’. Despite mostly being quite an upbeat song that the whole family will bellow, windows down driving their chevy to the levy. The harsh truth that Mr Mclean was trying to tell the world is that ever since the tragic death of Buddy Holly, music has died and will never be the same. I won’t go into the fact that this song detailing how MUSIC has died is what accelerated his MUSIC career. Although, thankfully for someone born nearly 40 years after the plane crash that brought Buddy Holly’s incredible life to an abrupt end, I am pleased to say that Don Mclean was wrong! Music did not die in 1959, but music could die in 2022 if we are not careful!
We have probably all heard stories of poor musician’s playing concerts hoping to get that lucky break. I mean Ed Sheeran, whether you like him or not he left home at 17 to sofa surf his way through London until Jamie Foxx invited him to stay at his home. It was only after 3 years from departing Halifax Ed Sheeran released his debut album that catapulted him to be worth nearly $200 million. As a music fan it’s a great humbling story, but it has the fundamental problem that anyone can do it. Not right now at least…
There was once a cycle that kept musicians self-sustained and financially able to do what they love and entertain the world. Play shows, make records, sell records, repeat. With the modern world of music streaming essentially, you’re removing the selling of records. Let’s put it into perspective, we all remember the 79p songs on iTunes, right? As a successful upcoming artist, you sell 10,000 singles and you get £7900. Whereas now if you were to get 10,000 streams on Spotify for example you will earn the life changing sum of around £44. To receive that £7900 through Spotify streams alone an artist would need about 1,800,000 listens. Which is equivalent to selling out The O2 Arena 90 times. But don’t worry everyone, Katy Perry has bought out another mindless piece of pop that is the same as her last 5 mindless pieces of pop. Even before COVID struck music in the UK had fallen into an uninspired coma of the famous staying famous no matter what they release, and the undiscovered staying undiscovered indefinitely.
Don’t get me wrong I have loved some of the music bought out recently, Fontaines DC are revolutionary, Harry Styles has mastered pop tunes, even Eurovision had some decent artists on recently! But nothing sticks, there is rarely any progression in an artist’s style because it’s not what gets the listens on streaming sites. How will we ever move forward with music? How on earth can we keep music alive if it’s almost impossible for a new genre to stick? Where’s the excitement gone? Music was once the way to define a generation of people. 60s is the psychedelic hippies, 70s the rebellious punks, oh and the 2010s/20s was every possible reincarnation of previous months number 1.
Article by Ben Reade.