It’s All About Babies and Bathwater Really!

It’s All About Babies and Bathwater Really! - Music2MyEars

There are days when I wonder who took the music out of the music industry! It’s a real roller coaster ride at the best of times but when even the music channels on the radio are full of opinionated chat and everyone’s iPod seems to be playing nothing but hi-hat I do wonder – why?

Of course then I turn up the monitors in the studio, work through the instruments channel by channel and as the music starts to take shape the sun comes out from behind the clouds and I realise what I came here for.

I like the moments when I hear a new artist that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck or go to a gig that makes the earth move.

It’s a fight though these days – too many people trying to find the next big thing and hundreds of displaced marketing people running around like headless chickens bleating about ‘product placement opportunities’.

The doors that this chaos might open though – that’s what gives me a warm feeling of possibility, things to be tried, - creativity rewards the brave.

The best part of being ‘in the business’ has to be the community. I share a studio with a couple of other guys, in a complex with other similar rooms and several other studios of all types. I’m always bumping into people on the stairs and sometimes simply going to make a cup of tea becomes a major social outing!

This is where the heart of the music industry lies, this is where it gets stripped back to its core, amongst those of us who are doing it not just talking about it.

I have great optimism for the future of our industry – the opportunities are immense and the technology to make them happen is easily available – but what we are very short on is good imaginative ideas and entrepreneurial spirit.

There is a tendency in these fast moving times to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ in the blind pursuit of the newest model. It happens with cars, iPods, movie stars, TV stars, Pop stars (and even spouses).

New developments should make us more able to use the good practices more effectively whilst replacing the things that didn’t work. We should increase our understanding of what is available and then make informed judgements about how to use the best tools creatively.

Most of all what we need right now are new dynamic managers and visionary A&R people who can create and support imaginative business models – what we don’t need is global, multi national conglomerate media mammoths. I’m optimistic that because they no longer have the strength to crush everything in their path that the young hopefuls I see coming out of the colleges wanting to make their career in music have the world at their feet.

Music2MyEars © 2008