Wired 14.07: The Rise and Fall of the Hit
On March 21, 2000, Jive Records released No Strings Attached, the much-anticipated second album from NSync. The album debuted strong. It sold 1.1 million copies its first day and 2.4 million in the first week, making it the fastest-selling album ever. It went on to top the charts for eight weeks, moving 10 million copies by the end of the year. The music industry had cracked the commercial code. With NSync, a pop-idol boy band fronted by the charismatic Justin Timberlake, Jive had perfected the elusive formula for making a hit. In retrospect it was so obvious: What worked for the Monkees could now be replicated on an industrial scale. It was all about looks and scripted personalities. The music itself, which was outsourced to a small army of professionals (there are 60 people credited with creating No Strings Attached), hardly mattered.
Labels were on a roll. Between 1990 and 2000, album sales had doubled, the fastest growth rate in the history of the industry. Half of the top-grossing 100 albums ever were sold during that decade.But even as NSync was celebrating its huge launch, the ground was shifting. Total music sales fell during 2000, for only the second time in a decade. Over the next few years, even after the economy recovered, the music industry continued to suffer. Something fundamental had changed. Sales fell 2.5 percent in 2001, 6.8 percent in 2002, and just kept dropping. By the end of 2005 (down another 8.3 percent), album sales in the US had declined 20 percent from their 1999 peak. Twenty-one of the all-time top 100 albums were released in the five-year period between 1996 and 2000. The next five years produced only two – Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me and OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below – ranking 79 and 91, respectively.
It’s altogether possible that NSync’s first-week record may never be broken. The band could go down in history not just for launching Timberlake but also for marking the peak of the hit bubble – the last bit of manufactured pop to use the 20th century’s fine-tuned marketing machine to its fullest before the gears were stripped and the wheels fell off.
Music itself hasn’t gone out of favor – just the opposite. There has never been a better time to be an artist or a fan, and there has never been more music made or listened to. But the traditional model of marketing and selling music no longer works. The big players in the distribution system – major record labels, retail giants – depend on huge, platinum hits. These days, though, there are not nearly enough of those to support the industry in the style to which it has become accustomed. We are witnessing the end of an era.
I remember buying tons of CDs, and then the music industry started putting DRM junk on the CDs. At first it wasn’t too prelevent, I’d download a tune from Napster… decide I liked it and buy the album. But the Record industry was greedy and decided to put in more and more DRM. And soon they started suing people young and old, living and dead. So like many I started for a while to just not buy. And when itunes came out I bought only songs I wanted, hoping that the artist got more money from this then with Album Sales since there was less cost involved. But according to Weird Al that turns out not to be true… since the industry wants to squeeze that dry also. Do I hate the artist for this? Hell no, in fact I still listen to music a lot on broadcast and online radio. And I still buy albums from time to time now… just I buy them either used or on major sale (figuring the industry has to pay the artist per album no matter the cost.)
Reading the Wired article they hit upon a lot of important points, and it makes me wonder if the industry is as needed/important then they used to be. I own hundreds of CDs… but I never listen to them directly… I’ve ripped them all and am using my ipod or the computers as MP3 servers. If the artists went with alternative labels, distribution systems… I wonder if they could be just as successful.
Continue Reading Wired Article. . .
Tags: Financial, Interesting, Music
