I don’t usually take music industry prognostications from Dennis DeYoung (formerly of Styx), but in a recent interview in Classic Rock Revisited, DeYoung made a series of statements about the death of rock that sound convincing — if not plausible when you consider the state of the genre and the music business.
The business model that supports big tours with lights, sets, video, and all the bells and whistles people pay a lot of money to see is in its waning years. Big acts like Swift, Gaga, and Beyoncé can’t sustain that level of “show” into their silver hair years because sales of albums don’t bring in the amount of money needed to support tours of that scale. And as “old farts” like DeYoung’s generation die off — and the younger “big acts” have to compete for dwindling dollars — it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Economics to see that if there’s not much money coming in, there won’t be much to spend on a big show. It’s a scenario that’s possible given certain trends that have happened — or are happening. Consider the following:
- Music is more or less free now.
- Millions of songs are available to anyone with a computer, phone, or tablet. But 98% of that music will most likely go unheard.
- Guitar manufacturers are seeing sales dwindle — with Gibson filing for bankruptcy.
- Big Box music stores like Guitar Center are teetering on bankruptcy.
- Streaming audio services pay a pittance to most artists in streaming deals.
- The price of concert tickets isn’t going down.
- Radio isn’t the tastemaker or gatekeeper it used to be.
- Tech innovations have all but eliminated the need to master a musical instrument — or even be fairly competent — if you want to write songs or rap over a beat.
There are always opportunities in times of disruption and change. People who see the “Death of Rock” sometimes can’t see what lies beyond a paradigm that peaked in the 1970s. That’s understandable because even those who like to make predictions aren’t sure what’s going to come next. For the present, however, it’s clear the infrastructure that supported rock (writ large) is fragmented and in various stages of change. And, you know, it doesn’t take much convincing to know that it’s really difficult for a restaurant — where one charges patrons for meals — to stay in business in a neighborhood where food of equal quality is readily available for free. In a way, that’s what artists are competing with. There’s a whole lotta “free” out there, and too many people are conditioned to expect music to always be free. How do you make a living in that kind of paradigm? The answer is the artist isn’t the winner in this new way of doing business — others are. It’s a lot like life during the Gold Rush. Those who made the most money during that era weren’t the miners — it was the sellers of the supplies and those who operated the modes of transportation to and from The Golden State. They were the ones that got paid first. These days, it’s the record companies, concert promoters, and ticket sellers who get their cut first before an artist takes the stage or has an album released. None of this is new, of course. These parts of the music industry have seemingly always gotten the better deal from an artist’s success. However, now we’re at a point where the non-creative side of the industry is squeezing what little is left out of a business model that, as DeYoung pointed out, “… a guy like me, who is 64-years-old, and plays 50 shows a year, and has an audience, will [not] be possible in the future.”
