Chase Barrett
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chase Barrett 5/4/2020 P. Schuette Senior Thesis The Natural Selection Of The Music Industry The progression of the music industry over the past seven or so decades has been so incredibly complex and taken so many unexpected twists throughout its lifespan, that it's truly impossible to set a defined point where the music industry became the modern boheimith that it is today. Throughout this essay, the word “Evolution” will be used a multitude of times to describe how different sectors of the music industry have changed and developed, but the more accurate way to think about it is more so as “Natural Selection”. Because that truly is the most accurate way to describe how the music industry has become what it is today. Through a repetitive process of self cannibalization, innovation, and then subsequent perseverance, the music industry has seen many different forms of revenue dependence. From the ways we consume music, to the ways we experience it, the industry has never sat in stasis for long. It's always rewarded forward thinking, and that is what will be attempted within this thesis. An attempt to see with accuracy what trends and changes are just around the corner and beyond. By identifying how trends arise, and how the industry then reacts to those trends, we can try and paint a picture of what commercial music consumption and live performance, specifically in regards to the music festival, will look like over the course of the next decade. The modern image of the music festival is very far from what they looked like at their point of origin. One could say the music festival goes as far back as the Pythian Games in Ancient Greece, which were a precursor to the Olympics, a “A general celebration of all things beautiful, it included a day of musical competitions.” (Humphrys 1). There was then The Three Choirs Festival in the 18th century, in which fans of Rossi, Beethoven and Mozart all convened in the cathedrals of England to experience their work. From an American standpoint, the practice didn’t make its way to the states until the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, which was first held in July of 1954. The Newport Jazz Festival was truly unique because it was the first large scale event like this that didn’t have any religious connotations to the music or the gathering. It was the first truly diverse, commercial gathering of popular artists to perform their work in the context that we know it today, and it featured truly legendary artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gilespie. But it was the next decade, the 1960’s, when the music festival became popularized and sought after as a “can’t miss experience”, in part due to the high energy and showmanship of the music that had been popularized at that point. This first occurred at California’s Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, where legends such as Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane all converged onto one stage to provide a crowd of 8,500 attendees (in a venue that should have been capped at no more than 7,000) with a life-changing musical experience. The ladder three artists mentioned would also go on to perform at what is known as the pinnacle of the music festival, the crowned jewel of hippy culture that all festivals are striving to achieve to this day, Woodstock 1969. But despite the incessant praise that Woodstock receives for being a mecca of cultural celebration, so many people seem to forget that Woodstock was a deeply flawed and dangerous event, one that likely shouldn’t have taken place at all. Local authorities were told to expect a crowd of around 50,000 attendees, when in reality the organizers sold over 180,000 tickets, while expecting around 200,000 people to ultimately attend the festival. Even these estimations were drastically underestimated, as more than 400,000 people attended the festival, most of which snuck in for free, and an estimated one million more people were stuck in gridlock traffic throughout upstate New York. This traffic caused cancelations and almost got Graham Nash and Dallas Taylor of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young killed in a nearby helicopter crash. On top of all of this, the iconic “3 Days of Peace and Music” slogan that was featured on the Woodstock posters could certainly be considered false advertising, as the attendees we’re just as hungry for actual nourishment as they were for guitar solos and LSD. The food shortages at Woodstock were truly severe, with most traditional food vendors declining to work the festival due to how gargantuan of a task it was. Just two weeks before the event took place, event organizer Michael Lang hired a small concession company called “Food For Love'' to run the food stands for the festival, and of course they were quickly overrun and forced to gouge their prices, much to the dismay of the attendees who believed this was against the anti-capitalistic spirit of the festival. “They charged $1 for hot dogs when the going rate was a quarter” (Spiegel 1). The Sullivan County sheriff had to utilize an army helicopter to perform a tactical airdrop into the festival, an airdrop that reportedly included ten thousand sandwiches, canned goods, fruit, and water. One of the most famous staples of the diet of the 1970’s Hippy was born out of this shortage as well, that being Granola. As a very cheap and accessible food that was able to be gathered in great abundance with the amount of farms nearby, Food For Love handed out thousands of Dixie Cups filled with granola in an attempt to try and provide the attendees, many of which has gone days without any food (while high on a litany of drugs), with some form of legitimate nourishment. All things considered, one could be surprised that the situation didn’t become more dire and violent than it did. There was one instance of a concession booth being burned down late at night, but overall the main reason the festival didn’t become a legitimate hellscape (like the festival's 1999 successor did) was due to the attendees being the ones to deliver on the promise of “3 Days of Peace and Music”. People shared what little food and water they had, and embraced the message that was at the core of the festival's branding. It was an incredibly complex situation to understand at the time, especially for the media. “For example, the newspaper coverage of the Woodstock festival “flipped” from 16 August 1969, when the New York Times described the festival as ‘An outrageous episode’, and in the UK, The Times asked ‘what kind of culture is it that can produce so colossal a mess?’, to the day after when the New York Times suddenly viewed Woodstock as ‘essentially a phenomenon of innocence’ and even as a ‘declaration of independence’.” (McKay: 34). Despite how lucky the organizers were that the festival didn’t become a legitimate humanitarian disaster, and despite the fact that the festival would eventually become regarded as an iconic moment in the history of live music and musical culture, the town of Bethel New York was left completely ravaged, and the organizers were stuck with 1.3 million dollars of debt in the aftermath. One could assume that that’s solely because of the disorganization and lofty expectations of the festival, but in reality, the model of the modern music festival has yet to become legitimately efficient from a financial standpoint to this day. Over the next few decades multiple festivals were able to establish themselves as legitimate annual events that owned their regional markets, and eventually garnered international attention, such as Lollapalooza in 1991 and Coachella in 1999. Each of which have managed to stay in business over multiple decades through great marketing and willingness to adapt the musical identity of the festival to stay in line with what the masses of people want to see live that given year. Both started off as predominantly Rock / Alternative fests, and have grown into predominantly Hip Hop / Pop / Electronic festivals, while still trying to check as many boxes as they can. But while these two offspring of the goliaths known as AEG and Livenation have managed to maintain consistent sellouts and hold their own in their respective markets, the 2000’s and 2010’s saw the birth of many mid-size and large festivals, as well as the death of almost just as many. The simple fact of the matter is that just like with the traditional live music venue, turning a profit in this business off of the ticket sales alone is essentially impossible. The goal with both venues and festivals is to get people through the door, and then make your profits off of the food, drink, and merchandise. This is the system that truly makes live music viable, as the price of operating a venue and paying the artists far outweighs any revenue from a reasonable ticket asking price. But with the festival, there's infinitely more risk involved, as the majority of the planning of the festival is made up of writing checks that you can’t recoup your losses for until a hectic 3 day period in which success is essential, or else the festival will most likely become bankrupt. “Industry insiders point to funding challenges, increasingly stringent health and safety requirements (which are now only going to become worse than organizers could have ever imagined), media scrutiny and the difficulty of securing high profile acts for an affordable fee as key factors that are making it more difficult to pull off a successful event.” (Marriage 1).