Sunday, October 28, 2007
Are Rock Stars "Selling Out?"
With revenue from the sales of recordings down in recent years, rock stars are looking for other ways to make money. Sales of CDs are down because of downloading and file sharing. So some of them have gone back to school to take business classes, sold their songs to be used in TV commercials and have formed partnerships with corporations. Some say they should stay pure, caring only about their music and not "go commercial." The New York Times today had an article on this called If It’s Retail, Is It Still Rock?.
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2 comments:
Rock Stars and the rest of the music business did this to themselves. They ripped us off for years by giving us lackluster music. An example of that is having to buy a whole cd for 2 songs that we like. You wrote a blog on this a while back and it was on point. Sells will not be what they used to be on the account of file sharing and such, but if the Rock Stars increase incentive, maybe more people will respect that enough to buy the cd. I think they should branch out and do other things, because music groups aren't forever.
Is it really "pure" when you:
1. Hire a prominent lawyer as your agent.
2. Sign a lucrative contract with a large, obscenely rich record label
3. Allow said record label to "manage" you and your music.
4. Tour the world and bank the huge revenues from each concert.
5. You get the point...
If you wanted to stay "pure", isn't playing for tips on the Riverwalk closer to that?
What if.. you were to ask any aspiring teen-aged rock star why they're seeking the profession?
I'm not sure the response would be "Hey, I don't care about the money, I just want to share my ART with the world and stay pure doing it".
I think Madonna said it best:
“I’ve never wanted to think in a limited way, and with this new partnership, the possibilities are endless,”
I would only rephrase her quote this way to make it more intellectually honest:
“I’ve never wanted to think in a limited way (when it comes to making money), and with this new partnership, the possibilities (to make a gazillion more dollars) are endless,”
In my view, commercial partnerships, product licensing, or whichever label you wish to affix, is just the logical extension of a music career built on, and supported by "pure" commercial gain.
I say, Rock On!!!
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