Record stores cannot afford to stay open. Electronic Dance Music events attract a frighteningly severe level of attention from authorities yet, more often than not, fail to be financially solvent, eventually being forced to give way to the Hip-Hop and Reggaeton behemoths. And finally, that age-old question: Do people really think that music should be free, or worse yet, a commodity? File sharing has hurt all corners of the music scene, but the dance music scene was hit particularly hard and is indeed still recovering. Independent Dance record labels don’t have deep pockets, nor do they have the corporate sponsorship that Metallica, Britney or Madonna and the “big 5” record labels enjoy. So a decline in sales has more of a ripple effect in the small pond of the Dance music scene. Additionally, the damage caused by file sharing does not lie simply in lost record sales, but also in lost marketability. Declining record sales will not convince a record label exec to sign and invest a lot of money in a DJ or a Producer. As a result, Producers and DJs become less able to create music for a large audience and the availability of House and Dance music may diminish greatly. To catch up, there had to be an across the board (read: across all genres) acceptance of the modern technology that could not simply be “uninvented.” In order to catch up, in order for artists (remember them?) to start making money again, there had to be an evolution from the Vinyl-exclusive format of dance music. Historically, by gearing dance music towards DJs and those select few “in the know”, a large consumer population was excluded and alienated. They eventually turned to file sharing, armed with the rationale of “it’s not available in stores so I’m not hurting anyone.” Additionally, it is worthy to note that history may very well be repeating itself right now. This could well be the 1980s after Disco crashed down from the heady heights of commercial success to full-blown rejection. Disco met such a vicious backlash because the consumers found themselves in the middle of a saturated market -- with no quality assurance, anything and everything was given the disco treatment, often with the hopes of making a quick buck. Today, greed is not the only reason the market has become flooded. Technology, you see, has become a curse as well as a blessing. The wide availability of recording and production equipment (and its reasonably affordable price) has made every other music fan a bedroom DJ/Producer. There’s no need to worry about high manufacturing costs or even paying a promotions staff when you can simply upload the your tracks to your website, or fileshare them with friends who will pass them on to their friends, and so on. Even starting your own independent record label is not the lofty task it once was. The effect that is now being seen is that, faced with a diluted market of average quality or worse music, the consumer feels this music should be free. All these factors have lead to a sharp increase in the quantity of releases on record store shelves. With a no filter for quality, it becomes difficult for the casual fan (and even some professional DJs) to sift through a hundred or more new releases each week for three or four good records. Additionally, as shelf life decreases, even the quality records don’t stay on the shelves as long as they used to. So, the last 7 years have been Sodom and Gomorrah: Free music, more advanced technology, music piracy is perfectly acceptable! But let’s look at one consequence that goes beyond the mere fact of lawsuits, fines and declining record sales: our shortening attention spans. (You’re still reading… good for you! There may be hope for your attention at least.) During the early-mid 1990s, club-goers and radio-mix-show-listeners would hear unreleased tracks months, even up to a year before they saw a release. Even a large majority of the material that was released was so underground that most people wouldn’t know where to find it. They would have to pick out specific identifying qualities of the track in an effort to track it down (“oh, you know, that track with the Elmo-sounding voice on it!” or “it sounded like a male vocal, but maybe it had been pitched way, wayy down – I don’t even know!!”). Today, after dancing to a record in a club, you can get home as the sun is rising, flip on your computer, connect to your favorite file-sharing program and, without much difficulty, find and download that track. But the process of producing and releasing records hasn’t quite caught up to that speed yet. By the time a record sees a proper release, people have already been dancing to it in the clubs, hearing it in online DJ mixes and downloading it to their iPods for the past six months. At this point, very few people really feel the need to actually buy that record to support the label and the artist and to ensure that the quality music they love will continue to be available. And while we’re at it, take a look around the music scene as a whole (and I mean any genre of music here): you might notice that independent dance music is not the only scene that is suffering. Go to any city with a mall and/or a handful of national chain music stores in the nearby vicinity. Now, look for the independent music shop. It’s kinda hard to find, eh? Whether you’re digging in crates for old jazz records, early 80’s punk or new wave or an old Chicago house track, there are increasingly fewer stores that can afford to offer the music lover this luxury. The so-called death of dance music is not being rung in by the tolling of the digital download bell. To put it in overly-dramatic terms, the grim-reaper has already walked among us – illegal downloads. Yes, it was a lot of fun to get music for free and rationalize that “This music isn’t available anywhere else,” and “I’m only using these downloads as a sampling device to see if I want to buy it”. And yes, it seems preachy to say that illegal downloads take money out of artists pockets and food from their family’s mouths. It does not only that but also deprives the rest of the world of this music that we all supposedly love. Going beyond the consumer, the technology of legal download sites has made the global dance music scene smaller, a more close-knit community that is accessible even to kids in the Deep South, Industrial Midwest or even the Alaskan Tundra. This is overwhelmingly good in that it ensures the continued vitality of dance music. People complain that legal downloads and CDJs are forcing the old fashioned record stores out of business. Perhaps they are to a degree, but think about the kid who has no access to this kind of music (since you’d be hard-pressed to find that rare David Morales mix of Mariah Carey at your average Best Buy, Sam Goody and Wal Mart) and has to rely on buying records from Ebay or downloading MP3s from a variety of legal download sites. When a kid in Indiana or Kansas gets bitten by the dance music bug, whether he’s seeking out vinyl or burning mixes onto CDs, this is someone who is going to dig as deep as he can to get to this music; listening and learning about its history, and just about jumping out of his skin when he finds old 12” dance records in the back room of his college’s radio station. These are people who will ultimately keep dance music alive, whether it is in its original underground home or at the height of commercial success before being relegated back to the underground once again. That is why, with House becoming more widely available, we have to do our part to truly show our support. Every legitimate sale, be it traditional vinyl or CD or the less-tangible MP3 file, shows the world (including those corporate shot-callers and their purse strings) that House music is worth supporting. This will insure House music’s future availability and vitality; and who would want to argue with that? |
