Oh Glenn, Don’t Log Onto Twitter Tonight
Granted, Glenn Branca’s editorial on the NYTimes Opinionator blog is probably a little more nuanced than we’re all making it out to be on the Twitter. I think he’s actually saying it’s hard to make a buck by making new music, which is probably true. But that’s how it is. Everything has changed. Musicians have to change their business model if they want to make a living at it. I think most musicians who are making a living at it do it through licensing and touring rather than selling records.
Yes, it sucks when orchestras go out of business and jazz musicians stop innovating, but I doubt either of those things is going to happen, because there is no “end” of music, just like there was no “end” of railroads or trans-oceanic shipping. There was just an end to their domination of particular niches of business.
The way people choose to be entertained en masse is always in flux. People who want to make money by making music are going to follow trends and do what they think people want to hear. But the avant garde has never been about making money, Glenn. It’s about creating something new. Artists will make art even if they have to work a day job while they do it.
During the 20th century there was an economic bubble that allowed music to be sold to large audiences due to the ability to easily mass-produce copies of recorded music at low cost to the producers. Instead of passing on the cost savings to the customer, the music companies got greedy and padded their sales margins by hundreds of percents due to their ability to control distribution. When they lost the ability to control distribution of their product, the prices they could charge plunged and thousands of people lost their ability to make a living off the product. It’s sad for those people, but that’s how it goes.
So Glenn, don’t conflate the end of your ability to make tons of money from your product with the end of humanity’s drive to create art.
