Segarini: The Rock Files: Fixing the Mess We’re In Part Three

As traditional sources of income continue to dwindle and in some cases, disappear, the music industries have displayed an odd reaction to the problems they all face. Do they increase the quality of their services? Do they lower expectations and begin to rebuild according to the new playing field brought to bear by the popularity and continued growth of the internet? Do they work together in consort to set new goals and create new avenues of income, sustainable future growth, and recapture the trust and respect of their customers, listeners, employees, and the public at large? No. They fight amongst themselves for a bigger share of what money there is, fire their creative resources, raise prices, and blame everyone but themselves for the problems they have. Well boys and girls, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.

We’re All Bozos on This Bus: Greed has always been one of the driving forces behind the scenes in the music business. Captains of Industry saw the scads of money people were willing to spend on popular music and either started labels, became managers, or developed their skills in entertainment law to harvest the huge amounts of money being generated by boys and girls and men and women whose skills lie in creating songs, playing instruments, and singing from the heart, not in math, reading the fine print, or economics. The really smart ones simply bought existing successful labels and artists and started cashing the cheques. As an example, WEA (Warner, Elektra, Atlantic) was the coming together of 3 labels and their subsidiaries (Reprise, Nonsuch, and Atco, to name a few) all of which came from disparate backgrounds. Warner’s was started in 1958 as a division of Warner Brothers Motion Picture Studios, after one of their contract actors, Tab Hunter, had a hit single on Dot records (which was owned by Lawrence Welk). Not long afterward, Frank Sinatra formed Reprise Records to gain more control over his own recordings, as well as release other artists. Reprise was run by another giant in the music business, Mo Ostin. Elektra was formed in the 50’s by Jac Holzman with the help of Paul Rothschild, and Atlantic (formed in 1947) was the Ertegun Brothers and Jerry Wexler and would eventually include the Stax/Volt family. Warners (by now owned by Seven Arts, another movie studio) was well financed, but Elektra started out with a Leadbelly album recorded in prison on a tape recorder taken there on the back of Holzman’s Vespa, and sold in his Greenwich Village record shop, and Atlantic started out selling their records out of the trunk of Ahmet Ertegun’s car. It was all about the music…and the money followed. (Pictured here: Ahmet, far right, with Lester Sill, Jerry Wexler, and The Coasters)

Eventually, in 1969, WEA was purchased by the Kinney Group. Their background? Among other things, Funeral Parlours and parking lots. Warner Music Group, the current configuration of these labels is now run by Canadian liquor magnate (who failed in his first music business venture with Vivendi/Universal) Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Lyor Cohen, the man who brought Rap/Hip Hop to the mainstream with Run DMC and other groundbreaking acts. It is now all about the money…the music that attracts the money is manufactured to do just that.

Radio used to play music, some of which would become popular and even create a career for the artist. Now radio plays what is already considered popular, and very rarely draws outside its formats or the major label’s criteria. It is no longer about the music…it is about the popularity.

Artists used to play 100’s of dates a year, start out in clubs, high schools, and colleges, tour in a van, sleep on floors, and pay their dues. They did it out of love, and an inescapable desire to play, write, and perform. It was all about the music…the hard work and dues paying was a rite of passage, and a joy to be a part of. Sometimes the work paid off with recording contracts and a career, sometimes it didn’t. Now? Now, none of that means anything.

From the trenches…

I know I’m rambling here, but you’ll have to forgive me. Watching the decline of all I believe in and hold dear can be frustrating as hell sometimes.

At RCA, the Family Tree’s first record deal paid us 3% of 90% of wholesale, divided between 5 guys. That’s like less than a cent per record apiece. Did we care? Nope. At least not until we realized we had to pay for EVERYTHING the label did on our behalf BEFORE we saw that 3%. Every nickel the label ‘spent’ wasn’t ‘their’ money, it was ‘our’ money, even the recording process itself. Everything was an “advance against royalties”. Everything. This practice still exists. In essence, it means the label recoups everything they spend before the artist sees a dime. In other words, they take the lion’s share of income for as long as they want to, unless you strike it rich on the first record, and even then, the pay out is minimal compared to what the label sees. We made our money playing gigs.

Some record companies really did believe in their artists. When Roxy and then The Wackers were on Elektra, they recorded 5 albums with us, even though we never had a breakout hit. The Wackers (pictured here) had a new contract for 7 more albums in place, which we lost due to a greedy New York based manager (NOT Bill Siddons), who pissed then President David Geffen off so much, Geffen found a loophole and we were dropped. Jac Holzman had wiped our debt to the label from the books before he sold Elektra . We were lucky to have been on such a great label, run by such a great man, at such a great time.

To quote an old friend, Myles Goodwin, rock and roll is a viscious game.

What’s that Smell?…

Now radio, records, publishers, artists and concert promoters are blaming each other and the internet for the rising sea of shit they are currently wading in. Have they done anything to help themselves out of the mess? Yes. Raise ticket prices, demand payments from each other for this that and the other, sue the music loving public, and fire innocent bystanders who do the work. How a certain U.S radio executive can fire so many employees in the name of cost cutting, lead his company into bankrupcy, and STILL take home millions of dollars in salary and bonuses every year, just infuriates the shit out of me. And HE is just one of many. The music business is far from dead…but it sure smells bad.

So how do we fix the music business? How can they adapt to the future the rest of us already live in? The answers lie in the monetization of the internet, the willingness on the part of all involved to accept the new paradigm, and the co-operation between the ruling bodies of the affected participants, and the participants themselves, to admit their mistakes and move past them.

Are the solutions about to be put forth in my next column the right ones? There is no way to tell. But unless suggestions like these are at least tried out, millions, maybe billions of dollars will go uncollected, heads will continue to roll, and the public will find other sources of entertainment and still regard music as free. One thing is certain. A lot of people who make astronomical amounts of money in the record, radio, and concert business will leave if the rewards for their leadership fall below what they could make in another field. They are here for the fame and fortune, not the music, and certainly not for the consumers, and it is possible that we would all be better off if they moved on, say for example, to run dish soap or real estate companies. Their abilities are to make money for themselves and appease stockholders, and those skills will always land them on their feet. There will still be big money in the music business, maybe not as insane as it was in the period between 1975 and 2005, but certainly enough to make people who love the business of music happy, but for the music, and the people who love it, the time for action is NOW.

Next: Rejigging the music business and monetizing music on the internet…Finally!

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That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts…and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, The Segarini Band, and Cats and Dogs, and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.