Doom, Gloom and the Renaissance

Posted by Pinky on Feb 19, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments

Oh, man… do you guys remember that one time when everyone was all like, “Oh my gosh! I totally don’t have a job and can’t afford beer!” and everything? Whew… that was a real drag. I am SO glad the recession ended 4 months ago.

Imagine that bummer high extended over a decade or so and applied specifically to your line of work and you’ve got something along the lines of what the music industry has been going through for most of my career. I was building my first websites right around the time Napster hit the scene and all hell broke loose, and really getting into a groove right about the time N*Sync broke the record for most albums ever sold in a single week. (~$2.4 million units) But from there, it’s been all down hill. In fact, DreamWorks Records was a client of mine back in 2002, when Darryl Worley’s first #1 single, I Miss My Friend, hit the charts. His album sold a massively “disappointing” 70,000 copies in its first week out, which almost lost him his major label deal. These days, that’s enough to score the best selling album in the nation on any given week.

But that’s not what this post is about at all. This post is about stupid industry lobbyists like the RIAA claiming that people will stop making music if college kids don’t stop downloading music for free. Actually, it’s not about that either. It’s about the fact that I am sitting in a gorgeous hotel room in Memphis, TN surrounded by over 1,000 wacky, crafty, rockin’ musicians at the Folk Music Alliance that have literally come from all over the world to bust out a guitar or mandolin and sing the fire out of songs old and new. The halls are packed. The rooms are packed. The stages are all full of people making music for the joy of making music and it’s such a great reminder of the way that human creativity works.

I feel very blessed to make a living in and around the music industry and really do sympathize with my friends in high places that are concerned about the future of their companies and generations of would-be-mainstream artists that may never have the chance to make $100,000,000 in their career. (One fourth of what Garth Brooks has so far, by the way…) But I’m not afraid for one fraction of a second that people will stop making and sharing music, or even that the business of helping them reach a bigger audience will go away. Tonight I am proud to be in Memphis, where music is made for the joy of making music. We should all have such rewarding problems.